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gergroy on 19 April 2009
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Gnizmo said:
puffy said: 

Maybe so however it's an average and there are always going to be outliers or times that the number needs a modifier of some sort.. An example is if you are looking at a sequel it is usually always more front loaded and if a sequel does the same or worse in the first week/month it can be almost instantly concluded that it will actually do worse overall than the last game in the series. I'm not trying to give all the answers as nobody can 100% mathematically predict the sales of a game but we can see a few things very clearly from the results.. The major one being the difference in sales patterns in Wii and HD consoles. That was the key argument I was trying to support/disprove and I think, to me, it supports the argument that calling Wii games a flop after only a week of sales is ridiculous.. These numbers point to that being the case.

For me to go through every game that launched with similar numbers but failed to make a million would be a MASSIVE task and so my numbers will stand as they are.

 As seen in my edit I am poking through trying to find the exceptions. The problem is the average doesn't mean quite what you think it does. It proves that most games that sold a million on the Wii sold at or below 111k. It does not mean the reverse is true as well though. I am not saying it is wrong, but I am saying the math you have can't claim that with any kind of authority if that makes sense. I am not suggesting to go through and check all the games, but I do feel the need to point out the slight error in the conclusion. You prove your main point either way.

I think you are being a little overly critical Gnizmo.  You can see how these stats might be useful in predicting the probability of a game reaching 1 million units sold yes?  The op is just saying if it sells these figures it has a good chance of hitting a million units sold. 

Obviously there are going to be issues with this, as games are still selling and can still make it to a million units sold over a long period of time.  Also the more hardware out there equals lower number of first week sales required to hit a million as games will have more legs. 

As it stands right now, this is a good guideline you can look at and say "hey, this game has a good chance of selling a million units."