Ethomaz's Dismantling the Myths: Amazon.com's Best Sellers is Not Accurate to the Predict Overall Hardware Sales in US (Checking: Accuracy with Software)

[JamaicameCRAZY]

Kasz216 said:

ICStats said:

IIRC 360 had more SKUs, especially by 09/10. With multiple SKUs ranking fairly high it's practically impossible to tell what sold more overall on Amazon.

XB1 also has two main SKUs, Titanfall & Standard, but Standard has ranked around #100 or lower for a while.  Thogh today an Amazon seller has the Standard at $465 and it jumped up to ~#50, while the Titanfall bundle at $499 has been falling.  Price is a big deal.  If XB1 sticks at $499 for the month of April I don't think sales can be expected like in March.

Check the lists again.

For November

It's 3 SKU's vs 3 SKUs in the top 100... and the PS3 has two SKU's ahead of the first 360 SKU and it's third SKU is ahead of the third 360 SKU.

It's certaintly closer then PS4 and XB1, which is a 1 to 2 SKU thing.

For February.  PS3 has two SKU's in the top 100.  Both ahead of the single 360 SKU.  

 

The bolded makes my point.  It shows how much one sale on the site can upset the data.  It went to 100 to 50 off of one sale.  That most places likely didn't have.

That's before even looking at the different customer base.

If something is showing a pattern of accuracy shouldnt we consider it plausible. I mean be sceptical and continue to check it for accuracy. But going back months/years to find 1 or 2 things, perhaps inaccurate, doesnt mean the entire site is inaccurate. If you have to dig that it should tell you hey this actually isnt that bad.  

 

I mean if a few inaccuracies is all it takes what the hell does that say about this chart. Didnt ioi say something like a 10% margin of error is considered acceptable?