Who is really in the lead?

[Sqrl]

misterd said:

Sqrl said:

misterd said:
Not Sony, of course (jab, jab) but with the new announcements of 360 and Wii sales, the Wii is just a little under 2,000,000 behind the 360.

But that doesn't count failure rates, does it? Would that be enough to put the Wii over the top?

What do you think?

If you are going by shipped numbers the Wii is 2 million behind, but I don't see the point in going by shipped number. See the only argument to going by shipped numbers is that "its the number that matters for the company" but in reality that number doesn't matter for the company nearly as much as the resulting profits so why not go by that number instead?

Ultimately the number that matters most to 3rd party developers and probably most gamers is the actual install base as it represents actual interest in the consol. And by those numbers the wii is only behind by about 600k.

That's precisely what I am trying to find out. How do you get that the Wii is 600k behind? That would imply roughly 2 million busted 360s, and I didn't know anyone was leaking those numbers.

I apologise, I missed this until now...

Basically groups like NPD and VGchartz, and I think Mediacreate also take retail samples and use statistics to estimate sellthrough numbers. Now most people see this as being very innacurate and there is no doubt that it is not perfect. However statistics in general is a highly respected field of mathematics and all parties (including VGchartz) try to provide the most accurate data they possibly can and the numbers are not just pulled from thin air. One of the site admins will have to go into more detail for you if you want to specifically know how the numbers are obtained as I am unfamiliar with the exact process.

However the important point to realize is that VGChartz does this for free where as NPD requries HUGE subscription fees to get their data. There is quite a bit of work involved in gathering data and calculating the final numbers so you can be fairly sure that these guys don't do it just to make one console look good or one console look bad. There is just way to much effort involved for not that much return for that to be their motive.