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CrazyHorse on 05 November 2010
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Squilliam said:
CrazyHorse said:

Well you're right in that they will obviously have their own data on sales projections and may have been able to refine that data based on recent feedback. However, the only hard numbers available on how sales may perform comes from pre-order data and Move sell through. As many have already said, pre-order data may not be all that useful for casual friendly products so I see no reason why they wouldn't adjust projections based off a competitors sales. Granted the two products are not identical but they are going after the same markets (again MS will likely do much better in the area of attracting new casual owners). If Sony underestimated the demand from potential Wii owners or Wii owners who wish to 'upgrade' (as seems evident by their recent statements, backed up by the EMEAA data) then MS may have done similar and are now correcting their projections based on actually data. Only speculation of course.

They have more data than that.

  • Phone surveys
  • Internet surveys
  • Internet traffic/search
  • Retailer traffic
  • Kinect advertisement displays in malls and the interest therein
  • internal marketing focus groups
  • beta testers analytic data on how often they use Kinect
  • etc

The main reason why I am kind of doubtful of their taking major cues from Move is that Move is on a competing console and is targeting a completely different audience. It is quite likely that both Move and Kinect could co-exist on the Xbox 360 without too much overlap. Furthermore like I said before, Moves sales rate is still quite a bit lower than their original projections.

As for Wii owners looking to upgrade, well, maybe. I can't really comment on what they want to do. Data on that is very hard to come by so therefore I will have to take Sony's word on that.

Yes all that data will be used to provide projections but it is only based on estimates and opinions where as Move data is actual sell through data, after all people can and do change their minds after focus groups and opinion polls ect. Sony will have used all the methods you outline to provide their own projections for Move which appears to have underestimated demand and so MS may feel their projections were also cautious. Not sure that the sales rates are too relevant in this case as Move has, and will continue to sell, more than enough units to provide useful data to similar products. To clarify, I'm aware their will be differences in target audiences but there is also enough overlap to make the units somewhat comparable. MS most likely haven't taken major cues from Move but I'd be a little surprised if it hasn't affected there forecasts at all.