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kopstudent89 on 08 November 2013
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Pineapple said:
kopstudent89 said:
Pineapple said:

I'm not sure where your 1.73 million is coming from. I'm getting it at 1545k for the 4 weeks. You get something very close to your number if you also add in the week ending 28th September, but that's not part of October, so I'm not sure.

I became a bit curious by this thread, so I decided to actually write down all the data.

  Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Average 4 weeks Average 4 weeks DS + 3DS
2005           0 0
2006 291 274 298 376   309,75 309,75
2007 410 383 424 405 426 405,5 405,5
2008 350 359 363 382 630 363,5 363,5
2009 336 318 324 381   339,75 339,75
2010 278 245 240 314   269,25 269,25
2011 174 176 211 243   201 279
2012 194 211 202 239 283 211,5 243,25
2013 223 481 430 414   387 395,25

 

 As you can see, the 3DS' 4-week average is ever so slightly slightly behind 2007's 4-week average, but that difference is essentially nothing - it's less than 5%.

I put the total sales into a graph, as well.

 


He got it from the VGC tools:

 

 

It's definitely promising for the holidays if it can perform at DS like levels.

Well that's very interesting - I had no idea those charts still existed.

Furthermore, I see now where the monthly data is coming from, and it's very odd. The week ending 5th October is not part of October, but part of September. The 1730k comes from what I call week 2, week 3, week 4 and week 5, without week 1. In other words, the monthly bit is comparing the last 4 weeks of October, or in our case, the 4 weeks since Pokemon X/Y released.

I'm not sure it counts the months the way it does - in my eyes, the week ending 5th of October is  definitely an October month. It might be in order to make the months consistent every year. They didn't use to be with the old monthly chart, which more or less made it useless for any comparison. Checking a bit, it definitely seems like the months are consistent, meaning that October is always 4 weeks long on VGChartz now. It seems September is always 5.

 

Either way, while this month paints a nice picture, it's also a bit misleading. You're comparing the 3DS 2013 best 4 weeks of the year - by far - to 4 completely average weeks for the DS 2007. In the first 10 months of 2007, the DS had only one month under 1500k, while having 4 months at or above 2000k.
The 3DS has had 1 month at 500k, and 3 months over 1000k.

This isn't meant as a downer on that the 3DS is doing very well for October, but just putting it into some perspective.

1. Even NPD uses this system. The first full week of October is considered part of October sales, it's the same for every month and I think even GFK use that data since it is consistent with end of week sales method that they all use.

2. You're right it is not a great comparison but it can be compared to September 2006 when Pokemon D/P was released or May/June 2006 when NSMB and the DS lite were released. Here's the data:

http://www.vgchartz.com/tools/hw_yoy.php?reg=Global&start_year=2006&end_year=2010&console=DS

With one week left for the 3DS it looks like it's performing well comparitively to those months that I mentioned. To have the best October is nothing to be sniffed at though especially as the 3DS is building momentum for November/December. It won't sell 10mil for those 2 months ast he DS did in its prime (11.5m in 2008), but if it can get cloe to 8m now then it would be fantastic for the console. With this week's numbers it's now at 8.9m that means it's a lock on for 15mil at least for the year (17m the high end). 

One last thing to note is that especially in the US, the video games industry has become very holiday centric with Black Friday getting bigger and bigger every year. I think the 3DS will grow a lot in November and December in the West.