When discussing film box office returns (itself something of a dubious metric but we can discuss Hollywood accounting and all that falls from it another day, if you want to do the equivalent for games then make a thread and I will be there) you will tend to be presented with either numbers adjusted for inflation right away or in the column next to it.
For those not familiar with inflation then as time goes on money buys you less, and not just over hundreds of years -- https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ . 10 million in 1980 is the better part of 31 million today. Even in 1999 then 10 million would be the equivalent of 15 million today.
Seeing that the Switch, which for now I am placing on the latest in a long line of Nintendo failures (or likely failures -- while I view it as unlikely it could get some games in the end), had surpassed the N64 (as far as sales/market share goes a failure, unless you are an American fanboy, though one with some decent games that have aged horribly) I wondered how useful a comparison that is and if something more useful could be cooked up.
Games as a general concept was mainstream at the time of the N64 but it is far more so today. Compared to the NES though... not so much. This might change in the future (if you got an Atari 2600 while it was current at age 12 then you are probably in your 50s now and might have had your kids and now their kids growing up with games), similarly games are making their way into the third world and other markets beyond the English speaking world, Europe and Japan. Population growth rates in said major markets though are stalled somewhat, if not actually shrinking, so that could get interesting for these numbers in the future.
Sometimes people talk about attach rate which is somewhat akin to how many games a user buys. Other times sales of games compared to total console sales also comes into play, though you immediately have to ponder upgrade/refresh/red ring and ylod failures and "I just wanted a media player".
I don't see it as often but game consoles per household, similar to cars per household, might be something to consider. TVs per household is something general electronics considers from time to time, and mobile phone companies definitely care about such things for their products.
Back on game sale volumes we see developers frequently complain that sales in the millions (one time breaking a million was a feat to note) are not enough to sustain things. While this could be developers caught in the investment trap* or generally being greedy, or not reigning in their spending (computers are only getting more powerful and cheap as time goes on -- if they spend more money making a game beyond a token bit of inflation** it is because they choose to) I am not going to dismiss it completely.
*game companies are generally noted to investors as companies with a single product, released maybe not even annually, and with potentially massive returns. As such they join a lot of other tech companies in silly investment numbers world. If said investors are leaning on you to produce the big hits...
**10 million in 2010 (seeing titles such as Skate 3, Mass Effect 2, Bayonetta, Red Dead Redemption, Fallout: New Vegas...) is $11,657,647.58 according to the calculator from earlier. While I would not turn down the difference if I was offered it then at the same time it is not so much in the grand scheme of things. Also many devs would love a budget of 10 million, though it is not high compared to some.
I read a small study the other day where different publishers/platforms had their review scores and sales compared and there is a split between platforms, Nintendo having an interesting position in it all. https://towardsdatascience.com/predicting-hit-video-games-with-ml-1341bd9b86b0
Do I make some kind of bias factor to account for this, or note it when comparing?
Going further then while you could probably account for the PS2 owners that wanted a cheap DVD player (people forget how big a selling point it actually was), maybe even something for the PS3 ones wanting a blu ray (between format wars, streaming had not quite gone mainstream but was a thing among certain sets and this was the heyday of torrents which is functionally the same for a lot purposes here, and people generally being content with DVD it is not as notable as the PS2 DVD stuff but not something to be dismissed) but what do you do about the Wii being a Wii sports machine for a sizeable fraction of its userbase?
I could ponder it further but I want a discussion. The game sales compared to console sales, top 10 game sales volumes, maybe top 10 not counting Nintendo first party stuff as a secondary metric, and possibly some kind of manufacturer adjustment (if Nintendo is all ten year olds without money, and nowadays probably a fortnite habit, then it stands to reason the cool psbox crowd in their 20s with no kids and enough disposable income, or gaming a proper focus thereof, would be different) being where I head first if I were to go there.
Short version. Let us thrash out a way to compare console sales in a more meaningful way.
For those not familiar with inflation then as time goes on money buys you less, and not just over hundreds of years -- https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ . 10 million in 1980 is the better part of 31 million today. Even in 1999 then 10 million would be the equivalent of 15 million today.
Seeing that the Switch, which for now I am placing on the latest in a long line of Nintendo failures (or likely failures -- while I view it as unlikely it could get some games in the end), had surpassed the N64 (as far as sales/market share goes a failure, unless you are an American fanboy, though one with some decent games that have aged horribly) I wondered how useful a comparison that is and if something more useful could be cooked up.
Games as a general concept was mainstream at the time of the N64 but it is far more so today. Compared to the NES though... not so much. This might change in the future (if you got an Atari 2600 while it was current at age 12 then you are probably in your 50s now and might have had your kids and now their kids growing up with games), similarly games are making their way into the third world and other markets beyond the English speaking world, Europe and Japan. Population growth rates in said major markets though are stalled somewhat, if not actually shrinking, so that could get interesting for these numbers in the future.
Sometimes people talk about attach rate which is somewhat akin to how many games a user buys. Other times sales of games compared to total console sales also comes into play, though you immediately have to ponder upgrade/refresh/red ring and ylod failures and "I just wanted a media player".
I don't see it as often but game consoles per household, similar to cars per household, might be something to consider. TVs per household is something general electronics considers from time to time, and mobile phone companies definitely care about such things for their products.
Back on game sale volumes we see developers frequently complain that sales in the millions (one time breaking a million was a feat to note) are not enough to sustain things. While this could be developers caught in the investment trap* or generally being greedy, or not reigning in their spending (computers are only getting more powerful and cheap as time goes on -- if they spend more money making a game beyond a token bit of inflation** it is because they choose to) I am not going to dismiss it completely.
*game companies are generally noted to investors as companies with a single product, released maybe not even annually, and with potentially massive returns. As such they join a lot of other tech companies in silly investment numbers world. If said investors are leaning on you to produce the big hits...
**10 million in 2010 (seeing titles such as Skate 3, Mass Effect 2, Bayonetta, Red Dead Redemption, Fallout: New Vegas...) is $11,657,647.58 according to the calculator from earlier. While I would not turn down the difference if I was offered it then at the same time it is not so much in the grand scheme of things. Also many devs would love a budget of 10 million, though it is not high compared to some.
I read a small study the other day where different publishers/platforms had their review scores and sales compared and there is a split between platforms, Nintendo having an interesting position in it all. https://towardsdatascience.com/predicting-hit-video-games-with-ml-1341bd9b86b0
Do I make some kind of bias factor to account for this, or note it when comparing?
Going further then while you could probably account for the PS2 owners that wanted a cheap DVD player (people forget how big a selling point it actually was), maybe even something for the PS3 ones wanting a blu ray (between format wars, streaming had not quite gone mainstream but was a thing among certain sets and this was the heyday of torrents which is functionally the same for a lot purposes here, and people generally being content with DVD it is not as notable as the PS2 DVD stuff but not something to be dismissed) but what do you do about the Wii being a Wii sports machine for a sizeable fraction of its userbase?
I could ponder it further but I want a discussion. The game sales compared to console sales, top 10 game sales volumes, maybe top 10 not counting Nintendo first party stuff as a secondary metric, and possibly some kind of manufacturer adjustment (if Nintendo is all ten year olds without money, and nowadays probably a fortnite habit, then it stands to reason the cool psbox crowd in their 20s with no kids and enough disposable income, or gaming a proper focus thereof, would be different) being where I head first if I were to go there.
Short version. Let us thrash out a way to compare console sales in a more meaningful way.
). But the Switch provides more than a mere graphical upgrade over its predecessors.
