(Edited) Using Amazon isn't entirely accurate to judge NPD sales. Here's why...

[Dr.Henry_Killinger]

SWORDF1SH said:

... it's all about buying habbits and trends.

Amazon has been pretty good in tracking hardware sales but not all is what it seems. Although it's a good indicator, Playstation guys are more likely to buy from Amazon so this offsets the data and sometime causes conflict with the NPD results. What I mean by this is it both consoles were pretty much the same position on the bestsellers on the monthly Amazon, Xbox would be ahead in the NPD.

The evidence

January NPD vs January Amazon Bestsellers

X1 - 152k NPD - 18th on Amazon

PS4 - 192k NPD - 9th on Amazon

On Amazon, the higher up you go, the bigger amount of sales between each position. These 9 positions between the 2 in the top 20 should translate more than 40k between the 2 for the month.

Order of top 10 games bestselling platform. NPD first Amazon second

1. Dying Light (PS4, Xbox One, PC) (PS4 32nd, X1 68th)
2. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (Xbox One ,PS4, 360, PS3, PC)(PS4 11th, X1 17th)
3. Grand Theft Auto V (Xbox One, PS4, 360, PS3)(PS4 22nd, X1 56th)
4. Minecraft (360, PS3, Xbox One, PS4)(Neither charted)
5. NBA 2K15 (Xbox One, PS4, 360, PS3, PC)(PS4 62nd, X1 69th)
6. Super Smash Bros. (Wii U, 3DS)
7. Far Cry 4 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3, PC)(PS4 41st, X1 63rd)
8. Madden NFL 15 (Xbox One, PS4, 360, PS3)(Neither charted)
9. Destiny (Xbox One, PS4, 360, PS3) (X1 70th, PS4 77th)
10. FIFA 15 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3, Wii, Vita, 3DS)(Neither charted)

Amazon has most software winning on PS4, except Destiny, while NPD shows more software selling better on the X1. Another indication that Playstation fans prefer Amazon for their gaming needs.

Why?

Well you guess is as good as mine. I can only guess by using old facts and my experience. It used to be known that the average user that owned a Playstation is older than the average Xbox owner. If that facts remains true, who knows, but it more than likely still stands. So I think this could be a direct link to why sales on Amazon doesn't truly reflect sales. Go into a gaming store and you will see more younger people in there than the older gamer, my experience is that more younger people buy direct from brick and mortar stores. This, of course, should offset the Amazon data in favour of PS4. Younger people tend to prefer the Xbox, younger people are more than likely going to buy from brick and mortar stores.

To conclude, if you see the X1 a few place behind on the bestselling Amazon charts, don't be shocked to see it outsell the PS4 in the NPD data. Same is true for software.

Amazon data: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2015-01/videogames/ref=zg_bsar_videogames_pg_3?ie=UTF8&pg=3#1

NPD: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=198105&page=1

Confirmation Bias.

As of now, the only thing you can conclude is that a higher position on Amazon is likely to correlate with a higher NPD position since NPD is a retailer survey and Amazon is a Retailer.

I mean how exactly do you make the calculation in the following claim: "These 9 positions between the 2 in the top 20 should translate more than 40k between the 2 for the month." Unless you can reliably predict Future NPD results given Amazon ranks within a margin of error, then you haven't proven anything.

Not to mention you cannot make any reasonable conclusion about buying trends or habits with simply one month of data, use that conclusion to frame what occured in software, and then use that data set to somehow explain hardware, despite the fact that we can already assume that the correlation between hardware and software is not very strong considering the ratio is not one to one.