The Official March 2010 NPD Thread (Data for 5 weeks ending Apr 3 2010)

[binary solo]

Hyruken said:

Ok then time for the nasty stuff

        VGC                       NPD              Difference
Wii - 641k                     557k             84k Overtracked (15% over)
360 - 462k                    338k             124k Overtracked (36% over)
Ps3 - 438k                    313k             125k Overtracked (39% over)
Ds - 627k                      700k              73k Undertracked (10% under)
Psp - 158k                    119k               39k Overtracked (32% over)
Ps2 - 82k                      118k               36k Undertracked (30% under)

Once again Ps3 is the highest overtracked product by 39%.

It would appear NPD believe 360 is selling average of 84k a week and PS3 78k a week.
Vgc has them at 115k a week for 360 and 109k for PS3.

Which means both 360 and PS3 are not selling anywhere near the high numbers currently VGC has them acording to NPD. I find that most interesting as we are lead to believe on here the demand is high, especially for the PS3.

According to my analysis of the inherent, known and generally accepted inaccuracies of both NPD and VGC estimate systems the following HW results are in reasonable agreement (i.e. the difference between the VGC number and the NPD number isn't statistically significant):

Wii & DS

This means there is a statistically significant difference between the NPD and VGC numbers for all the other systems. The most significant difference is for the PS2, the lowest significant difference is for the PSP. 360 and PS3 have similar significances of difference.

Any new information should lead to adjustments where the new information is at least as reliable as current information, but that new information still only forms part of the overall data upon which numbers are based. According to my analysis VGC USA estimate could be adjusted as follows*:

Wii & DS - No adjustment

360 dropped back to 394.3K (or -14.65% adjustment)

PS3 dropped back to 365.2K (or -16.63% adjustment)

PSP dropped back to 138.8K (or -12.13% adjustment)

PS2 brought up to 101.9K (or +24.28% adjustment)

*It all depends on what weighting NPD data gets relative to other VGC data.

Thus possibly adjusting total Americas to:

360: 463.4K (531K)

PS3: 430.6K (503K)

PSP: 162.4K (182K)

PS2: 114.2K (94K)

The big "winner" in terms of VGC is the Wii because it gets no downward adjustment so it remains in the number 1 spot for all HW (whereas it's #2 in NPD). DS is a bit hard done by because it gets no upward adjustment so it stays in the number 2 spot for all HW (whereas it's #1 in NPD).

So there you have it. Not the best month for correlation between VGC and NPD but not exactly a statistical disaster either.