Microsoft: Over 3 million Xbox One's Sold to Consumers in 2013

[Landguy]

superchunk said:

Landguy said:
You can never agree on total sales to consumers on this site. It is pretty clear with todays inventory management systems, that at the end of any given day that M$ or Sony can get the total of all sales for that given day at almost every retailer worldwide. So, when people say that Sony or M$ are just guessing, it is beyond funny. 15 years ago, I ran Best Buy stores in Minnesota here in the US. The Best Buy Corporate HQ is right here. At my computer in the store, I had access to the total daily sales of any product for about 120 stores. If I wanted more info, I could call a friend that worked at corporate HQ and he could give me total sales for the whole company. That was 15 years ago. You guys think it is hard for Microsoft or Sony to have a relationship with the few hundred companies that actually sell their products to get a few key items daily/weekly/yearly totals? It would only take a couple of hours work to put the totals together EVERY day.

They likley have agreements with the larger retalers... but not everyone. They sample the data like everyone else. Not to mention they don't have on-demand numbers. No retailer is going to give someone they buy stuff from on-demand info.

So MS gets some info, extrapolates that vs the shipping and uses that to get an idea of what it should be and then makes vague statemetns like "over 3m".

I worked retial for a decade too. Obviously the retailers know exactly what was sold... but that is company private information. Not something they just hand out to everyone.

True and not true.  Sure,Microsoft wouldn't be able to get sales figures for products that aren't theirs.  But getting detailed reports of new and highly sought after products is not uncommon.  If a retailer wants to keep a product in stock, they provide as much info as possible.  For mega corporations that supply hundreds if not thousands of products to retailers, they get whatever info they desire about their product sales.  It wasn't uncommon for vendor reps to come into my store and ask where the 7 copies of this or that is, as they showed our inventory should have that many.  Knowing how many of the product is on the shelf is more important than a lot of bits of info.  Even if they don't get daily updates(which during the holidays was very important), weekly updates are essential.  At best buy, the inventory system(15yrs ago) couldn't give you up to the minute sales on certain items(skus).  During the holidays we had to email into the regional office a list of about 40 key skus every 2 hours.  That way they knew if certain factors impacted sales throughout the day.  They also would change orders and redirect product up to the last minute.  Most of the employees in the stores were oblivious to how much detail was being extracted from every sale in the store.