Apart from the odd abberant prediction my general impression is that the Japan Preview is remarkably accurate on HW. I have been a little surprised at some previews where "seasonal lift" has been applied to one console, but not to others (most notably in this week's preview). Overall though it would seem that the official HW sales numbers normally fall within the previews estimated range, or 1-2K either side.
The Source does about as good a job as the weatherman at forecasting the weather, but The Source does it with less data. No one is suggesting getting rid of the weather forecast on the nightly news.
On the subject of sales for this week I'm picking things won't be quite so amazing for PS3 as first thought when 550K was in some early reports for Americas/BF. With the famitsu numbers as a guide I'm thinking PS3 will fall just shy of 700K. Still an incredible week, but short of one comparative benchmark that I'm looking at which is the WW 360 sales for BF week in 2008.
Wii I'm thinking this week will just sneak past 1 million WW after considering what we've had reported for Americas and what we're seeing in Famitsu. It only needs to lift from 344K to a tad over 400K in Others to crack the million and 400K+ is easy meat if 2008 can be used as a guide (went from 349K to 419K in the same period). This is excellent news for my prediction of 4 weeks of Wii over 1 million from BF week to the end of the year. And it provides hope to those who have picked 5 weeks over 1 million.
For those picking only 1 or 2 weeks you only have about 24 hours for revised predictions to still be officially accepted in my poll.
“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."
Jimi Hendrix
