One thing I've noticed about our data for the Americas is that we seem to track in a "rounded" way while NPD tracks in a "spiked way".
To me, it seems like we're lower than NPD for most stuff in Nov-Dec, but higher in other months...but because we seem to be lower in Nov-Dec, sometimes we end up with stronger Jan-Feb data than NPD has. The Americas market is so huge, you can get like an 800k Wii discrepency and its still within 30% of what NPD has in December.
I see a similar pattern with Famitsu and Media Create in Japan actually. Famitsu has huge spikes for most stuff in Dec-January, but tends to be lower for sw/hw against Media Create outside of Dec-Jan. When the yearly totals come in though, Famitsu and Media Create are always pretty close to one another, and within the bounds of shipment data.
People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.
When there are more laws, there are more criminals.
- Lao Tzu
