The Math of Undertracking

[amirnetz]

The “Others” numbers are up and seems pretty shocking to some, espacially the wide margin by which the 360 outsold the PS3.

 

“The 360 is Overtracked!” is a common cry of the disappointed PS3 fans. Well, is it really overtracked? Is there a 360 bias in VGChartz? Fortunately we have some correlative data to use in assessing the claim.

 

Microsoft  announced on November 19^th that the “XBox 360 sold 7 millions in Europe, up from 5 Millions in June”.

 

http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/691143/Xbox_360_Sells_Seven_Million_In_Europe.html

 

Yes, as usual, these are “shipped numbers” and not “sold to consumers”. Still, since the average channel inventory (i.e. the number of units that sit on the shelves at the retailers) does not fluctuate greatly, it is very reasonable to assume that indeed 2M units were passed to European consumers hands during the period.

 

Going to the VGChartz archives, VGChartz reports the European sales of the 360 in the the relevant period (June 7^th – Nov 14^th ):

 

Console	X360
UK	459,828
France	222,459
Germany	168,401
Spain	207,106
Italy	175,710
Scandinavia	96,181
Other Europe	206,994

 

So together VGChartz reports that the sales of 360 in Europe is 1,536,679 for the period. Significantly under Microsoft’s official numbers of 2M units.

 

The simple math means that VGChartz was actually undertracking the 360 in Europe by 465K units till now and therefore any claim of “overtracking” bias is unfounded.