Weekly Hardware Chart, 17th January 2015

[DonFerrari]

binary solo said:

DonFerrari said:
USA and RoW is either to high too x1 or too low for ps4. By all the rankings the gap should be a lot bigger.

Sales rankings are not a good way to assess actual sales. All you can do is say that when sales rankings across most major retailers puts a particular console ahead then the relative sales numbers on VGC should align with those rankings, but the actual sales gap could be large or small because we have no idea what sales gap is represented in the rankings. A rankings gap of 10 can in theory only represent a sales gap of 10 units which if total sales for the lead console is 1000 represents only a 1% sales difference. 

Relatively simple market analysis suggests though that the % decline in Xb one sales from 3 jan to 10 Jan should be significantly greater. So based on the fact that adjusted numbers for 10 Jan did not substantially change the Xb one decline, but did reduce the PS4 decline I would say VGC is still misreading the market. IMO Xb one should have declined by over 50% between 3 jan and 10 Jan, with the 10 Jan to 17 Jan decline being actually smaller than it is right now. When market forces suggest a rapid decline, as should be expected with a price increase, then the console should find its base faster. So I think a more realistic picture for USA would be 10 Jan Xb one 50K (-55%), 17 jan Xb one 45K (-19%). What we have are 46% and 23% drops respectively, which gets us to almost the same sales for 17 Jan, but in a less realisticv fashion considerig the maarket forces that are in play over these two weeks.

Reading the various online sales rankings one should expect the 23 Jan sales to be very flat for Xb one. PS4 sales should decline somewhat as there's nothing substantial to prevent the typical January decline to a post-holiday base line. However the onine sales rankings also suggest PS4 has stayed ahead of Xb one. But there is virtually no head room for Xb one sales to be flat WoW and for PS4 to follow a typical decline pattern and for PS4 to remain marginally ahead. PS4 should drop by about 10-15% for W/E 23 Jan as it gets close to a post holidy baseline. That would put PS4 at about 42-43K, Xb one should stay flat which would keep it at about 46K. This positioning does not reflect what seems to be the trend in the online rankings of major retailers. The PS4-Xb one gap for 17 Jan should be at about 10K with the gap narrowing to about 3 or 4 K in PS4's favoour for W/E 23 Jan, whoch would adequately reflect the re-price cut of Xb one and reflect what the online sales rankings seem to be telling us. But as it stands VGC pretty much has to put Xb one ahead for 23 jan week unless there are further adjustments.

I also think the UK chart looks off. I don't know of any reason why PS4 should win December comfortably but then for there to be a sudden market shift towards Xb one. The MCV UK software charts don't appear to be showing any sort of market shift towars Xb one on the game sales side. If anyone has information on what market forces have been in play for the first 2 weeks of January in the UK which would explain this shift I would very much appreciate it if they posted about it. And I don't mean idle speculation, I mean actual verifiable marketing, promotional and pricing movements which would explain the shift.

It seems to me that the VGC algorithm might be continuing to over-use last gen 360/PS3 sales as a moderator of the final estimate. Relying on last gen sales trends for UK (and USA) does not seem to be a reliable aspect of the methodology because the market has substantially shifted towards PS4 in both countries.

I agree with all you said and agree online rankings can't really indicate the gap. But outside of the theoretical world we know 10 positions on the chart wouldn't Just reflect in such a small gap in real life, we are talking more in the 10k region gap. But won't do a push on that as we can Just wait for NPD in 8 days to show the real numbers. But VGC gap is too odd.