Mass Effect Andromeda in third place for NPD March 2017 Report

No one is buying GTA V now. The game is almost four years old and is available on five different platforms. It's the micro-transactions that are keeping the game profitable. It's why R* will never do story DLC ever again. GTA Online is the future of all R* products, and we already know RDR2 will have its own version of GTA Online with micro-transactions. This is nothing more than a money machine for R*.

Yes, this is a case where microtransactions works. Unfotunately, knowing EA... it's going to be some half-ass attempt which is only going to piss off even the casuals.

Your article is so vague, it barely means anything.  It's from the official site, but is so non-specific you'd think a politician wrote it.  I gave you an actual article stating that they do not track Origin sales.  Find me one that states that they have indeed started tracking sales.  Jesus, 8th graders use better debate evidence gathering technique than you.  

Your site, which isn't even the one that you have hyperlinked, states NPD covers "all distribution channels".  That means retail and online.  They are talking about direct from the company (EA, Microsoft, etc), distribution stores (Gamespot) and retail (Target, Walmart).  Those are all the "distribution channels"  Not that they track every service.  It does not mean it has the ability to track every single sale of any video game ever.  

Even stuff from Nov 2017, which was only 5 months ago, still states "Does not include Origin digital sales."  You think that in 5 months they finally got Origin to release their sales information and decided to just not announce anything about it?  No news, no Tweets, nothing??  You can't seriously be this naive.  

Bethesda games being pretty much the only exceptions, yeah. Witcher 3 is an amazing game, but it wasn't even in NPD's top 10 for 2015, because whatever records it broke (4 million copies in 2 weeks?) would have only been truly noteworthy within the RPG genre. Meanwhile, just because CoD seems to sell so much better than everything else year in, year out, doesn't prevent games like Battlefield, Halo, Destiny, Battlefront, The Division, Overwatch, and heck, even Watch Dogs, from showing up in top 10 for their respective release years. The best-selling Mass Effect game, ME3, missed out on that in 2012. That's why EA is pushing so hard for the pew-pew crowd, there's so much bigger audience to be gained there.

I'm by no means trying to undervalue Mass Effect, of course it's one of the top RPG brands. I'm just saying that doesn't mean we can assume it's going to wipe the floor with AAA shooters that aren't CoD in terms of sales. Bethesda's RPGs might do so nowadays, but that's hardly the case for the whole genre.

Pretty much all people who buys a switch buy it for zelda breath of the wild, its pretty much the game that sells the switch, and if the switch is sold out people are just going to buy breath of the wild until they can have a switch. Heck that is what I did with DAI, I bought the goty before I even had a ps4 because I was scared it may sold out. Just like you said, there is more sales of breath of the wild sales than switch, so its not limited to 900 000 sales.

And like max said zelda is a juggernault, twilight princess sold more than 8.5 million copies despite being an exclusive, everybody knows the zelda franchise, heck my step sister knows who zeldas or links is despite not liking video games. Its an iconic video game franchise that exists since the 1980's. Nintendo are pretty much the only brand among sony and Microsoft that can survive only on their franchise and first party game for their console because they have so many fans that could keep them alive, so not having as much sales as breath of the wild is far from being surprising for mass effect Andromeda, I never excepted it to have as much sales.


"You are vastly underestimating the pull of the Mass Effect franchise. It never particularly sold well on the PS3, but that's because it started out as an Xbox 360 exclusive. Since most Xbox 360 owners jumped ship and bought PS4s, it's rather difficult to believe that MEA would not have sold well on the most successful console in video game history (PS4). No, bad press definitely hurt MEA as it is a major property. Losing to any console exclusive is telling and losing to a mediocre Ubisoft property is also telling."

Call of duty is still having way more pre order on xbox rather than playstation, same for Fifa despite many people switching from xbox one to ps4.

And I say you are the one overestimating the power of mass effect, We in the mass effect community we love that franchise but oustside of us, not many people knows it. Heck one of my friends who loves video games was not even knowing what the hell mass effect was before I told him. it is a sucessfull franchise but certainly not on the same scale as zelda. It has its fans but its not that huge (that said I wish it was).

Also I disagrees with the sales being made for the most part in the first months, that maybe true for some games but not all of them, tomb raider 2013 sold 8.5 million copies as of april 2015, but in the first months, it was only 3,4 millions. More games are sold on the long run right now, people have been getting used of buying their games later for patches free content and sales, I even did it for witcher 3, it was a very good game but I was certainly not buying at first, considering how much it improved after release.

How about this one?  It's from January.  Still not new enough?  Do you need one from yesterday stating it?  Do you require scientists to reiterate monthly that you are still, in fact, comprised of cells and that DNA is used in the synthesis of proteins?  Facts remain true until refuted.  So my article, even if it's FIVE MONTHS old (although now I have one that's much less) is still true until shown otherwise.  Which you have hilariously failed to do so.  

The NPD Group has released its list of the 10 best-selling games of 2016. And, yes, shooters and sports titles continue to dominate the industry.
The list includes physical sales and some digital (for PC games it includes Steam, but not other digial stores like Origin).

venturebeat.com/2017/01/19/2016-npd-call-of-duty-no-1-battlefield-no-2-on-2016s-list-of-best-selling-games/  January 19th.  

The closest I seem to be able to get to the actual march 2017 NPD report is a NeoGaf post most of the game sites (Polygon, IGN, Gamespot) all link back to as their source.
link

At the very least that clearly states ** No Origin, Battle.net, uPlay, or non-Steam sales.  That's about as close to the actual source as I can track down.

My evidence, as you should already know, was NPD's official website. Whether you like what it states or not is entirely irrelevant. As I said, you do not have enough information to prove one way or the other whether this is still the case. It could be and that would certainly help to explain MEA's position on this list. However, you have not met the burden of proof to prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt.

For MEA's sake, I hope the Origin sales are not being considered. I purchased the game on Origin, myself, but it's also foolhardy to believe the PC base for this game would be comparable to console sales. Without a doubt, however, digital sales is one of EA's most lucrative ventures.

Here's this one from 2 days ago. I suppose all of these articles are just lying?

wccftech.com/march-npd-switch-wildlands-zelda-botw/

Specifically says of MEA "No Origin, Battle.net, uPlay, or non-Steam sales"

Based on my own observations, it seems you have to either be some sort of subscriber to their service or an industry insider to have access to this information. It doesn't seem to be made publicly available, which is why only the gaming media seems to have access to this information. It's likely many of these articles are probably just piggybacking off of other outlets and copy/pasting their stories. It's hard to question the credibility of the service when all of the industry insiders always treat NPD reports as irrefutable proof of sales.

That makes sense, although part of the online sales for Wildlands should appear for those who purchased on Steam. For those who purchased directly from UPlay or used Microsoft or Sony's online store, those wouldn't show up.

BOTW obviously wouldn't show the numbers made on the Nintendo eShop.

Well, without their data being available for review all we can say is this is their best guess.  Not just for MEA but for all the games on their list.  So, sorry for running you out on a tangent there since all we proved is their numbers for all the games are equally invalid.

Fair enough. As far as numbers are concerned, it's all we have to go on. It's not necessarily indicative of anything, especially if all sales aren't being considered. However, it's still interesting to look at and try to predict future trends for some of these games based on the sales NPD seems to have access to. How truly accurate it is really is anyone's guess, but it's better than nothing.

It's always going to be difficult to entirely track sales given all of these companies operate differently and some are less compelled to release this kind of information to the public than others.