So Amazon sales rankings accurately predicted NPD results 5 out of 6 times since launch. Seems like a fairly reliable predictor, to me. Especially when the Amazon rankings were much closer in December, the stock situation was so volatile at the time and the sales gulf was relatively narrow.
With the PS4's sales rank reliably 25-40 places above the Xbox One on Amazon I'd say it is almost certain it is being outsold across the whole market as well.
Based on what? You compare the highest Xbox SKU to the highest PS4 SKU and declare the one that is ranked higher as the one that will win NPD? That's terribly simplistic, it ignores multiple SKU's, but lets define our terms...
Also I thought it was 6/6? It missed a month?
I wouldn't strictly predict XOne would outsell PS4 for June, but it might, and I bet it will be at least 75% of PS4's sales, which the Amazon hardware rankings dont really reflect imo.
Thinking about it, will the white PS4 count towards sales until it's released? I'm not sure. If they don't count then there's a good chance Xbox One has better June sales.
I think it does at Amazon IIRC, but not at NPD.
I think you can go back to June 2013 charts at Amazon and PS4 is there. Proving Amazon counts preorders as sales at the time of the preorder. Well, I guess thinking of it it's kinda obvious, since preorders are on the hourly chart to begin with.
But I still dont see why you'd think PS4 at #9 and two X One SKU's at say 45 and 55 means X1 sells better. First off there's no way to tell, second intuitively I think one #10 spot should be selling well above two charts spots below 40 in sales.
Basically as I point out you guys are all over the place
And I know we're going to get lots of backtracking and excusing with multi-SKU's the first time it doesn't work out, which there's a good chance will be June imo.
I will say as of this second Kinectless X1 is at #43 I think and Titanfall bundle is #55. Basically it seems Kinectless X1 may be ahead to stay, which wasn't obvious.
Another indication that PS4 sales remain high, is the fact that PS cards remain in the top 10 alongside the PS4. XB cards are ranked lower, near the XB1.
Or this could be an indication what I've argued, more Playstation shoppers shop at Amazon...
Actually once I read this may have something to do with buying PSN cards on Amazon is a good deal for international shoppers (I forget why). So from what I understand you have lots of people from Europe buying PS cards off Amazon USA, accounting for their constant high ranking. Now this should apply to Xbox cards as well I suppose, but Xbox has less international users. Anyway, the whole charts are unusually strong for Playstation so I doubt any explanation is needed.
Still, I think the PS4 will comfortably win June. It's ranking higher at 4 out of the top 5 retailers NPD tracks as I pointed out earlier
These are online site only rankings though. Brick and mortar is a whole nother, much larger story. And I'm pretty certain lets say, Gamestop's sales ranking only account for online orders at Gamestop.com (which in their case is probably a very tiny fraction), not the sales at their thousands of local stores. Same for all online arms of brick and mortar retailers.
I think I covered this a few posts back (at least I wrote something that I meant to post). I googled PSP sales in 2012 and it turns out that it sold at a ratio of 2:1 compared to the PSV during the time the PSV was available. Also, the Xbox 360 had many different SKUs and was probably placed multiple times on the list of sales from Amazon. Just because one PSP was placed first doesn’t mean that it sold more than the Xbox 360 at this particular retailer. So this shows that the Amazon data are valid for showing trends, if we simple ignored the PSP we wouldn’t think to check whether its sale were actually that good and apparently they were good.
I dont see why 2:1 sales over extremely poor selling Vita matters? PSP ranked ahead of for example, all 360 SKU at Amazon in 2012...that's nowhere near showing up in NPD which was my point.
PSP was 99 bucks I think at Amazon for like, 2011, 2012, 2013, and was apparently pretty popular there, even as in the real world it was basically dead/dying in that time. And why not, you could see the appeal. Heck I imagine it may not have even been all that available on the street, pushing Amazon sales further higher.
Come to think of it, you seem to also see a lot of very niche, Japanesy games overrepresented at Amazon altogether. Which also makes sense, as those type of games probably wont even be at Wal Mart, let alone that type of more sophisticated consumer purchasing them at Wal Mart.
because you are drawing conclusions from the number and stats you yourself seem to keep an eye out and look for signs? As has been pointed out before; the only way to get any fair idea out of the Amazon sales is by looking at the rankings. If a product is sitting on #8 and another #44, it doesn't mean that the latter is selling over 5 times worse.
For all we know, rank #8 and #44 could be seperated by a ratio of less than 2-1.
It doesn't, but it seems pretty likely. I dont know, it seems like there's probably a mathematical theorom for this somewhere. In theory though, each chart position could be selling exactly one unit more tham the position below. However, I just would put lots and lots of money on the difference being great between places. Well take NPD, the top selling game probably most months will be I think at least 2X the #10 selling game. And it's usually probably 4-10X or more, when we get numbers. And that's just 1 v 10, how much more 10 V 40?
As I mentioned, that's really my major problem with Amazon's charts since new-gen started. PS4 has been 1-10, X1 has been 25-40, and this just reflects a level of hardware sales dominance I dont see month to month in NPD. Although April was almost 2-1, and May should be similar, for example March was much closer between the two.
In conclusion, a lot of words signifying not much
