SuperData Wraps Up 2019 with December Numbers

We have the final monthly digital revenue update from SuperData Research with the release of their December chart.

SuperData Research Top 10 – December 2019

Going straight to the PC end of the chart, the usual top four stayed in their usual ranking, with League of Legends still at the top of the revenue list.  The first change doesn’t hit until fifth position, where World of Warcraft was last month.  In December Red Dead Redemption 2 moved up into fifth place thanks to launching on Steam, with Roblox, which drops on and off the list, surging up into the sixth spot.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare held onto seventh, where it was last month, while World of Warcraft ended up down in eighth.

After that was CS:GO, another title that wanders on and off the chart, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection, which landed on PC at the start of December.

Missing from the list are Fortnite, which had been in the top five for a few months, but which had been falling off more recently, and World of Tanks, a long time and regular entry in the bottom half of the list.  With no revenue numbers to gauge by, you cannot really tell if the new titles were surging onto the list or if revenue dropped off for the titles that fell off.

On the console list, Pokemon Sword & Shield, which topped the list after its November launch, disappeared completely.  On top for December instead was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare which was in second place the previous month.  FIFA 20 and Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order swapped and then moved up a spot, while Grand Theft Auto V, the old grand dad of the list, managed a fifth place finish for the holiday season.  Finally, Fortnite is still holding on in the console space, grabbing the sixth spot.

On the mobile end of the chart Clash of Clans ran ahead and passed perennial top title Honour of Kings in December.  Candy Crush Saga landed in third place and Pokemon Go fell down to ninth position.  Also of note is Roblox, which broke into both the mobile and PC list this month, and Homescapes and Gardenscapes, both of which I have noticed advertising very heavily in other mobile apps.  I saw constant ads for both  in Words with Friends.

We can compare this with the December numbers from NPD.  As always, NPD is US only, combines PC and console sales, and do not always include digital sales.

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
2. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
3. Madden NFL 20
4. NBA 2K20
5. Luigi’s Mansion 3*
6. Pokemon Sword*
7. Mario Kart 8*
8. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate*
9. Pokemon Shield*
10. Minecraft**

* Digital sales not included
*** PC Digital sales not included

The top of this list tracks the first spots on the SuperData console list, as consoles still depend quite a bit on the physical distribution chain.  People go to GameStop to buy console titles still.

FIFA 20 doesn’t make the cut because we don’t care that much in the US.

And Nintendo, which has no presence on the SuperData console chart this month grabs half the spots on the NPD chart.  Nintendo depends on physical sales more than any other console.

I think it is a bit of a cheat to split out Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield, but they do what they do.  But it looks like a lot of people got games for their Switch under the tree in December.

NPD also has a full 2019 sales chart.

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
2. NBA 2K20
3. Madden NFL 20
4. Borderlands 3
5. Mortal Kombat 11
6. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
7. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate*
8. Kingdom Hearts III
9. Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
10. Mario Kart 8*

* Digital sales not included

As one might expect, another console-centric list there.  I suspect that Pokemon Sword & Shield would have made the cut had they decided to break them out as individual titles.

SuperData released their own report on 2019 already, which I covered in a previous post.

And so it goes.  The SuperData report also included the following items to accompany their chart:

Consumer spending on digital games reached an all-time high of $9.8B in December 2019, up 8% year-over-year. Substantial year-over-year growth in mobile revenue (28%) more than offset falling Console and PC earnings (down 25% and 4%, respectively). Console spending was down partially due to shrinking Fortnite revenue (December 2018 was the title’s highest-earning month ever) and also due to fewer major premium games being released in late 2019 compared to the 2018 holiday season.

Clash of Clans from Supercell had its best month ever, more than seven years after its launch. The game earned $158.2M in December 2019 as content updates and holiday sales resulted in growth of monthly active users (MAU) and conversion rates.

A gamble on a new business model paid off for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Unlike past games in the franchise, Modern Warfare did not offer a season pass or paid map packs and monetized exclusively through battle pass sales and microtransactions. Despite this, Modern Warfare revenue in Q4 2019 was 4% higher than Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII during its launch quarter. In December 2019, the first month Modern Warfare players could purchase in-game content, spending reached $78.7M, nearly as much as was spent on Black Ops IIII in-game content during that game’s entire first quarter ($92.9M).

Grand Theft Auto V had its best month since December 2017. The game earned $84.7M across Console and PC as discounts drove downloads. Additionally, the release of the Diamond Casino Heist content update, a follow up to the highly successful July 2019 Diamond Casino and Resort update, resulted in increased spending on premium currency.

Red Dead Redemption 2 received a substantial boost after launching on Steam. Digital unit sales more than doubled from 406K in November to 1.0M in December. The game became available on Steam on December 5, one month after releasing elsewhere including the Epic Games Store and Rockstar Games Launcher. This brief exclusivity window was advertised in advance, so many players simply waited a short period to play the game on their preferred launcher.

 

New Packs in New Eden Still Selling Skill Points

Just about seven months ago a controversy got stirred up about a new Starter Pack for EVE Online because it was selling one million skill points for the low, low price of five dollars.

The reasonably priced packs… we’re talking about the one on the left

This seemed very much against the grain of a statement from CCP in a past dev blog about the nature of skill points in the game:

It’s very important to note here that this means all the skillpoints available to buy on the market in EVE will have originated on other characters where they were trained at the normal rate.  Player driven economies are key to EVE design and we want you to decide the value of traded skillpoints while we make sure there is one single mechanism that brings new skillpoints in to the system – training.

Here were packs with a million skill points, two skill injectors worth, being generated out of thin air and sold for cash.

CCP was quick to point out that players could only buy the starter pack once per account, though the math of getting a million skill points for five dollars even once was pretty compelling.  As I calculated out, for a veteran player who was only getting 150K skill points out an injector, this was like getting seven large skill injectors for five bucks.  An unbeatable deal, and there was even a bit of a rush to go buy the things due to that value.

The rush was also due to CCP responding to protests the next day in a dev blog in which they promised to do something about the starter pack.

And then they did nothing for seven months.  I was going to put up a post every month that the starter pack was still available, but I only did that once.  The crowd had moved on… there was the Blackout and the Drifter attacks and the cyno nerfs hitting after that, driving players out of space much more effectively than just breaking their word again about selling skill points.

Time passed.

Earlier today CCP posted an announcement about new “value” packs for capsuleers and I am happy to announce that you can no longer have access to a one-time straight up buy of one million skill points for five dollars.

Instead, you now have access to a one-time straight up buy of 250K skill points for ten dollars.  Or twenty-three dollars.  Or fifty dollars.  Or ninety dollars.

Admittedly, a much less appealing deal.  I don’t think people will be rushing out to grab that in the numbers that ran after the starter pack seven months ago.

But yes, the new range of “value” packs, which come in Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum levels, all include 250K skill points.

The January 2020 Value Pack Selection

If you are only interested in skill points… and frankly aside from PLEX or Omega time there is little else of value in these packs… the best deal is the ten dollar Bronze Pack.

The Bronze Happy Meal

60 PLEX won’t buy you much in game, though I suppose you can just sell it for ISK.

Oddly, if you are looking for value for money, the more expensive packages might be better deals, depending on what you want out of them.

The four packs are:

• Bronze – $9.99
  • 60 PLEX (~$2.50)
  • Cosmetic outfit
  • 4 frigate SKINs
  • 250K SP
• Silver – $22.99
  • 30 Days of Omega ($15)
  • 110 PLEX ($5)
  • 4 destroyer SKINs
  • 250K SP
• Gold – $49.99
  • 60 Days of Omega ($30)
  • 500 PLEX ($15 or $20)
  • Vedmak SKIN
  • 250K SP
• Platinum – $89.99
  • 90 Days of Omega ($45)
  • 1500 PLEX ($45)
  • Drekavec SKIN
  • 250K SP

The only things of value, in my opinion, are skill points, Omega time, and PLEX, and the latter two are the items you can buy, and likely do, buy from CCP.  So you can look at the amount of PLEX and Omega time you get as an off-set to the price paid for the pack.

For example, with the Bronze pack 60 PLEX is about two fifty… you cannot buy it in increments that small… so the offset price of the pack is about $7.49 for that 250K of skill points.

In the Silver pack we get into Omega time and PLEX increments we can work with.  We’ll give Omega time its highest value, $15 a month, and you can get 110 PLEX for five dollars, so that gives you $20 of value in the Silver pack, meaning you’re paying about three bucks for the 250K SP.

With the Gold pack things start to get interesting.  60 days of Omega is $30, and 500 PLEX is worth a month of game time, so another $15.  But to buy 500 PLEX costs $20, so you could value it that way as well.  So the offset is $45 to $50, making the 250K SP somewhere between $5 and the few cents I glossed over to get even numbers.

Finally, the Platinum pack gets you 90 days of Omega for a $45 value and 1500 PLEX, which in game time is another $45, meaning that you can get something close to $90 of value out of a $90 purchase and have your 250K skill points on top of that.

The thing is, you can only do it once.  All of the new packs are one per account.

That assumes you want to do it at all.  I am not convinced.  I don’t need the 250K of skill points… CCP just gave me that many last weekend for just logging in… I am not burning for some PLEX and I’ll buy my Omega time the old fashioned way I think.

So we went from a five dollar starter pack that was a really attractive deal that caused a good amount of outrage to a set of less attractive deals… that still have the stigma of selling skill points.

I don’t know.  I get that CCP needs to make money and these “value” packs are a way to boost income and that, due to the nature of the game itself, they walk a fine line in trying to offer something of value versus breaking the game and outraging the core fan base.  And skill points are a bit of a hot button issue for many players.  But what else is CCP going to throw in there?  Ships?  Already trained skills? (This certificate good for Amarr cruiser IV)  Even more cosmetics?

Meanwhile, there is that Best SKINs of 2019 pack for fifty dollars that contains nothing like any of what I would consider the best SKINs, for ships I don’t fly, all priced well beyond a point I would pay.  For fifty dollars straight up cash I want something like the whole Purity of the Throne Amarr SKIN sub-cap collection or all of the Caldari Ghostbird sub-cap SKINs.  But that might just be me.

Anyway, people are disappointed that CCP is still selling skill points, but the outrage seems weaker this time.  Either this isn’t as bad or we’re all just worn still out after a summer of outrage.  Or both.