Amazon U.S. February bestsellers and general Amazon-based discussion

[Nuvendil]

quickrick said:

Nuvendil said:

Now you are just making assumptions based on your own preconceived notions.  There's no evidence for the first claim in your post.

However, Amazon picking a winner has always been "luck".  Amazon does not and has never made up the lion's share of the games market.  It just so happens that, for better or worse, transactions here with regards to hardware, constitute a pretty representative verticle slice of that market.  This could change at any time.  However, it has remained a good predictor of sales *leaders* (not sales in units) for years.  And there's no evidence that has changed.

just look at the best selling games on amazon for 2017, it's mostly Japanese games.

The fact they all sold a lot of coppies probably has something to do with that.  But four things to keep in mind:

1) multiplats are split between two platforms plus split between any sku variants like collectors editions or deluxe editions.  This effects their ranking.

2) we don't know the distance between each rank so a game with 2 skus in the 20s may have sold more than a game with 1 sku in the top 5

3) with regards to Nintendo games in general, they rarely do a wide range of skus.  Usually it's just one sku.  So this helps their games rank higher but with fewer skus in the rankings.

4) Amazon has never, ever been used as a metric for game sales rankings or overall success because the inaccuracies with software have long been documented, noted, and accepted.  At best it can indicate a very general and imprecise level of health for a given release.  Which is why hardware is what is discussed most seriously with regards to Amazon.