| ShadowLink93 said:
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Yeah. Old sales data is a bit of a mess.
For example, shipments for the Americas region for the NES make it hard to corroborate third-party sales estimates because Nintendo's fiscal years during the 80s ran from September 1 to August 31, but then they had a six-month transitional period lasting from Sept. 1, 1989 to March 31, 1990 after which they've been using the April 1 to March 31 fiscal years we're familiar with. Also, while Nintendo did ship 7.55M NES units during FY1990-91, in FY1991-92 they only shipped 2.4M, which seems like not enough to sustain 4.4M units sold in the U.S. in 1991. Much of the actual sell-through data comes from various magazines and market analysis/research papers. And while the NPD Group did give us a final U.S. lifetime tally of 36M for the NES in the U.S., that's more than the 34M final tally that Nintendo gave for shipments for the entire region. So someone is wrong somewhere.
Also, I got some data second-hand (IIRC it was from Square2005 from back in the GAF days) that yields a lifetime total for the SNES & Genesis that's proportionally much lower than what the NPD Group estimated. It also doesn't match up well with known shipment data. We know from Nintendo's own numbers that the SNES had shipped 8.96M units to the Americas region by March 1993. My old second-hand source estimates only 5.1M units sold in the U.S. by the end of 1992. Those numbers on the VG Sales Wiki are much higher, sitting at 6.9M units. The U.S. has always represented between 85-90% of the sales in the region, at least for the generation as a whole, so it probably stands to reason that the SNES sold around 7.7M to 8.1M in the Americas by the end of 1992. Take into account that there were probably several hundred thousand units shipped in the winter quarter of 1993, and that makes the numbers on the VG Sales Wiki more accurate, at least for earlier SNES numbers.
The sources VG Sales uses for later SNES sales is way too low. What I have from my second-hand source is actually higher than what VG Sales has, and therefore closer to Nintendo shipment data. Nintendo shipped 4.88M SNES units from April 1996 to when the system was discontinued. My second-hand source gives 3.26M units in the U.S. from 1996 onward, while VG Sales has it at under 2M, with it completely dropping off after 1997 (highly unlikely unless most of the SNES units sold in the region outside of the U.S. weren't until after the N64 was released).
What we do know is that the SNES shipped 23.36M units lifetime in the Americas, and given the U.S.'s typical share of the region's sales for Nintendo systems, that gives us a range of around 19.8M to 21M, which is pretty spot-on to what the NPD Group estimates from the Wedbush report. But finding reliable yearly data is always going to be difficult if not impossible.
And then there's the mess that is Sega Genesis numbers. That's just all over the place.
Oh, and unless something changed recently, there's a good chance there won't be a CESA white paper this year. Hopefully they do still release it this year.
EDIT: I was going to do the part about 16-bit systems but I got sidetracked by stuff. Only had half a sentence written out before I hit the "Submit" button.
Last edited by Shadow1980 - on 20 January 2024Visit http://shadowofthevoid.wordpress.com
In accordance to the VGC forum rules, §8.5, I hereby exercise my right to demand to be left alone regarding the subject of the effects of the pandemic on video game sales (i.e., "COVID bump").
