Are you thinking what I'm thinking? That due to the rise of the "preorder culture" and pent-up demand amongst the hardest core gamers after the "Longest Generation" that sales in the early months are concentrated in the debut holiday instead of being more evenly spread out like before?

Let's focus on the U.S. for now since we just got NPD numbers for the PS4 and XBO. The 360 and PS3 sold 600k and nearly 700k respectively during their launches. The 360 sold another 603k in Q1 '06 and the PS3 another 501k in Q1' 07, giving their debut quarters and the following quarters comparable sales. Meanwhile, the PS4 sold about 2000k and the XBO about 1800k last year, making their U.S. launches triple the size of their predecessors'; the PS4 also sold 85% more units than the PS2 did it's debut holiday (just shy of 1.1 million). Because of mass preordering causing hundreds of thousands of customers who might have bought the system at a later date buying the system ASAP, a large number of sales that might have otherwise happened in 2014 were sold in 2014, thus the proportionally sharp drops compared to older systems. The sales then eventually rebound, leaving a noticeable early 2014 trough in the sales curve.

Something like that?

If that is indeed the case, then claims of "doom" are doubly pointless. They're already pointless now, what with this being not just a single month, but only the third month the PS4 and XBO have even been on the market. If it turns out that sales in the early months of the gen are shifted towards just the first few weeks, then XBOs having plenty of stock and a tepid Jan. NPD (the 360 itself only sold 161k in Feb. '06) may not be anything to worry about. It also means that, since even with limited stock and reduced demand, the PS4 sold about on par with what the PS2 did in Jan. '01 and, when normalized for weekly averages, ahead of the 360 and well ahead of the PS3, the PS4 may go on to sell far stronger than what that 280k figure for last month suggested.