Weekly hardware 7 March 2015

[binary solo]

Shadow1980 said:

I was thinking to myself "The XBO sure is awfully close to the PS4 in the U.S.," so I checked the monthly U.S. numbers and the PS4 still hasn't been adjusted enough. NPD had it at 342k, while VGC still has it at 298k (the XBO numbers are about dead-on, though, 276k for NPD and 269k for VGC). This means that VGC is showing only an 11% lead for the PS4 for February, while NPD is showing a 24% lead. The gap shown for the week ending March 7 shows the PS4 in the lead by only 7.7%. I know VGC's week-to-week tracking is just rough estimates, but if February was better-adjusted to match NPD (the data's been out for three weeks), we'd probably have a more representative estimate for the week ending March 7.

I know VGC uses their own methods, but post-adjustment VGC numbers should be no more than 5% off from NPD, which is the case for January for both the PS4 & XBO (VGC has the PS4 less than 1% off from NPD and the XBO is less than 2% off from NPD) and even February for the XBO (off by less than 3%). But right now they still have the PS4 undertracked by 13% for February, well outside any sort of margin of error. I have a feeling NPD is going to show another big gap in the PS4's favor, so unless February is adjusted for the PS4 and that bumps up March tracking, the PS4 is likely going to be undertracked for March as well.

As for Europe, with no publicly-available numbers from the Euro trackers I can't comment on VGC's numbers for this week. However, I will use VGC's numbers for purposes of showing the number of Europe minus the UK for the week ending March 7:

3DS: 55,554
PS4: 42,657
XBO: 13,410
Wii U: 6856
Vita: 3796

So, the PS4:XBO ratio is over 3:1 on the continent, unless there's still big adjustments for Euro numbers to come.

Nothing to say about Japan number tracking. VGC is always spot-on there. It probably helps that MC & Famitsu update weekly instead of monthly so it's easier for VGC to post more accurate numbers without need for adjustments. But I will say, as usual, poor Wii U. I blame Japan. I can't believe the U.S. is already up to half the global total for the Wii U. I guess all the attention is going to the PS4 now, which is actually doing pretty damn good relative to the overall size of the Japanese market. According to MC data, the PS4 actually had slighly better Q1 (Week 1-13) sales than the PS3 did in Q1 2008. But the PS4 may be shaping up to have better baseline sales than the PS3 did in '08. In the four weeks from Feb. 2 to March 1, the PS4 sold 111k units, and from March 2 to March 29, it sold nearly 162k. That's better than any 8-week non-holiday period the PS3 ever experienced prior to the Slim coming out. Whether or not it actually keeps it up through the year, and whether or not the PS4 actually outsells the PS3 remains to be seen (we still haven't had a price cut or FFXV yet, so there is still room for more growth), but so far the Japanese market is still able to sustain at least one console at decent numbers. Both the PS4 and the Wii U might actually be doing decent if it weren't for the mistakes Nintendo made.

EDIT: I started writing this post well over an hour ago, but got sidetracked by other things. Sorry if the whole thing with U.S. numbers has been addressed already.

I don't think vgc even bothers with trying to get independent hardware data for Japan. Pretty sure it's just MC + Famitsu + Denkeki /3 perhaps with a weighting towards MC as being the apparently more accurate tracker of the 3.

Pretty much waiting for Bloodborne week numbers as the only interesting thing happening these earlier weeks is Japan and we already have those numbers.

 

Like others I am a tad sceptical about the UK positions. It is certainly like that xb one will occasionally outsell PS4 in the UK, but only when there are deals or software releases that heavily favour Xb one. I'm pretty sure that on normal weeks PS4>xb one 99% of the time.