what a difference numbers make

[Gollum]

Just curious, why is it that console hardware sales figures from Japan are so dramatically different this year depending on the source? I mean look at this (Media Create):

                      this week  week before   2003 total   
Game Boy Advance SP    83.200      114.000      197.300
PlayStation2           46.200       59.400      648.200
Game Boy Advance       26.200       33.900      663.000
Gamecube                5.600        9.200      168.600
Xbox                    1.800        3.000       40.200
PSone                   1.700        2.000       24.100

Then compare it to this (Famitsu):

                       this week  week before   2003 total   
Game Boy Advance SP     117.859        -         117.859
PlayStation 2            62.049      46.918      387.673
Game Boy Advance         32.422      25.640      235.855
Gamecube                  7.607       7.653       57.446
Xbox                      3.012       3.101       25.738
PSone                     1.329       2.192       14.703

There is a HUGE difference there, how come? I know they are probably monitoring different store chains, that weekly figures can easily be different because the dates they are taken on differ (Famitsu numbers are a couple of days older), and that Media Create is adjusting their figures to make up for those stores they don't monitor (which is why their figures are in average ~1.8 times higher). But that wouldn't effect the totals for 2003 THAT much, would it?

I mean according to MC GBA sold more units than PS2 in 2003, according to Famitsu however it sold only like 2/3rds as many! MC says GC sold 4x as often as Xbox, Famistu says it sold barely more than 2x as often. Can someone with more insight into the Japanese market fill me in? I guess MC is more reliable but what exactly the point of Famitsu's figures is if they are so off base is beyond me...

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Looks to me like they are just different weeks.

Media Create's "This Week" looks very much like Fumitsu's "Week Before".

Famitsu doesn't have any sales for GBA SP for "Week Before", so that should be the first clue that Famitsu's numbers are probably a week behind Media Create's...

 

[Gollum]

I thought that first too Joe, like I said the Famitsu numners are a couple of days or even a week older, but that hardly explains the big differences in total sales for 2003, I mean there's a difference between GC selling 4x or 2x as often as Xbox...

 

[Teasy]

Isn't the difference simply that Media Create provide much more accurate sales numbers then Famitsu?

I mean Media Create are THE company for this sort of thing in Japan, they provide daily sales numbers too. Famitsu are just a magazine who try to provide some rough guestimate type sales numbers AFAIK.

Of course I don't know that much about it so I may be wrong.