Did Xbox One Beat Wii U Already??

[JustBeingReal]

Seece said:

JustBeingReal said:

Seece said:

No they don't, because these figures are for investors and what they have sold (and if they have sold to retailers that's what they have sold) all that matters.

The numbers arn't released for the purpose of armchair analysis on web forums.

 

And whilst I don't agree with Toast's figures, shipments are most certainly not useless when it comes to this kind of discussion.

Yes they do, because shipped figures by themselves don't give investors any solid basis in fact for what direction that part of the business is going in. Shipments aren't an accurate measure for what the actual cashflow is back to the company and investors want as accurate information as possible to make their judgements on where they're going to invest.

 

It's not about web forums, it's about everyone that could potentially buy stock having accurate sales data to make educated decisions on where to invest or knowing exactly what is going on.

 

Shipment data by itself is useless, because it's not telling investors what the actual reality of the sales situation is. As far as this discussion goes Toastboy made his thread claiming what the sales were, based on the shipped data (not even a solid shipped figure for XB1 at that), it's about as useless as for arguing actual sales as you can get.

 

The best anyone can say is X and Y company shipped X and Y amounts.

There's no evidence for the sales and sales are what this thread is about, right?

It does though, because at worst sales will lag shipments by 6 months. MS/Sony/Nintendo can't keep stuffing the channel infinitely, those systems have to be sold, and if they don't sell you get a really low Q in shipments.

Nintendo give much more of a breakdown because they're solely videogames, MS and Sony don't need to because they're much bigger than that, and if anyone is thinking of investing in either because of their videogames business (why on earth would that be the case for MS ...) they would subscribe to trackers like NPD anyway.

A shipped figure only tells investors what retailers are ordering, it doesn't tell them what is actually selling, it's an inaccurate estimate, which retailers are guessing at. A retailer can easily over or under estimate how much of a product they'll need to stock, an example of that would be when a new game (new IP) is released or if you're launching in a new market that hasn't been tapped before in regards to that specific product.

XB1 being launched in china and other tier 2 markets is a prime example of a period when over stuffing would happen, because no one knows exactly how well it was going to sell. These recent Microsoft shipment details are the result of that, so overestimating is very likely.

 

Again I'm not talking about using forums for estimated sales, in order for investors to make their decisions.

No matter what way you slice it shipments aren't sales, they're supply and not demand data.

 

FYI Sony gives far more regular, actual sales data than Microsoft and Nintendo. Just because Sony and Microsoft are bigger companies that doesn't mean they don't need to give as detailed information as another company for their gaming business, it's still a part of the company and investors need to know the slightest increase or decrease in business so they can keep track of where the company is shrinking or growing.

Accurate sales will always be more preferable as it's what's actually happening in the marketplace, how much actual product is selling through to customers and what customers are really interested in buying.