Woot the site is updated.  SHouldn't software get a boost with more hardware being sold?  Remember that 6+ attach rate so add in an extra 40k hardware and thats 240k software.  I say higher Mass Effect and Rock band sales!

actually it was undertracked by 60k in September (if we sum up Us + Canada)...and NPD October was just US...so probablythe difference is in the range of 100k

 Sales are last gen. Percentages are next gen.

And regarding that last statement, I must mention that I made exactly that point, about vgchartz increasing its data sources, in this earlier thread.  Really it should be obvious to anyone who understands basic statistics (sample size, selection bias / sample bias)...

And let me add that's not a criticism of vgchartz, ioi, or any of the data here, this site is great and I hope it eventually takes NPD down. I just hope it becomes more and more accurate with time (something that requires increasing the number of data sources, hell no numbers can be perfect until the data is from ALL potential sources).

But people are too focused on the pretty numbers when there is a fairly large margin of error in all of this.

Some more info here:

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8148&Itemid=2

Microsoft said that it outsold Sony's PlayStation 3 2 to 1 last week, according to retail estimates.

I'd take a wait and see approach on all these numbers for now. That's especially the case with MS' report. At least Sony we know the numbers were bad because of their focus on percent gains and Nintendo generally doesn't play with numbers and at any rate even if they reported shipped then that means sold to customer for the Wii. MS on the other hand has been known to be sly with sales figures and especially now that Nintendo beat them to the punch they have to report the best figure they can create. As we found out last year around this time MS is capable of shipping a heck of a lot 360s to retailers whether they sell or not.

The thing that continues to strike me though is how bone-headed MS' managers seem to be. They were really surprised that a sub-$300 360 would sell better than the $350+ variants? With managerial brilliance like that it's no wonder MS can only make money on video games the quarters that Halo sells millions of copies (oh and by using shifty accounting).

As for the software figures, those are from last month and aren't all that impressive for the 360. It had 51% of the hardware base and 52% of cost adjusted software sales.

Last month the 360 was way overtracked. This month is might be undertracked.

ioi did mention adding some new sources, maybe he hasn't properly configured his data to properly estimate the consoles?

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The issue is that the sources ioi gets data from probably can't track alot of the more "general" american retail stores like K-Mart, Wal-Mart, and such (atleast in my mere opinion).

That's why DS sales were way off too. When you get a more basic, huge retail store like Walmart, their sales can come and go in droves....In this case, it seems like the sources ioi uses had a typical, easy-to-see holiday boost for the Wii and PS3, as these stores give a great "sample" that easily compares to NPD. Wii and PS3 sales are usually not too far off in the US.

On the other hand, the DS and X360 are usually more difficult (as well as the PS2). This is probably because sales vary greatly on when, and where sales occur. In the case of the DS, it wouldn't take much for people to rush out and buy it at a Wal-Mart moreso than anywhere else. When I was at Wal-Mart on Black Friday, tons of kids hovered around the cases. If ioi couldn't track Wal-Mart, or other general stores, he'd have the most to lose in terms of accuracy from them.

But that's not ioi's fault. He needs to do whatever he can to get ahold of a bigger sample size though, preferably with more "general" retailers like Toys R Us, Wal-Mart, Target, and such.