Tabarnacos on 11 January 2007
Monty said:
Well, to shed a little light on how vgcharts comes up with its figures, I'm attempting to do a little research on his earlier posts over at the GAF forums.
Apparently, he feels NPD under-reports figures (which most agree, with some saying up to 20% of the actual figure), and figured out a calculation based on something to do with when the new model PStwo was released, the old inventory left over, and the NPD stats to that point.
So, he doesn't have any exact figures either, and uses a simple formula that he came up with to compute NA... based on under-reporting of NPD and a guestimate of Canada's sales. I didn't see anything for accounting for Mexico's sales.
And, I think where the biggest error is - as you pointed out Erik - is that the 360 has launched in a lot more minor countries then the Wii or PS3. It's likely that the 360 is getting the short end of the stick (as you say) because of if.
If he is using the EXACT same formulas for each console, then that most definitely would not be fair, and you'd either be severly under-reporting the 360's numbers, or over reporting the other consoles as they are not on level playing fields in terms of their launches.
Wii launch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_launch
Xbox360 launch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_launch
The Wii was available in brazil BEFORE the 360...
