| windbane said: nextgenwars has been consistently way off since the count started. |
Way off from where? Reality, or similar sites?
The Wii number as always seemed about right. The PS3 number seems a bit low, but with it selling not so great in either Japan or NA, and supposedly doing better than expected in other places where numbers are not so easy to come by, it's hard to tell. The 360 number is the one which raises the most doubts.
But first of all, what's that number supposed to be? They hint at sales to retailers. Well Micrososft publicly announced at CES, in January, they'd shipped 10.4 million consoles to retail. Four months later and with the Elite now selling, they're at 10.7 - which is actually low considering Microsoft's forecasts of 12 million by June (already down from 13-15 million).
If you decide to go with VGChartz, you'll find a difference of 1 million consoles between Microsoft's "shipped", and VGCharz' "sold". Now this just brings an honest question, is it likely that those 1 million consoles, representing ~10% of all LTD sales, have been sitting somewhere in retail warehouses for 4 to 6 months? I find it odd, but I'm just an outsider, and this might be "business as usual".
Again, this does not mean I distrust VGChartz numbers. Actualy, I respect this site a lot (and a lot more that NGW), because they've shown a consistent track record of correcting its estimates when and where appropriate. And that's what's most meaningful to me: realising these are all estimates (even NPD's are), subject to errors. Not a silly piece of code that makes a site more fashionable.
