March 2016 NPD Thread! Hardware and software up!

[Aquamarine]

Zanten said:
Soooo this has probably been brought up somewhere in the thread before, but just in case, looking at Microsoft's NPD PR statement;

“In March, global hours spent gaming on Xbox One increased 89 percent compared to last year. Xbox Live engagement was driven by the greatest games lineup, including new titles released in March like ‘Killer Instinct: Season 3’ and ‘Tom Clancy’s The Division.’ ‘Killer Instinct: Season 3’ has seen record engagement across Xbox One and Windows 10 since it launched on March 29, making March the best month ever for the franchise with more than 6 million unique players. Last week, on April 5, we launched ‘Quantum Break’ to critical acclaim and it became the best-selling Xbox game around the world, and is now the biggest-selling new Microsoft Studios published IP this generation. We can’t thank our fans enough for their continued support and we’re looking forward to bringing more unprecedented experiences on Xbox One, Windows 10 and Xbox Live later this year.”

...would I be wrong in saying that the statement doesn't actually have anything to do with NPD data? Like, at all? We get a statement on 'user engagement,' which I'm pretty sure would be data that Microsoft keeps track of themselves via Xbox Live and whatnot, likewise when it comes to discussing engagement with Killer Instinct. When the statement moves on to sales, it's for Quantum Break, a game that released in April and therefore doesn't apply to March NPD anyway. In fact, unless Microsoft and Sony get NPD data weekly instead of the monthly PR statements/numbers we get, I'm assuming that Microsoft doesn't even have NPD information on Quantum Break's sales yet, and is relying instead on its own data, or other sources that release said data in shorter intervals.

(If Aquamarine is still reading this thread, does the fact that we get these statements monthly mean NPD only shares its software and hardware data with Microsoft and Sony for the end of every month? Or would both companies be able to see the estimates as they're being compiled, say, getting rough data on the 'Week 1' sales of their new game from NPD, before the official statements are released?)

Anyway, closes with the usual thank-yous, and voila. We have a March 2016 Microsoft NPD statement that has nothing to do with March 2016's NPD results.

Or, again, am I misreading something?

Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo all internally track sell-through of their products.

Their internal data updates daily and includes physical + digital totals.

They only use NPD to take a look at how the broader retail market is performing. So Sony knows how much the PS4 sold, but Sony doesn't know that PS4 was the #1 console in March until market reports from NPD and GfK come out.

That's why NPD comes out two weeks after tracking stops...because there's no real desire for it to come out any sooner.

And that's also why Sony waits until NPD releases to make PR statements instead of making them the instant March ends.