Amazon US January monthly bestsellers and general amazon based discussions

[binary solo]

Aura7541 said:

AlfredoTurkey said:

I'm perfectly fine with waiting for NPD numbers. Until then though, we have ZERO, factual numbers to go by. So why is everyone just saying "last year bla bla bla" like that somehow means this year is going to be the exact same situation? Am I the only one who thinks ioi isn't dumb enough to make the same mistake twice? 

The only facts we have right now is that he haven't seen the PS4 win the US for months. That's a fact. Until I see otherwise, I am not going to just assume the PS4 is all of a sudden winning again. 

Here's the link to the OP of Boutros's December NPD thread and scroll down to the bottom to see the archives: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=6994455

There, you can see how wonky VGC's tracking was (and is) and how the site incorrectly predicted the X1 winning certain months when the PS4 actually won.

Ya'll are collectively giving Mr Turkey too much airtime his fundamentally flawed thinking. People should learn by now that there is no arguing people around to a more logical way of thinking when it goes against their personal desires.

The clear facts are these: We're pretty much at the end of the month and PS4 is 10 places ahead of Xb one for the month on Amazon.

This is a very strong indicator (hourly chart is not) that NPD will have PS4 ahead of Xb one for the month. Because aside from the launch months in 2013 Amazon is batting 1000 on predicting the NPD winner between PS4 and Xb one. This is a far superior record to VGC, which is why the Amazon monthly chart is an interesting discussion point.

It is rather incomprehensible to believe that Xb one sold more in the one full week of the month that it was the same price as PS4, but that PS4 outsold Xb one for the rest of the month with Xb one being $50 cheaper for 2/3 of that time. And that PS4 outsold it by enough to overcome that 1 week lead Xb one had at the beginning of the month. This is would be magical economic gravity defying stuff for PS4 to turn a week 1 loss  when it was the same price into a January win when it was more expensive for half of the month. Much less magical is that PS4 substantially outsold Xb one for the 2-ish weeks Xb one was at $399, and that it outsold it marginally for the other 2 weeks of January.

Amazon and NPD may diverge this month, that is quite possible specially with Xb one and PS4 both being in the top 20 for the month, which was pretty much never the case for the 10 months of 2014 when PS4 won every NPD. As a predictor of NPD Amazon wou;d become less reliable the close the two consoles come to each other on the bestseller list. But n this case if the final gap for the month remains at to places then I think Amazon is still very likely to accurately prdict the NPD winner. If the gap in any given month is 5 places or less I'd say Amazon would be less reliable. I reckon there's about a 10% chance that Xb one wins NPD with a 10 position gap in the Amazon chart.