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happydolphin on 17 December 2012
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ioi said:
happydolphin said:

That helps.

In the meantime, why not extrapolate using known buying trends (shipped vs sold in the known regions) on the shipment figures we have? That would give a good interim ballpark estimate, updated quarterly and revised anually.


I'm not sure I follow - using buying trends in known regions to estimate for unknown when each region is so different and the known regions represent such a small sample will be meaningless in terms of accuracy?

To be honest, I have no idea where 1m PS2s are being sold each quarter when all the data from all the regions we collect only adds up to < 150k. Trying to use LTD data in any way to predict current trends is totally useless since the worldwide breakdown is totally different now to 3-4 years ago, nevermind to 7-8 years ago. In Western markets, there haven't really been any PS2 shipments in the last 12-18 months but there are clearly large amounts going to India, Middle East etc as well as a lot of games being sold that we are also not tracking. This is similar with other Sony products which have a lot more traction in these markets than Nintendo / MS - it is more a case of we have no idea how many are being sold in those small but increasingly significant markets rather than some kind of intentional Sony bias as is often suggested

The best we could do would be to say that in the last quarter it sold 90k per week so we could just put it at 90k per week for this quarter but that's just complete guesswork and meaningless so the best we can do is work back from shipments (but then that assumes that shipment data is perfect which is usually isn't).

Well, assuming it's an interim solution for the year until the yearly update arrives, as compared to a 0 value isnt it kind of meaningful?

I totally agree with you on the Sony bias thing I don't see why people would think that. haha

One thing we could do is use the bell-shaped curve of the known markets (NA, EU, JP), shipped and sold, for the PS2, create a ratio curve, and scale it to fit the current shipments to other regions. Then, we would be able to multiply the shipment curve in those regions to the buying trends of the known regions, and get an estimate. It would even be very interesting to compare our estimate with the values we get at the end of the year, and would be a fun project for the community.