So according to the Weekly sales thread these are the countries that make up the ~70K tier 2 launch sales:

• 2nd September: Chile and Colombia
• 4th September: Japan
• 5th September: Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Arab Emirates

Firstly how did I get 70K? Well basically taking the week on week change of ~64K, then factoring in the 24K WoW drop in the USA gives us 68K as a rough tier 2 estimate. Then I rounded up for good measure.

Globally in tier 2 that gives an average of 3.6K per country. But that is horribly skewed by Japan, because Japan is actually tier 1, just late to market.

So globally in actual tier 2 countries we have ~46K launch sales across 18 markets giving us a launch average per market of 2.5K.

The estimate for the Europe 13 is ~31K, which is an average of ~2.4K. So this is a slightly lower per country average than globally in the tier 2. The remaining 5 countries outside of Europe account for ~15K or 3K average.

What are the implications for how the tier 2 will improve weekly globally global sales? Based on 70K in the tier 2 + Japan does that translate to 10K/week, or 5K/week or less than that?

Is this good, bad or meh?

Arguably it's really only a debate between bad and meh. I think we're looking at meh, beause a counfounding factor in this is the fact that the really die hard Xbox fans in these tier 2 markets, especially the Euros, will have got themselves a Xb one some time ago. The true "launch" in these markets is the actual install base as of 6 Sept, not the number of Xb one's sold in these countries during the week ending 6 Sept. OTOH, this makes Europe, especially, look a tad bit worse, because how many of the console sales attributed to official Xb one countries up to the beginng of Sept are actually Tier 2 country sales, and hence how much smaller is the install base in Tier 1 Europe (in particular) than what the VGC numbers imply? In the end does it matter? It's the USA Xb one sales that truly matter, followed by global total sales.

We don't have a particularly tidy way of directly comparing PS4's launch perfomance in these same countries. But we do know that the launch aligned PS4 launch sales is over 2.1 million, and the launch aligned Xb one sales are something in the order of 1.2 million. I haven't got a clue about the Wii U launch programme across the world, but It seems the main Wii U countries launched with something in the order of 1 million consoles in the 2012 launch period, which is not all that far off the Xb one launch aligned launch. The Xb one Tier 2 70K put a little bit more distance between Xb one and Wii U, but not much.

Honestly I never really realised how close the Wii U and Xb one launches really were, because Wii U was over a 3 weekend period, whereas Xb one was a single week for the vast majority of its launch sales. Interesting indeed, though no one can argue that Xb one hasn't had a better first year, given it's at 5.2 million and Wii U was only at ~3.5 million by this time last year, nearly 2 million behind the Xb one curve.

And of course now we have a more or less level playing field, so let the holiday games commence, and may the odds be ever in your favour.

Oh, but there's still China to come...

Most of those markets are t2 aka sony land so low sales should have been expected.

Lets cross "tier 2" off from that chalkboard.

It gave a single week boost that will not be there next week, but god help us with the hilariously optimistic Xbox fans that think this is a new baseline vs. PS4 globally. "Oh look, we sold more with questionable overtracking by 3K units worldwide on the back of all these new country launches". Heck, just the one week 25k from Japan accounts for way more than the 3k difference, and that evaporated probably within 24 hours.

The month is going to be an absolutely crushing victory for PS4 to the extent that may shock people.

Oh yeah china is next week, we'll see.

Ah never mind, hadn't seen the updated numbers yet. Will probably be adjusted down further for X1 anyway. Next week will be a bloodbath from hell.

IS PS4 releasing in China any time soon. And the tier 2 numbers for XOne were well, tier 2.

I guess the XOne did good in its own right.

"Arguably it's really only a debate between bad and meh. I think we're looking at meh, beause a counfounding factor in this is the fact that the really die hard Xbox fans in these tier 2 markets, especially the Euros, will have got themselves a Xb one some time ago."

This is an understatement. Roughly 50% of all videogame stores have had Xbox One in stock, imported from Germany. There's no need to be a die hard fan to buy it when there's 10 of those Xbox one boxes in front of you.