Shadow1980 said:
On average, Week 1 represented 52% of sales in the first five weeks for the Q1 releases, while for holiday releases that number drops to 35%. This continues to hold true even if we extend that range of weeks:
That's an average Week 1 share of 41% for Q1 releases but only 26% for holiday releases. Let's extend it all the way to 26 weeks, giving us half a year of sales:
And we see an average share of 22.7% for Q1 releases but only 16.8% for holiday releases. We start to see significant outliers in this ten-system sample at this point: the PS4 and Wii U. Both were systems that had reasonably good launch weeks but had dreadful baseline sales early on, which incidentally were roughly equal to each other, as we see in this comparison of sales for the first 39 weeks/9 months:
But those first five weeks favored the Wii U, because it was a holiday launch while the PS4 was released in February. That resulted in the PS4 running at a somewhat semi-stable deficit for a while, taking over a year for it to start to fully reverse the trend, close the gap, and surpass the Wii U in LTD sales:
Of course, this is just Japan. I started with them because their sales trackers track sales on a weekly basis. NPD only tracks sales on a monthly basis. However, an examination of NPD data heavily suggests similar trends. While systems are more likely to release in Q4 in North America, we still have several major systems released in the past 20 years that launched before Q4: the Dreamcast, GBA, PSP, 3DS, and Switch. Whenever a system releases prior to October, it always exhibits a pronounced drop in its second month. This does not really happen with Q4 launches. The largest November-to-December drop proportionally of any November launch system was the PS4, which saw a 24.3% drop, yet even that wasn't enough to keep it from having the second-largest first December of any Q4 launch system (the XBO edges it out), and the PS4's first December was over 3.18 times larger than the January following it. Now it is true that all three home consoles released last gen were November launches and had weak launches relative to their baseline levels thanks to supply constraints (and high price in the PS3's case), but they nevertheless did not see any big drops in December; had they had sufficient supply to meet demand, their launches would have been much better, but we probably wouldn't have seen dramatic improvements to sales in their first full calendar year (well, except maybe the Wii). Meanwhile, the smallest drop any of the listed pre-Q4 systems saw in its second month was the PSP, which saw a 43.4% drop from its launch month to its second month. Every other system saw sales drop by more than half in their second month. Here's every launch month to second month drop for Gen 6-8 systems launched prior to Q4: DC: -70% TL;DR: Launching during the holidays does have a clear, demonstrable effect on sales, with an obvious causal mechanism in play. This tends to favor Q4 launches when comparing LTD sales, at least for early-life sales (the effect does of course wear off over time). |
I was only comparing NPD data because thats the thats where have sold numbers, but you can compare earnings report for the launches of 360, wii, and ps4 during the holidays, and on there second holidays they sale 2x-3 or, and thats with out launch boost as well.
