Every month the NPD, which claim to be the leading provider in reliable and comprehensive consumer and retail information for a wide range of industries including gaming, release monthly data for both software and hardware sales for all three consoles.
The group is properly organized and well respected in the gaming industry, respect we believe is well deserved. However we questioned whether the company's figures were accurate since it failed to collect some extremely important data, example DLC and MMO sales data. They conceded that DLC and MMO figures were unaccounted for, however, according to the group, this failure is not there fault but companies in the industry that keep an extremely tight lead on the information.
GamesThirst interviewed David Riley of the NPD, and the sheer amount of information he gave, shed some light on the situation, and a little secret of the industry.
"INDIE Live Expo, Japan’s premiere online digital showcase series connecting indie game fans all over the world, highlighted more than 150 games during its Saturday broadcast introducing world premieres, new trailers, and updates during its 10th-ever digital showcase." - INDIE Live Expo.
"Following a great event in November of last year, DevGAMM Lisbon is coming back to the beautiful and sunny Cascais region to catch up with old friends, connect with game developers from around the world, hear from seasoned professionals, and have a great time all around." - DevGAMM.
A look into the sad trajectory of indie games from high successful releases to complete irrelevancy in just a few weeks or months.
That's the thing with gaming there's always new experiences to have why spend months or years playing a single game when there's a new experience right around the corner.
Indie or AAA if your building your game expecting long term player counts you'll probably be disappointed as gamers often enjoy something for a few weeks and move on only to return if it's truely a classic.
Out of all the generations I've experienced there's games from 30 plus years ago I still dust off and play like super Mario bros, earthbound, vice city and san Andreas being games I treasure and revisit every few years but I'm not going back to play a game designed to keep me engaged for months on end because it's also designed to milk my wallet in most cases.
Build a great game that people love make it playable offline and ask does it matter if the concurrent player count is under 100 a year post launch more often that not it doesn't
The price of entry is too high to take chances like I used to. Was looking at V Rising and that ranges from $50-$130 CAD. That’s a lot for an indie imo. By the time it goes on sale, the player count might be dwindling. But that’s the trade-off, I guess.
NPD to track digital sales...they will just get the numbers direct from Steam/Live/PSN etc...no need to pay for NPD's extrapolations.
not to release certain number though
They love how Microsoft rapes them
Walmart accounts for roughly 15% of music sales and conversely I'd assume slightly more for videogame sales (since it's an even less broad medium).
That's a lot of unknown sales.
Same goes for amazon.
PS3 - IT ONLY DOESNT ANYTHING!