By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Gaming - Ethomaz's Dismantling the Myths: Amazon.com's Best Sellers is Not Accurate to the Predict Overall Hardware Sales in US (Checking: Accuracy with Software)

ethomaz on 25 April 2014

fleischr said:

Though I agree with Amazon being a reasonably good indicator -- some strange stuff does happen in their best seller rankings from time to time that aren't reflected in this site's sales rankings (maybe undertracked?)

For example, I just checked the best sellers list now. Here's a few things that'll make you go WHA??

AC4 on WiiU #40

ZombiU WiiU #51

WiiU Mario and Luigi bundle #89

And some crazy old PC games

All these were recently discounted and may drop off the sale charts in the days to come.

This is the hourly ranking? This is one is impossible to track... it changes every time... if 10 guys buy a old game then it will show in the hourly ranking.



Around the Network
POE on 25 April 2014

Do you check amazon every hour of the whole month?



ethomaz on 25 April 2014
POE said:
Do you check amazon every hour of the whole month?

No. Just the weekly, montly and year ranking... these are updated once per week.

I just checked every hour when PS4 was sold out and Amazon received some fast shipment that last few hours.



POE on 25 April 2014
ethomaz said:
POE said:
Do you check amazon every hour of the whole month?

No. Just the weekly, montly and year ranking... these are updated once per week.

I just checked every hour when PS4 was sold out and Amazon received some fast shipment that last few hours.


How can i chek those?
Link please   :D



ethomaz on 25 April 2014

POE said:

How can i chek those?
Link please   :D

All of them uses the same base URL.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2014-04-14/videogames/ref=zg_bs_tab_t_bsar

Hos look at the date "2014-04-14"... this one is the weekly ranking and you can add or remove 7... so you can have these URLs:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2014-04-07/videogames/ref=zg_bs_tab_t_bsar 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2014-04-14/videogames/ref=zg_bs_tab_t_bsar
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2014-04-21/videogames/ref=zg_bs_tab_t_bsar

Understood? Now remove the day from the URL mantaing only the YEAR and MONTH.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2014-04/videogames/ref=zg_bs_tab_t_bsar

So you have the Monthly ranking... change to 03 (March), 12 (December), etc.

And just the YEAR is the Yearly ranking.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2014/videogames/ref=zg_bs_tab_t_bsar

 

So you you know you can use any date using this format:

YYYY
YYYY-MM
YYYY-MM-DD



Around the Network
POE on 25 April 2014
ethomaz said:

POE said:

How can i chek those?
Link please   :D

All of them uses the same base URL.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2014-04-14/videogames/ref=zg_bs_tab_t_bsar

Hos look at the date "2014-04-14"... this one is the weekly ranking and you can add or remove 7... so you can have these URLs:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2014-04-07/videogames/ref=zg_bs_tab_t_bsar 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2014-04-14/videogames/ref=zg_bs_tab_t_bsar
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2014-04-21/videogames/ref=zg_bs_tab_t_bsar

Understood? Now remove the day from the URL mantaing only the YEAR and MONTH.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2014-04/videogames/ref=zg_bs_tab_t_bsar

So you have the Monthly ranking... change to 03 (March), 12 (December), etc.

And just the YEAR is the Yearly ranking.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2014/videogames/ref=zg_bs_tab_t_bsar

 

So you you know you can use any date using this format:

YYYY
YYYY-MM
YYYY-MM-DD

A very well explained response. Thank you ethomaz!!



Turkish on 25 April 2014

who cares about Amazon, vgc shows Xbone outsold PS4 by 12k last week.





DonFerrari on 25 April 2014

The reason NPD reflets Amazon isn't because it's accurate it's just because ps4 is kicking X1 in sales. Vgc is the one getting it wrong all weeks.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

wary-wallaroo on 25 April 2014

Obviously, Amazon is biased in favor of PS4. That can be the only explanation!



Kasz216 on 25 April 2014
ethomaz said:

Kasz216 said:

Your numbers are FAR to optimistic, and your belief on how improtant a player Amazon is in the market is just outright wrong.

250,000 / 3 =  $~83,300  (Despite the fact you'd expect sales to be front loaded.)

So for an average 50K sales.

So you think for the 19.99 (Is what it started at) the game sold for.  They made $1.70  per copy sold.   Despite digital supposidly being better for developers then retial.

Well actually less since that's revenue shared with 360, and PS3.

Also, you think that Amazon can TRIPLE the sales of a game.  Despite the fact that Valve is by far the strongest market force in digital, and Amazon's digital market is known to be fairly insignficant.   (Hence why expansions into england focus on how much stronger a videogame retailer they are there.)

 

If I wanted to take it to the most absurb extreme I would of simply used Thief Gold.   Which was actually Free in Feburary if you entered a contest.  Even so, despite being Free I doubt it was downloaded nearly 1 Million times required to surpass PS4.

Different stores have different percentages of the market, right down to specific consoles.   The reason why the number seem to work out right now hardware wise is because it's the start of the generation.

 

With consoles, it's a lot easier to get "lucky", as there has been a fairly big gap... and your comparing a whole two.

 

 

 

One final one to illustrate, and if you don't get it at this point... fine.

http://www.joystiq.com/2014/03/13/february-npd-ps4-sells-more-xbox-one-leads-in-dollar-amount/

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2014-02/videogames/ref=zg_bs_tab_t_bsar#1

 

Xbone 250K,   Bravely Default 200K.    Bravely Default ahead in Amazon Rankings.

360 GTA >  PS3 GTA in NPD.   PS3 GTA> 360 GTA in Amazon.

 

Minecraft 360> Bravely Default in NPD.   In Amazon.  Bravley Default 6, Minecraft 25... and behind a  couple other games that didn't chart in the top 10.   Like FFX Remastered, Tomb Raider.  (Also Battlefield 3.  Which is digital download.)

 

You can't blindly trust one websites top sellers list for information.

One by one...

1. The Amzong Game at $2.49 was a digital code to Steam... it is the Valve after all.

2. You don't have any of these games sales (Thief, Brother: Tale of two Sons, etc)... no you are not proving nothing here.

3. The first good example... thanks.

Bravely Default sold more than 200k
Xbone sold 258k

Amazon Bravely Default: #8
Amazon Xbone: #23 and #71

That is what you are not getting... there are Multiples SKUs... and if the two Xbone SKUs outsold Bravely Default?

4. GTA V is good example and  you are right... Minecraft have two SKUs too but one of them is not in the TOP100.

 

See... it is accurate yet... over a lot of examples only one was wrong.

What did you don't get is that I said "accurate for Hardware" and you insisted in Software... that was cool because proved to me that Software is accurate too.

NPD April will come and we will see if it holds accurate again.

How many months you will need to undertand?

1) The steam market is purchases from steam.  Not to steam via third party.

 

2) Are you sure there are multiple minecraft SKUs sold by amazon?   I see multiple listings for the game... but only 1 sold by amazon.  (Which by the way is the real reason why you don't see 3DS higher up.  They only carry the 3DS XL and in small quantities, they don't really carry much of any Nintendo consoles.)

If your talking about listings... PS4 and Xbone have tons of em listed on Amazon.

 

3)  Your arguement for 2 disporves the entire thread concept.  Even if we go with your absurd assumption that the Amazon customer base is completely the same compaired to the average customer base, if the Xbone SKU's can combine to beat Bravely Default in one month.   Why couldn't they combine to defeat PS4 in a month?   

Since as you said, there are no numbers telling us the differences, we can't even look at the numbers and guess, since a 40 and a 60 in januray may of actually sold less then a 41 and 77 in Feburary.  (Xbones 23 in Feburary apparently being higher then it's 16 in January as an example)

Heck, that could of already happened.

Amazon's two XBOX SKU's total sales combined could of been higher in total sales then the PS4 was... and it didn't show up in the NPD numbers... and you just assume that Amazon got it right.

So you are either wrong in 2 and wrong... or right on 2... and still wrong... since you've shredded all your proof without having amazon's direct numbers.

 You've argued yourself into dead end essentially.