Professionally conducted polls are wrong all the time. The reason why is because they all take samples and then extrapolate those samples to determine the whole. But that can be flawed, for many reasons, some of which are obvious.

These polls can also often conflict with one another, depending on what samples they use, and the formulae they employ for the extrapolation.

Here we have a case of two conflicting polls. Which one's "right" and which "wrong"? (Though they are probably both off to some degree.) We don't know, and won't know until the real data comes out.

Which one to trust 'till then? It's a matter of guesswork. Because NPD has a larger sample size, we might tentatively go with their figures, but a larger sample size is no guarantee, and doesn't mean that VGC's data is wrong. NPD has erred in the past, as every such poll is bound to do, and will err in the future, and may be in err currently.

In every case, there's no reason to get upset about any of it.

Where can you see NPD's LTD sales for the consoles?

And do those numbers include Canada? Because using the US * 1.1 = US + Can, those numbers come out very close, with the Wii being slightly high.

@ Reasonable

It's one every console, other than arcade actually, I checked each one. For anyone with surplus in their area, might be smart to do the math and figure out if you can make a few bucks on Amazon.

The UK numbers need corrected as well:

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/29603/PS3-hits-1m-in-UK

 "ChartTrack has also revealed that the Sony console has been outselling 360 for the last month. “It has been outselling 360 for the last four weeks, but they were neck and neck over the Christmas period, weeks 49-52,” said ChartTrack director Dorian Bloch."

 VGChartz has 360 outselling PS3 in the UK through the whole period.  Word of mouth, Amazon sales, and now Charttrack say otherwise.  Currently VGChartz appears to be massively overtracking the 360 and undertracking the PS3.  The PS3 is outselling the 360 even in UK/USA now.

My BestBuy was out of Xbox360 today ( and Wii too but I never saw a Wii on a Friday during lunch break so doesn't mean much). Only console you could find was the PS3 40Gb. Weird thing is I still remember the huge pyramids of PS3 and Xbox360 they had 7 weeks ago...

 And yes, PS3 has always been higher on Amazon for the last 10 weeks but I noticed recently that some Xbox360 SKUs were indeed sold out on Amazon....

In my experience the strongest selling retailers for Xbox360 should be Gamestop and Bestbuy based on their shelves and the advices you usually get from the employees in there. Question is are those among the retailers tracked by NPD ? 

Wow, so ioi missed a shot. I think we all know how many shots he's taken since the site started, and numbers are usually within the 10% range, which is more than many proffessional analyst companies could boast over.
There are major shifts in the market ww, and these shifts make predicting very, very difficult indeed. I don't think any of the users here could've predicted these numbers either.

Keep up the good work ioi, there's a reason why there's hundreds of your fans and users out on the web on a daily basis defending your numbers! They're worth defending most of the time.

@Jin: Jesus f-ing christ, get a life, what the hell is the use of that? Good nite sir.

Wow ,great news for the PS3 ,it has outsold the 360 for the first time in the US .Now with the Canadian data it will be close to 300K units for a non-holiday month .This is what the PS3 needed in NA ,now let see if the following months show stabilization around these numbers or slighty below .

Considering january 2007 had five weeks and january 2008 had four it has sold a considerable amount more than last year .I think Warner announce finally dissipated some fears about the machine being dragged down "due to BR failure " .

360 I dont believe it has stock problems .Not of great magnitude in any case .Last year it sold about the same in January and had none stock problems ,december 2007 was nearly the same as december 2006 and above all that the 360 demand has somewhat dried up outside the US .I cant conceive how Microsoft would have stock problems selling exactly the same or slighty below last year when last year they had lots of consoles in the stores ...this sounds as PR spin and better leave it like that because if its true then it suggest MS is manufacturing fewer and fewer 360 s ....

DS also had a big drop last january ,it seems somewhat a seasonal machine ...as it is given as a gift many times its sales go ballistic in holidays and then receive an abrupt end until they pick up again..

Ps2 incredible ,it is 9k units under the Wii ,4K under the PS3 and it outsold again the 360

PSP sales continue to be strong ...

Those are the sales and the LTD in US

1. Wii – 274.000 – (7.627.500)
2. Playstation 3 – 269.000 – (3.514.700)
3. Playstation 2 – 264.000 – (41.309.700)
4. Nintendo DS – 251.000 – (17.842.000)
5. Xbox 360 – 230.000 - (9.354.800)
6. PSP – 230.000 – (10.742.900)


Now ,adding canadian data the PS3 is almost spot on and PSP too ....but all the others seem to be greatly overtracked .We are speaking about nearly a million in the Wii and 360 and several millions on the DS .

Hmm. Interesting. What website do you go to so that you can see the LTD sales?

* NPD (NA) = NPD (US) * 1.1

From looking at these numbers, not including The PS3 and PSP (which are remarkably close), and focusing one the DS and Wii for a moment, we can figure some things out.

First, NPD must not think the Wii is sold out anymore. How can I know this? According to Nintendo shipment for Dec. 2007, they have shipped 8.85 million by the end of 2007 (to the "Americas"). NPD still has them only at 8.38 million, a month later. Possibly Canada (and I suppose Mexico and South America) is/are a bigger market than we are giving them credit for. Still. Going with an average of 100k a week, we should be at at least 9.35 million or so, which is much closer to what VGChartz has. I'd say NPD is way off for the Wii, unless of course the Wii isn't selling out anymore... which. Eh, there's not enough evidence of that to support such a claim.

For the DS, we know that Nintendo has shipped about 20 million by the end of 2007. With some sellouts in the US during the holidays, it wouldn't surprise me if it was close to 20 million, or at least 19.5 million, meaning since then, according to NPD, the DS has only sold another 162k. I would say the DS is probably right at 20 million now. That's just a hunch or guess.

I don't have a link to Microsoft's American sales, so it's hard to say what shipments were like. Also, since even with some sellouts with certain models, shipped will be anything buy sold. So it'd be harder to tell where actual sell through rates are at. And NPD and VGChartz aren't even all that far off anyway.

Basically, they have similar LTD (except for Wii and DS, which I have explained my position), but how they got there is different. So whether NPD was correct for this month or not, ioi is still very accurate overall.

I stand behind ioi. (Don't worry man, I gotcha back. )

Link to Nintendo fincial reports.

 See that is why I don't trust NPD.... I guess those are totals that someone added up using each month... I would bet NPD adjusts old months and we just don't get to see it.

I actually don't see that much problem with the PS3 number for January, after all it is gaining momentum and January is usually a relatively big month (kind of like October), although the difference in weeks (last year 5 this year 4) makes me doubt a little.

The DS is the one I think NPD is totally off on, and if they are not off on it then they must have adjusted to make it totally sold out by the end of the year (so was only selling the small supply Nintendo sent in January)... however we can't see any adjustments if they do make them.