Sony couldn't muster a sixth successive NPD victory in October 2015, as the Xbox One and Halo 5 managed to overcome the PlayStation 4's price drop. In truth, it looks like it was a pretty middling month for home consoles in the United States, with sales barely increasing year-over-year. However, it's worth remembering that the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 are continuing to decline at a rapid rate, offsetting the numbers significantly.
Consequently, overall retail sales were largely flat, totaling $805.9 million for the month compared to $788.7 million the year prior. The release of Rock Band 4 helped to bolster accessory income by 18 per cent, as software dipped by three per cent. Unsurprisingly, it was Halo 5 that topped the charts, with NBA 2K16 and Assassin's Creed Syndicate finishing just behind. Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection was forced to settle for ninth place, although we should stress that the software charts don't take into account bundled games.
Sony will perhaps be a little disappointed with October as a whole as the PS4 did receive its first price cut early on. However, big Call of Duty: Black Ops III and Star Wars Battlefront bundles may have delayed sales into November. Either way, the organisation was eager to point out that its box is still very much a best seller around the world. "We are truly humbled by the success of the PS4," a Sony spokesperson told Games Beat. "Thank you to our community for making PS4 the top selling console globally."
Top Ten Physical Retail Releases: October 2015
- Halo 5: Guardians (Xbox One)
- NBA 2K16 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3)
- Assassin's Creed Syndicate (PS4, Xbox One)
- Madden NFL 16 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3)
- WWE 2K16 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3)
- FIFA 16 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3)
- Destiny: The Taken King (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3)
- Yoshi's Wooly World (Wii U)
- Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection (PS4)
- Rock Band 4 (Xbox One, PS4)
[source venturebeat.com]
Comments 30
I'm glad Sony lost, they need a swift kick in the butt every now and then. Wouldn't want them to get complacent.
Are these dollar totals or copies sold? I would be pretty happy actually if rock band got 10th in copies with how expensive it is.
@ztpayne7 Copies sold at US retail. No digital copies included.
I agree, this is only good news!! PS4 will win this gen regardless, but Sony needs a rude reminder every now and than so they don't get arrogant.
Xbox deserves the win for having an awesome fall lineup.
Exclusives really don't move the needle as much as people think. I actually prefer Sony releasing its games outside of the holiday rush, because it's just stupid going against the juggernauts, as Tomb Raider is about to find out...
There's only so much time and money that people have, and it's the likes of Call of Duty that see the majority of it at Christmas time. Uncharted 4 will do much better in March than it would have done in November.
@get2sammyb
I agree that, it makes sense to pepper the whole year vice concentrating everything during the Sep-Nov season.
But, Sony's published exlusives, although improving, have been pretty mediocre this generation.
@sub12 To be fair, Bloodborne's still the highest reviewed exclusive of the generation. I've really enjoyed the "smaller" stuff they've been putting out like Resogun and Rapture, but yeah, 2016 should be a much better year for "AAA" (shudder) PS4 exclusives.
As long as we get The Last Guardian, all will be forgiven!
Well I think the Xbox One helped it's self with the hole backwards compatibility, Sony saying they not doing it to me is the wrong move, Microsoft are going to start selling more games now, let me give you a great example... Rainbow Six Seige, PS4: just Rainbow Six Seige, Xbox One: Rainbow Six Seige-Rainbow Six Vagas and Rainbow Six Vegas 2 FREE, they will be able to do this with a lot more games. (I'm a PS4 player btw before the haters start!)
@Midzark It's a nice perk and a good bullet point, but why would I want to play an old game when I've just bought the new one? Not sure it will move the needle much, but it is a decent incentive.
@Midzark. Its definitely a great feather in MS cap. But wpuld people really enjoy playing the inferior verson of the New game theu just bought? It would be like buying uncharted 3 at launch and they getting Drake fortune free. Great value yes but stark improvments to gameplay in the newer game would make the older game seem ever more dated than it is.
@get2sammyb
"but why would I want to play an old game when I've just bought the new one?"
@3Above
"But wpuld people really enjoy playing the inferior verson of the New game theu just bought?"
I can give some insight seeing as I am a multi console owner who prefers to buy all multiplats on PS4 where the UI is cleaner and games typically run better.
Yes it makes an impact on decision-making. Most definitely. I prefer all my multiplats on PS4, but at the same time, the difference in performance is negligible to the point that it wouldn't take all THAT much to persuade me to go with the X1 version of a game.
And if we're talking a free, highly rated 360 game (or two) as the deciding factor, I'm going with the free game every time. Ya it's gonna be a little dated. But I'm a gamer. I play Wii U games that look comparable to last gen, I play 3DS games, heck I even play many old school games on virtual console. A 7th gen game is actually on the upper end of games I play all around, graphically.
And yes, even if I wouldn't play it right away, just having it for backlog is worth it to me. I enjoy filling out a robust game collection across the board- like a book-lover has a personal library, and believe me, free classics are enough to tip the scales (in most cases anyways).
I did buy Fallout 4 on PS4 and just bought Fallout 3 on X1 for BC, but that's more the exception than the rule.
I can't speak for everyone but for me, yes it matters.
I'd have been surprised if Xbox One didn't win. Eventhough I feel like the hype surrounding the franchise has dropped off a bit since the change from Bungie to 343, Halo is still a strong property. Now the interesting thing is how much staying power it will have. Will it lead Xbox One to a big win this holiday or will the PS4 price cut and Star Wars and CoD marketing deals play a bigger role over the next two months? Maybe I'm too much into sales numbers, but whatever, I'm looking forward to finding out.
@get2sammyb
It depends on the exclusives. Something like Disgaea is not going to 'move the needle,' but if you're honestly going to tell me something like Uncharted 4 couldn't have made an impact I'm going to have to call bs on that.
Xbox winning this month isn't just a good thing from the perspective of keeping Sony on their toes and not getting complacent, because I do think they kinda hoped the pricecut would be enough to hold their reign, but I think it also shows exclusives are still important.
As @get2sammyb rightfully stated "exclusives really don't move the needle as much as people think", something that Sony's dominance made more than clear, but this did had me worried a bit. Whenever the PS was criticized we as fans could always point to the great 1st exclusives we were getting, but this time around Sony adopted the winning strategy by relying heavily on 3rd parties; Bloodborne isn't just the highest rated exclusive this gen, it also isn't a first party effort.
Should we care when 3rd party offerings are such incredible hits, both in sales and critically, with games like TW3, MGS V, Fallout and more appearing on our console? I want to think we should. Halo hasn't resonated with the critics in a way I expected it would, but judging it purely from a gamer's point of view it's incredible bang for your buck. Where 3rd party offerings solely exist to make as much money as possible, 1st party exclusives are more than that, they are the consolemaker's business card. Halo 5 offers so much value for it's $60, that you just know that's only the case because it's a first party exclusive designed to move consoles instead of just maximizing profits.
And I miss the typical Sony exclusives even more; where MS is only now starting to look beyond the realm of pure shooters, Sony's exclusives have always been different than your regular 3rd party games. Not only do they often excel on a technical level, they differentiate themselves from other games by not being so risk averse. Themes and settings can be totally different from the standard, they aren't afraid to introduce gameplay that hasn't been popular in years and they even let a tried and tested FPS developer make a 3rd person action-adventure- RPG- monster hunteresque game with robot dinosaurs.
These 1st party games are the cream of the crop and the games I always look forward to most. So to see they're still of significance, even in months when the big Juggernauts hit is somehow a relief. Sony losing a month here and there won't scare them, but seeing people still care about 1st party exclusives can be important for the years to come.
@Boerewors
The way I view things is a great game is a great game. First party, third party exclusive, third party multiplat, as long as it's great that's all I care about. However, I do agree with you that there is something special about first party exclusives. No company should know the ins and outs of a console the way first party developers do so that right there is a bonus. That said, and this is where I take issue with a lot of the fanboys on this site and it's the only area where I have contention with the writers that 'exclusives don't matter.' People can deny it all they want, but last-gen when MS was ahead for much of the generation on the strength of third-party deals with only Halo, and to a lesser extent Gears, being its big exclusives, Sony quacks were rightly pointing out all the great exclusives PS3 had. Now the tide has turned and we get this idiotic 'exclusives don't matter' argument. Exclusives are what gives a console its identity and while something like Gravity Rush may not 'move the needle' it's a lot better to have it than not have it. So I wish people would cut the bs, but moronic corporate slaves will be moronic, hypocritical corporate slaves.
There is no denying though, PlayStation is the house that third parties built. When I thought PSone my first thoughts weren't Twisted Metal, Syphon or even Gran Turismo or Crash but rather Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Tomb Raider, Dino Crisis, Ace Combat, Tekken, Time Crisis, Final Fantasy, etc. So I can't blame Sony for going back to that strategy. It's just unfortunate that it seems to have to be either or as opposed to having a nice balance of strong third party and first party. 2016 looks like it should be a nice year but then again I said that about this year and it turned out all we got was Bloodborne and Until Dawn. I highly doubt we get all the exclusives in 2016 that people are anticipating. For sure Horizon will be pushed into 2017.
@Gamer83
The moment Uncharted 4 drops exclusives matter again
Your typical PS3 gamer isn't the same as the standard PS4 gamer and PushSquare seems to realize this and sometimes cater to this "new PS gamer". Old PS gamers are the kind of consumers who once left Nintendo because they refused to listen to us, but we never stopped asking Sony's respect in return; the PS was the first adult console not because of the content, but in the way it treated the gamer. But although these gamers are still very much a part of the community, the 360 gamers we used to laugh about when they told us what they did to our moms the other night on the Internet because we simply stated we enjoyed Puppeteer, are now part of our community too.
When a console has succes, these type of consumers just follow: they don't think for themselves and just buy what's trendy and to compensate for not thinking things through they go online to shout they rule and therefore their console of choice does too. For an editor it's so easy to score when you write for a group of these fans; you just wave away whatever the competition is doing and make sure you come up with excuses for the platform your audience loves and within no time you'll reap the "rewards". I ran a PS2 dedicated site myself and a certain point I felt untouchable: that thing was selling like hotcakes and every argument concerned PS2 owners brought to the table about the console was waved away by calling those people "negative Nancies that should go play Xbox instead", cause surely 100 million people couldn't be wrong!? People just loved it and as an editor you almost got high on the support you were getting for telling others "the truth". By the time the PS3 launched and turned out to be less of a succes I had no credibility at all, because I wasn't running a site dedicated to PS like I claimed, I was running a fansite.
People often times mistake honest concerns about the PS4 for unfair criticism or enthusiasm for what Xbox is doing as an infiltration to sell Xbox consoles, but most of the times people like me are sincere and just want a console, or website for that matters, they like to do well. Next generation the tables will probably be turned again and then "exclusives will move needles" all over the place
@Neolit
There's nothing you said that doesn't make sense tbh. Views can differ, mainly because I don't think there is just one truth. I liked reading your comment and agree on most things, except for MS being able to take over the console market. They need at least 10 more years like last year and go without effing up like they did before that, before games would buy into it. Sure, if they subsidize consoles so heavily to a point no one can compete, they'll take it, but luckily their are shareholders who mostly don't like Xbox as it is.
Sony has turned gaming from a side project to its most profitable consumer electronics division and Nintendo is pretty much a gaming company and not much else: they have gaming in their DNA, unlike MS who has only recently start making decisions that feel like "gamer's first" choices. As the One launch has shown us it takes more than a bag of money to really be accepted by gamers and that's why I don't think MS will get away with its relatively bad launch, where Sony did just that with the PS3: gamers somehow have faith in Sony, faith MS hasn't earned yet. But I feel that doesn't have to mean we have to dismiss everything they do as not relevant to us, cause I see lots of cool things happening there.
I don't know how Yoshi's Wooly world ranked in top 10! Don't get me wrong I love Yoshi and this is his best game since Yoshi's Island but people generally ignore Yoshi!
I read(don't believe everything you read on the Internet) that Halo 5 only sold 1 million?! That is SAD. Well for MS anyway Hopefully SONY can take this month and next month in the USA(= the WORLD it seems on the internet) So that will be 10 month win for the PS4 and a shameful 2 month win for the X1
As people have stated, it's good for sony to lose every now and then, as it's a good thing to keep them from getting too high and mighty...maybe this will help them get on the ball and listen to fans more and get their exclusives out more.
Besides all of this, 2016 should be a great year for sony, and if all of the exclusives come out that we've been hearing and seeing about, then they'll be back to dominating again (but I'm not really sure on what exclusives Xbox has for 2016). I'm planning on purchasing an XONE this income tax, but PS4 will still be the system I always come back on (Shame that I got rid of the Wii U and keep on having second thoughts about nintendo anymore).
Anyways, sony already won the current generation, and I don't see that ending. I can see them beating the sales of the Wii and PS2 and becoming the number one system of all time...somebody let me know when that happens though.
As someone who also owns both consoles, when I choose to buy a game, the visuals (1080p vs 900p upscaled for example) are the last consideration. This is such a small difference overall. It doesn't affect the game-play, story, content, options etc etc. If XB1 version has some bonus, whether that be a free game via BC or even earlier access to DLC, I will buy that version over the PS4. The ONLY time the resolution comes into play is if everything else is equal.
I know November has a lot of 3rd party big releases with 2 of those associated more with PS4. I know it maybe a sore topic but Rise of the Tomb Raider is also out this month and is reviewing very well. It may not sell as many copies as the big multi-plat releases but I do expect it will be in the top 10 for Nov, even in the top 5! Personally I bought it and want it more than Fallout 4 - especially after the impact that the reboot left on me. I didn't buy Halo 5 as I feel that series as lost its way since 343 took over!
I am not that surprised that the Nathan Drake collection only managed 9th. After all it is only a remaster of the campaign (best part) only and a lot of people still have the PS3 versions and the memories of those still fresh in their minds. All the other games are 'new'.
@get2sammyb So Xbox give away 2 older games for free and you pose the question 'why would i want to play an old game?' and yet PS has pumped out more remasters than you can shake a stick at and multiple times you have defended the practice. What's the difference? HD? The Sony logo?
@Gamer83 Right, but those kind of exclusives are few and far between in Microsoft and Sony's stable. There's God of War, Gran Turismo, Uncharted, Halo, and Gears of War - they're about the only ones that have serious selling power...
@eLarkos I think you should re-read the thread. This has nothing to do with remasters.
@JLPick
Sony is dominating some places in Europe 9:1, unless that turns around dramatically then the PS4 should be the top selling console this gen. I don't think it's a good thing when a company dominates the market like that though, because complacency always seeps in and Sony has definitely been tone deaf about certain things that are very easy to add to updates and such if some higher ups would get their heads out of their a$$es for two seconds.
So the month I buy a PS4 is when it drops?
A point not sure if it was mentioned but Sony only supporting PS4 now should mean more and better exclusives.
Would have been a disaster had MS not won this month but Sony won't be worried in the slightest. In all likelihood the combination of CoD and Star Wars will shift plenty of units. As for BC, it's a nice feature to have but it should have available at launch for it to make an impact, as for those still hoping for BC on PS3 titles, it will never happen for a few reasons. One Sony has PS Now which is still getting getting games onto the service so publishers aren't afraid of it. And 2 it's technically impossible for the PS4 to emulate PS3 games. Now PS1 and 2 games are much more realistic but depends on how Sony will distribute it.
Hello,
I had a Xbox 360 (Sadly several since they kept breaking or red ring of death etc...)and original Xbox; and I remember the Xbox 360 also had BC for original Xbox games. Heck you could play over 100 plus games and it seemed cool at the time. However, I barely used it and began to forget about it. I wanted to play new games not old games.
Now when I got the PS3 (awesome time in 2010) I got to enjoy PS2 and PS1 games and It was so much better. Sony consoles have so many more classics that I enjoyed and would come back to.
Xbox One BC doesn't matter to me since I have a PS3 and I don't need to play them on my PS4. I think BC will get buzz now and then die off by next summer because the current consoles will be 2 1/2 years old and tons of games (well a lot more on PS4. I believe PS4 has over 150 more games than Xbox One currently).
Cheers!!!
@sinalefa
You would hope it means more and better exclusives. We'll see how good Sony is at getting them out though. 2016 looks great but this time last year people were saying the same for 2015.
I always find it interesting when exclusives out sell games being sold on 4-5 systems.
@get2sammyb I already quoted your previous comment but here it is again for your reference: "It's a nice perk and a good bullet point, but why would I want to play an old game when I've just bought the new one?"
My comment was in relation to that. I find it odd you promote remasters on PS yet dismiss 2 free games when given on xbox.
And for the record, I comprehended the thread the first time i read it.
@Carl-G 1 million physical copies. In one country. Digital purchases not counted.
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