Retro system sales - how to count?

[thetonestarr]

S.Peelman said:
The same as with remakes and remasters; seperately.

There will be massive overlap with purchasers who bought both the old and new releases. Plus it’s unfair to add sales to an old release since they’ve been discontinued since long ago, purchases of the rerelease will mostly be based on nostalgia and times and market conditions have changed. You also can’t really say that, should the Mega Drive Mini sell 15m, that the Mega Drive was actually the 4th gen winner. This means that for example OoT sold 7.6 and 5.3 (or something) and SNES sold 49 and 6, not 13 and 55.

The point you make about OoT goes against what most generally consider, though - when talking about OoT sales, they are usually stated as a combination of all releases, unless otherwise stated.

Thus, most of the games, then, would be counted as follows: Star Fox (SNES): 2.99m; Star Fox (SNES:C): 5.28m; Star Fox (total): >8.27m etc.

Nah, it's becoming more and more clear that it should be considered an 8th gen release to support the 4th gen family - aka, option #2.