And this is why returns on these kinds of items should not be allowed. Let the vultures suffer.

It has been posted. In the official monthly thread.

It got ignored there, though, so I think it's fair to have a new thread for it.

Why would these be counted as new sales?

And there's no way that NPD would be able to differentiate the sales of normal modeled and the ones that were returned.

It doesn't matter why final Wii U sales figures are low, it just matter that they're low.

Not sure why anyone felt it necessary to point out that there were a lot of returns. That tends to happen when the market for the system is weak and there isn't any demand.

So that'd mean that the sales total is fine but if you want a more accurate picture of month to month sales you should take 40,000 sales from the first month and give them to this past January. Guess February sales will make it obvious whether or not that's a plausible explanation.

So what exactly is this article suggesting? I'm a little confused.

That's like saying that it doesn't matter how much revenue a company is bringing in, all that matters is their profit.

And to some extent, it's true. But if it's reported that the company has a very low revenue, and everyone panics because their revenue is declining at an astonishing rate, it would be very significant to discover that their revenue was actually double what everyone thought -- even though it didn't change their profits.

Basically, what everyone thought happened was that the Wii U sold fantastically during its first month and then horribly during its second month, losing all of its momentum like it slammed into a brick wall. What actually happened (maybe)? It sold modestly during December and poorly during January, but not catastrophically poorly, and with a less harsh dropoff than everyone thought. Essentially healthy (if weak) sales instead of DOOM sales.

Basically, it matters because a few days ago everyone was saying 40k sales in February. Now people are saying 80k is a possibility. That matters, especially if they're proven right when NPD reports.

So you have some 50,000 returns and according to cream sugar (from GAF) the makeup of most sales is like 85/15 between premium and basic. Thats close to 18 million dollars worth of returns not including accessories and games that were returned with said systems. Thats a lot of money to eat post holiday for any retailer and would cause them to pause any future ordering.

At current sales rates, it would take 5 weeks to work that supply off.

EDIT: assuming any of this is true.  Nintendo gave no update (since the report was weak) during the NPD time and patcher said that software sales wouldn't line up with a system that sold 100k so i guess this month would give a better indication.

Well, selling 100,000 with 40,000 returns from stupid resellers is better than just selling 60,000. At least it means there's potential for better sales in the following months when those resellers have all returned their consoles.

Yup heard about this. I guess only February numbers should show the full picture