@ The Source

MikeB wrote:

"You expected Microsoft to have shipped 7.5 million XBox 360s. It was actually 6.3 million, that's 1.2 million you're off.

Why are you calling my guesses over tracking? They're guesses, do you not understand that I just look at VGC data, estimate retail stock and then guess how many more systems it would take to hit the totals VGC has? 

Sony's sell through was down 800,000 in the USA and Japan and shipments were down 200,000 from Oct-Dec 2009 to Oct-Dec 2010. Microsoft shipments are the result of not forecasting Kinect well - they changed from 3m to 5m to 8m in the span of 2 months and so they didnt know whether to ship a ton of bundled Kinects with X360 or a ton of X360s and standalone Kinects. Nintendo's shipment figures are exactly in line with the drop off in sell but I had guessed they'd be able to squeeze some more in once retailers saw the 10 fold European and USA weekly sales jumps from September to mid-December. The DS / Wii hw errors also reflect the fact that Nintendo lowered its hw projections for each, and I didn't get the impression they would from our data. I'm not consistently high or low on anything either:

Wii: Underestimated SW shipped (80m - total sw shipped = 85m)

        Overestimated HW shipped (9.4m - Nintendo shipped = 8.7m)

DS: Underestimated SW shipped (42m - total sw shipped = 44m)

        Overestimated HW shipped (10m - Nintendo shipped = 9m)

PS3: Underestimated HW shipped (6m - Sony shipped 6.3m)

         Underestimated SW shipped (55m - total sw shipped = 58m)

PSP:  Dead on for HW shipped (3.7m / 3.7m)

          Dead on for SW shipped (16m / 16.5m shipped)

PS2: We can't fully track sw due to games not showing up in earlier years - purely a guess on my part but I was close. HW was close - just a bit low.

X360: Overestimated HW shipped (7.5m / Microsoft shipped 6.3m)

I don't know really see what I'm supposed to tell you - I guessed 38.5m systems shipped and the reality was 36.1m shipped. Thats a 6.3% error. I was only 5.2% off on SW between the Nintendo / Sony platforms. I don't really see how I can be accused of anything when I missed by 0-8% on sw & hw for 5 of the 6 platforms.

I partially agree with you MikeB

but i thing the problem is that each market is unique and different. Like recently i posted an article which said that based on NPD GT5 did 579.5k in November and 1.14M in  November and December.. I thought 579.5 k was for US November but later on educated members told me that 579.5k was for Cananda and USA for November. which means that GT5 did 179.5k alone in Canada which is almost 45% of USA sale whereas VGC consider USA as 85% of whole Americas market (USA Canada Mexico Brazil Argentina etc). Although this is fairly good ball mark for like 50 - 60% of games but for remaining 40 - 50% games and consoles it is fairly to greatly wrong guesstimate. and i think due to this generalization most of the time PS3 gets underestimated and sometime fairly largely. so this might also mean that if GT5 was doing some great numbers than PS3 console might be doing some astonishing numbers (in respect to that market)

So they need to fine tune their estimates and single generalization rule should not be applied for the whole market even if they are neighbouring countries. :)

Just my 2 cents

@ The Source

There's a reason why we have this talk every once in a while when the official data is released, I explained this above. The only thing I expect from you is to take past mistakes into consideration and actually learn from them. I think you can get a lot more accurate this way.

I wouldn't mind if for once you actually overtracked the PS3 a little and the undertrack the 360 a little (but never with the huge margin of error you made with regard to the 360 last quarter). That would finallly kill a trend.

Remember I have been a vivid supporter for your efforts since the beginning, I want you to become more accurate and stand up against all the criticism directed at VGChartz' data/reporting.

You're criticizing me for not tracking data well when I'm not doing the data. All I do is guess based on what Brett provides on VGC and what the companies are providing. What I do is look at our data, and the historical ratios to shipment figures for my estimates. I look at every quarter every year for each company and I am aware of the differences between the companies - I can only do what the data shows though.The problem is I can't "learn" from the percieved biases of the data because when mistakes are made it is adjusted. If PS3 is upped 1m last year, I don't see that when I check the figures for estimating this year - its now much closer, and so I have to assume the current figures are closer because of the previous adjustments. I don't have the time or patience to write down the hundreds of minor adjustments which would be necessary to remember how the original data in years past compared to shipment figures.

We're never going to have a 2m difference between all consoles for sell through and shipments - the companies have different policies on inventory, it isn't a bias.

@ TheSource

OK, then I think you will have to talk to Brett then for implementing a better overall strategy. I thought you were also involved with the data tracking/adjustments here on VGChartz.