Are NexGenWars numbers on PS3 and Wii sales bunk?

[jbanes]

With nexgenwars.com's numbers settling at a rather odd split for the number of Wiis vs. PS3s sold (500,000 vs. 300,000) I decided to get to the bottom of how exactly nexgen gets their numbers. What I found was this thread on Nexgen's brand new forums:

It basically just takes time and research to estimate the numbers as closely as possible.

 

What I have done is gotten charts of monthly sales for the past few years, and figured out certain trends. Then I have gotten past sales data and estimated the pace at which the consoles will sell. After I have the estimate and the counter running, I just watch out for anny official announcements, and adjust anything accordingly.

 

The site has been up since early July, and I haven't had to adjust the sales for the Xbox 360 since then. So far my estimation method has been pretty much right on. Now for the new consoles it is a little harder since there is no previous sales data to go off of. What I do for these is research how many they are expecting to have on launch and by the end of the year. For the launch counter I get it to around the number expected, and then I slow it down to pace it so that it will reach a good estimate for the end of the year, and as usual I will adjust anything if any official word comes in.

Bascially, he makes a wild guess about the current numbers based on the best-case estimates currently hitting the news wire. The unfortunate fact is that his numbers fail to tell us anything, as they're nothing more than counters toward sales targets that we all already know. Thus NexGen is almost certainly publishing "sales" that only exist in predictions rather than grounded in sound probability or actual sales data.

 

The site owner, 17 year old James Simpson from Oklahoma, should be applauded for his creativity, but the usefulness of his numbers leave something to be desired.

Edited November 27, 2006 by jbanes

[+remowilliams]

It's totally worthless nonsense.

Edited November 27, 2006 by remowilliams

[NE146]

82% of statistics are simply made up anyway

[Albert]

I was wondering about this site, since I keep seeing people quote it. Nice to know that it's complete bunk.

 

..Al

[n8littlefield]

It automatically set of my BS alarm, just given the fact that Sony never has actual sales figures, just shipped figures. Even though we kind of assume that they sold out, it still gave the "facts" and instant red flag.

[spacecadet]

It automatically set of my BS alarm, just given the fact that Sony never has actual sales figures, just shipped figures. Even though we kind of assume that they sold out, it still gave the "facts" and instant red flag.

 

No console manufacturer can quote anything other than "shipped" numbers at launch. They're not sitting there at the cash registers counting every sale.

 

Nintendo quotes NPD reports whenever they talk about the number of units "sold", but those aren't available until at least the middle of the *following* month for any given time frame, and they're based on statistical sampling, not actual scanned sales. So all Nintendo could do at this point would be to talk "shipped" units too.

[homerwannabee]

To tell you the truth the most interesting numbers are still correct. 54.3 percent believe that Wii will win the console war and 17.6 percent believe Playstation 3 will win. The other numbers may be false, but I don't think they were telling us as much as those numbers to begin with.

[n8littlefield]

Nintendo has released that they have sold more than 600,000 Wiis and that they still are pretty much sold out. I think more importantly in terms of publishers is that the Wii attach rate (games sold with the console) according to Gamestop was 3.0 while the PS3 was 1.5 - likely due to the PS3 being heavily Ebay'd, but still not great when publishers need to recoup the high next-gen HDTV development costs.

[jbanes]

Nintendo has released that they have sold more than 600,000 Wiis and that they still are pretty much sold out.

Here's a link for those of you who haven't seen it yet:

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...amp;refer=japan

 

I always thought that 400,000 seemed a little low.

 

 

Edit: Looks like NexGenWars has adjusted their Wii numbers. From what I know, there is no way that there are 300,000 PS3s on the market at the moment. I would be honestly surprised if there were even 250,000 in the hands of consumers at the moment. (eBay or not)

 

Edit 2: Here it is from the horse's mouth this time.

 

http://press.nintendo.com/articles.jsp?id=10662

Edited November 28, 2006 by jbanes

[MegaManFan]

Nintendo has released that they have sold more than 600,000 Wiis and that they still are pretty much sold out. I think more importantly in terms of publishers is that the Wii attach rate (games sold with the console) according to Gamestop was 3.0 while the PS3 was 1.5 - likely due to the PS3 being heavily Ebay'd, but still not great when publishers need to recoup the high next-gen HDTV development costs.

 

Or it could be that PS3 games are $60 and Wii games are only $50. You can basically buy 3 Wii games for almost what 2 PS3 games cost.

[Albert]

Nintendo has released that they have sold more than 600,000 Wiis and that they still are pretty much sold out. I think more importantly in terms of publishers is that the Wii attach rate (games sold with the console) according to Gamestop was 3.0 while the PS3 was 1.5 - likely due to the PS3 being heavily Ebay'd, but still not great when publishers need to recoup the high next-gen HDTV development costs.

 

Or it could be that PS3 games are $60 and Wii games are only $50. You can basically buy 3 Wii games for almost what 2 PS3 games cost.

To be more precise, you can buy exactly 6 Wii games for the price of 5 PS3 games. The $60 sticker price of PS3 games is another turnoff for me. I think $50 is already too high as it is, $60 is just gouging the consumer.

 

..Al

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Not all Wii games are $50. Some are only $40. And I suspect that as time goes, $40 will become the basic standard price for most of the Wii games. Same as the Cube...

[spacecadet]

Nintendo has released that they have sold more than 600,000 Wiis and that they still are pretty much sold out.

 

Nintendo's counting shipped consoles there too, and assuming (based on NPD surveys) that because most stores are sold out, that they've sold approximately 600,000 systems. You can't look at any of these numbers as being particularly accurate - Nintendo's are probably about as accurate as Sony's would be in this case. They're "more or less" accurate.

 

I think more importantly in terms of publishers is that the Wii attach rate (games sold with the console) according to Gamestop was 3.0 while the PS3 was 1.5 - likely due to the PS3 being heavily Ebay'd, but still not great when publishers need to recoup the high next-gen HDTV development costs.

 

And what's the PS3 vs. Wii attach rate for Blu-Ray discs?

 

Doesn't matter right now for game publishers, but Sony's intent with the PS3 is two-fold, just as it was with the PS2. The PS2's game attach rate initially was under 1, which everybody thought was the end of the world. But it turns out a lot of those people were buying the system as a cheap DVD player, which wasn't such a bad thing for publishers in the end, because it put a lot more systems in people's hands over those first couple years. Eventually, the game attach rate climbed, and because all those systems were out there, everybody made a lot more money than they would have otherwise when people did start buying games.

 

I think people put way too much stock in various launch numbers and stats; they just don't mean much, if anything. What matters is long-term demand and being able to satisfy that demand. And those are things that aren't really apparent when it's still the early adopter fanboy crowd buying up all the systems - neither system has yet satisfied the demand from that crowd. It's probably not going to be until next year that we really see how things are starting to shake out. Publishers know this too; most of them will hedge their bets until then. That's the way it always happens around every console launch, whatever the initial attach rate is.

[jbanes]

Nintendo's counting shipped consoles there too, and assuming (based on NPD surveys) that because most stores are sold out, that they've sold approximately 600,000 systems. You can't look at any of these numbers as being particularly accurate - Nintendo's are probably about as accurate as Sony's would be in this case. They're "more or less" accurate.

It's worth noting that Sony hasn't given us any numbers at this point. Their last communication was that there would be 400,000 at launch (which seems unlikely at this point) and that 600,000 more would be airlifted to the states at some undetermined time "before Christmas". Both companies have reduced their sales projections for 2006, but only Nintendo has announced any sort of current sales figures, suspicious or otherwise.

[MegaManFan]

To be more precise, you can buy exactly 6 Wii games for the price of 5 PS3 games. The $60 sticker price of PS3 games is another turnoff for me. I think $50 is already too high as it is, $60 is just gouging the consumer.

 

..Al

 

True but I don't expect the $60 price point to hold up much after Christmas, especially given there's a huge library of PS2 and PS1 games that still work. If it does I'll just sit on the two games I have - I'm not in any hurry to buy more especially when it appears there are several good ones I could download for a nominal fee (there's a really good Asteroids knock-off for one).

[Albert]

To be more precise, you can buy exactly 6 Wii games for the price of 5 PS3 games. The $60 sticker price of PS3 games is another turnoff for me. I think $50 is already too high as it is, $60 is just gouging the consumer.

 

..Al

 

True but I don't expect the $60 price point to hold up much after Christmas, especially given there's a huge library of PS2 and PS1 games that still work. If it does I'll just sit on the two games I have - I'm not in any hurry to buy more especially when it appears there are several good ones I could download for a nominal fee (there's a really good Asteroids knock-off for one).

I'm sure eventually titles will be discounted, but I bet Sony will continue to release new titles at the $60 price point. I'm guessing that when they come out with their discounted line of titles for the PS3 (those that have been out for a while), they'll be $30 instead of $20. Will be interesting to see how this develops between the PS3, 360 and Wii.

 

..Al

[King_Salamon]

Apparently there was a second wave of hardware for the PS3 although it didn't last very long (obviously) in stores as most were still pre-ordered from the short-shipped first shipment.

 

Wii has seem a second shipment as well, with the same results.

 

The local EB Manager asked me if I wanted a phone call when the next shipment arrives so I can get one, I declined and said I would wait for the new year for a system... this was for the Wii. Seems Nintendo is keeping a constant trickle of systems coming out but Sony may have another shipment before Christmas from what I'm hearing and that'll be about it.

 

I'll just enjoy the demo units at the stores for now and worry about the buying part next year.

[+remowilliams]

Apparently there was a second wave of hardware for the PS3 although it didn't last very long (obviously) in stores as most were still pre-ordered from the short-shipped first shipment.

This is definitely true for the PS3. I know for a fact that Target was refreshed - shipments were put out on Monday. Two stores near me received 10 each, and the third 8 units.

 

Too bad two of the stores were immediately hit up by ebay scammers.

[8BIT 1337]

True but I don't expect the $60 price point to hold up much after Christmas

 

I have a feeling both MS and Sony will hold prices as high as possible this time around, as I've heard too often about how the cost to develop games has risen dramatically over the last few years. Nintendo. Well. I can see them keeping their games just low enough (like $10 cheaper) to differentiate themselves from their competition while still maximizing how much they get, but I'd be suprised to see Wii games lower than that consistently.

 

Of course that's all just wild/idle speculation on my part

 

(I personally love this between generation time. I bought a *lot* of DC/PS1 games on the cheap 6 years or so ago, and I can't wait for those cheap PS2/GC/Xbox games to pop up!)

[King_Salamon]

Further proof that this is a bunk site is as follows:

 

System Sales to November 2006:

 

PS2 - 35.8 million

GBA - 34.3 million

DS - 7.6 million

PSP - 5.7 million

Xbox 360 - 3.4 million

Wii - 476,000

PS3 - 197,000

Xbox 360 HD-DVD Player - 42,000

 

Note these are North American numbers only. Regardless, the Nextgen site is somewhere in the 8.5 million sold level and for that to be true the number of systems sold in Europe would have to be 5 million, which is not likely.

 

The PS3 numbers in at under 200k... One fifth of what they originally promised.

 

The HD-DVD is fairing as expected... add-ons just don't sell. Especially add-ons that are $200.