Is Anyone Else Questioning MS's 2M Sold Through?

[binary solo]

thismeintiel said:

binary solo said:
Xb one reached 2 million on 9 December, after 18 days on sale in all markets. PS4 reached 2 million on 30 November after 16 days on sale in North America and 3 days on sale everywhere else.

Comparability-wise you could look at "market days" (my made up term) on sale: Xb one sold for 18 days in 13(?) markets = 234 market days. PS4 sold for 16 days in 2 markets and 3 days in 36 markets = 108+32 = 140 market days. So PS4 took 96 fewer market days to reach 2 million consoles sold.

Of course not all market days are equal so you'd have to introduce a market size coefficient to refine those numbers. But I think you'd still find that PS4 has sold significantly faster than Xb one.

And someone on the other side would just bring up that the PS4 has shipped in more regions, regardless of how many days it is on the market.  I do agree the PS4 is selling quicker, however, the problem with both of those arguments is that at launch, each company is going to ship as much as they can and most supply is going to be sold out within the first few days (if there is demand for it to.)  And it will take a few weeks, maybe even months, later to get big enough shipments out to make a big difference, saleswise.

I have no doubt the Xbox One is selling well in the US, but other numbers show the same cannot be said about EU.  Or, more accurately, not on par with the PS4.  That's really my point.  I just don't see the US, or even NA, making up for the deficit it has in EU, already.  Especially not enough to make it to 2M in just 3 extra days.

That's why you convert to "market days" to account for the fact that the consoles are selling in a different number of markets, and PS4 release was staggered.

You could also look at the population base for the time on market. So you could guess at Xb one's population base from launch day as say 1 billion people, so you'd have 18 billion people days on market for 2 million consoles sold. For PS4 you'd have ~380 million for 16 days (North America) and say 1.2 billion (the other 36 markets) for 3 days, so 9.6 billion people days on market for 2 million sold.

It shows (assuming the popultion bases are in the right ballpark), again in a way that would need to be refined a little, that PS4 got to 2 million sold with a lot less exposure to the customer base than xb one.  So while it looks like Xb one's 2 million achievement is alsmost as impressive as PS4's it isn't really.

Anyway, IMO all this early days record breaking stuff is just causing a whole lot of false confidence, because both consoles are going to struggle to sell as well, in the long term, as their 7th gen counterparts.