Chark said:
That would save the fluctuations unless a month received a crazy boost but a month of good sales might be an indication of an increase of Vita's bottom line sales which are what the chart truly predicts. One obscure week does throw it off and with such low sales right now it is a poor predictor of what sales will be like for Black Friday and beyond, which averages 137k a number the Vita should easily go over during those weeks. Judging Vita's sales using this slow period is the reason why it looks so bleak. Holiday sales will be holiday sales and I don't believe they are measurable by a trending percentage increase, especially since the percentages I am using are based off of consoles that were performing well before the holidays. This month and the next will change the Vita's average sales, I expect its sales to start picking up from here with the new software releases, the kicking in of PSone classics, PS plus integration, and PS Mobile launch. Maybe we will be surprised the week after Hitsume Miku, maybe Vita sales in Japan won't drop straight back down like they did when Persona 4 the Golden launched. |
@ the bolded... exactly, an unusual increase in monthly sales can be indicative of future increased sales, but an unusual increase in weekly sales due to a single game release is far more likely to be a temporary (1-3 week) boost, which therefore throws the prediction off too much.
Weeks of low sales however are not unusual occurences that are unlikely to affect future sales, the only times when there can be anomalous low sales weeks are if a new model/price cut is announced to be happening in a few weeks, so people are put off buying until then (this is generally why price cuts are anounced right before they happen)
Your calculations for each future week are found by comparing the average 2011 week to Vita's latest 2012 week correct? (so for example if Vita sells 35k, while 52 weeks ago 5 platforms sold 500k (average 100k each), that would mean Vita sold 35% of last years average... then you look at 51 weeks ago and see the 5 consoles sold an average of 110k, so the prediction for next weeks Vita sales would be 35% of 110k) The current low Vita sales are not anomalous for any reason otherwise it wouldn't keep selling similarly week after week... which means they are actually quite good for predicting future sales assuming no changes to the platform (price cut/new model/system seller [usually exclusive] game)
You may be correct that the Vita sells over 157k for Black Friday week, but if it does it won't be because the last weeks 33k is a bad indicator of future sales (my bet is Sony & retailers will be really pushing Vita then with promotions and big discounts because it's a hard sell now, that and Black Friday does seem to be becomeing an increasingly important week each year, so I would probably expect an extra 5-10% on top of whatever you get from last years average anyway)
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I just did a quick comparison using monthly sales.
In August PSV sold 142,581 (I believe VGC follows the NPD standard of 4,4,5 weeks for the quarters, so w/e 1st September should be included in September)
Last year 6 platforms sold 3,703,740, which is an average of 617,290. So Vita sold about 23.1% of the average for August
If I extrapolate that 23% to the rest of the year the Vita should sell another 1.4 million and end the year with a LTD of 4,126,024
That's the same calculation as you have used except using months instead of weeks... it helps iron out any anomalous weeks.
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Alternately you could continue using weeks but use a rolling average found from the past few weeks... which means you can still predict the future sales in weekly increments. So you still get the nice curve upwards through November and December, with the tooth of Black Friday in it, but it still irons out any of Vitas anomalous weeks. (It won't help iron out any anomalous weeks the other platforms had in 2011, but the fact you are doing an average of multiple platforms should be helping that already)
