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

[bigjon]

SWORDF1SH said:

bigjon said:

While the PS4 was not a virtual sellout back in April of last year it was still hard to find. Amazon was getting alot of shippedments of PS4s. So if someone could not find a PS4 in their local store they would go to Amazon. I have not check alot of retailer lately (nor do I think the one near me would be representative as I live in Hawaii) but I from what I understand both the XB1 and PS4 are easy to find so people have no other reason to go to Amazon right now other than that being their purchasing preference (online shopping).

Now if your theory is that PS4 buyers have more of an online preference I could buy that, but would need to know the basis of that theory.

That could explain the huge difference in rankings.

Basis of my theory? I'm trying to find the differences between xbox fans and PS fans and the only one I can come up with is average age. There was a fact that Xbox owners average age is younger than PS owners last gen. If that is still true then we have to work out what younger gamers do different to older gamers and one conclusion that I came up with was that younger gamers might prefer to buy from brick and mortar stores and maybe gaming specific retailer.

This is believable but in no way conclusive. It would explain the conflicting data between Amazon and NPD for software and explain why Amazon rankings do not really relate to NPD figures. eg last April, 16 place difference turned out to be only 20k and January 9 place difference within the top 20 turned out only to be 40k.

I agree with the age difference, that is why the XBOX always has a betting increase % over the holidays. Teens are less likely to have a credit card or even a paypal to buy things online. That said, many of these younger gamers have thier parent still buying things for them. So the people actually paying for the system might still be more likely to buy it online.

It would be an interesting stat to see the average age of people actually buying the consoles. As we know the age of the people playing the consoles skews older on the Playstation.