6th Generation NPD Comparisons! (WiiU Vs Gamecube and Xbox One vs Xbox)

Shadow1980 said:

said:

Dude, where does your data come from?  I've been trying to create a comparison chart just like this for ages, but everywhere I look I get wildly conflicting numbers.  I'm at the point where I don't know what to believe any more.

To clarify, I've been trying to create a comparison of the four most recent generations (albeit, just Sony and MS).  My gen eight data is from VGChartz, and gen seven is from the table on this page (scroll down to where it says "NPD sales figures monthly table")...

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/NPD_Seventh_generation

All of this I did by monthly figures, but finding monthly sales for gen six (PS2/Xbox) and gen five (PS1) has been a pain in the ass.  I've tried to piece it together from various sources - which frequently report sales by different metrics (yearly, half-yearly, quarterly) - and then make all the time-frames match by dividing out the individual months, taking averages, etc.  And this is often only to discover another source that conflicts with the numbers I've been using.

In short, it's a right mess.  Even Sony's official sales figures only go back to 2006...

http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdataps2_sale_e.html

Do you know of any reliable global sales figures (preferably monthly) for the fifth and sixth gens (Sony and MS only)?  I've asked others but there seems to be a dearth of information on this once you start to look back much further than the previous gen.

My PS2 sales figures come from here. It's the only source I could find that had monthly PS2 sales from 2000 and the first half of 2001. It conflicts slightly (<5% difference usually) from other sources that more or less line up with each other, but given the small margin of error it shouldn't make much of a visual difference when making a chart. I end up deferring to the other figures for Xbox and GC sales as well as PS2 sales from June 2001 onward.

 

Thanks for the info, Shadow.  That's a great list!  I notice it starts at October 2000.  Based on my research, that was the US launch, and the only region it had prior to that was Japan (or possibly Asia in general) which launched in March the same year.

So, I'm now trying to find the numbers for Japan's first seven months.  I don't suppose you have anything on that, do you?  I've found a few tidbits but nothing to bring the whole period into focus.

Here's a start...

Sony released the PlayStation 2 console in Japan on March 4, 2000. Within two days of its debut, sales for the PlayStation 2 had reached 980,000 -- ten times the number of original PlayStation units sold during its initial three-day release period in 1994.

...

On August 1, 2000, five months after the system's release in Japan, Sony announced it had shipped over 3 million units.

Source - http://www.allgame.com/platform.php?id=47

Ok, on the following page, they have PS2 yearly sales figures and the first one is "Fiscal year ending March 31, 2000"...

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/PlayStation_2

Now, if the console was only launched in March (March 4th, according to the same page) then "Fiscal year ending March 31, 2000" is just March, right?  Well, according to that page, the figure for March is 1.41 (million).  So, that's the first month.

But now there's a problem.  The next figure (9.2) takes place between March 31, 2000 and March 31, 2001.  But part way through this is where your source kicks in.  If I've added things right, your source has October 2000 - March 2001 at 2,128,885.

So, to get the period between March and October...

9.2 - 2.129 (rounded up) = 7.071

So... can that be right?  That sounds like quite a jump.  If I worked this out right, it goes roughly like this...

March - 1.41

April to September - 7.071

October - 391,245

November - 187,554

December - 522,239

January - 248,052

February - 233,223

March - 546,572

That doesn't look right to me.  That 7 million is only spread over six months.  That's over a million sales per month average, which stands in stark contrast to the sub-million monthly figures that immediately follow it.  Especially when you consider that October was the US launch.  If anything, wouldn't you expect those numbers to be higher than those just preceding them?

I guess it still may have been.  That's the problem with taking averages.  But even still, to reach 7 million, it would have to have matched its March sales every month almost until October.  Unless, I suppose, it shot up after March, selling 2 or 3 million one month, or something like that.

I don't know.  I'm sure that either I've done something wrong or something's wrong with the numbers I'm using.  Are the figures in your source worldwide sales?  That's what I was assuming but maybe I had that wrong.

EDIT: Oh duh!  On top of everything else, I just noticed that my own source which I quoted right in this post said this...

On August 1, 2000, five months after the system's release in Japan, Sony announced it had shipped over 3 million units.

So that 7 million figure is definitely wrong!