Hello everyone, I have been working for a while on a report that can facilitate the analysis of how a console is doing every month. This is a first draft and I am writing here because I am sure that there are valuable opinions in this forum that can help create the best report possible. 

If this is something you feel that would be fun to look at every month for the active consoles, then I will gladly keep updating them monthly.

Here is what the report currently looks like:

There are 5 main components:

1) Total Sales (All-Time chart): This chart is designed to highlight how close or how recent the console is to another all time console. This table includes all the consoles, not just the ones we have weekly data for. The chart will adjust to show consoles that are nearby, there is no reason to see right now how far the PS5 is to the PS2, Instead we can see how close it is to the Atari 7800. 

2) Gaps Table: This module tries to compare apples to apples. The PS4 has been released for 84 months, so what we do is compare against other consoles on their 84th month. Also, if a console has been released for less time, then we compare both consoles based on the newest console. This is able to give us an idea of how other consoles were doing at the same time. This is very similar to @trunkswd gap charts, but there is a fundamental difference. This chart is Month aligned. What this means is that for example the PS5 has been released for one month (November). So the gap chart with the Switch looks at how much the Switch made in its first november.

3) Latest Month: This component focuses on the most recent month, it shows how it compared against all other consoles (rank), it shows how the units sold compare to what it sold last year on the same month and it shows all the times this console has been out during this month.

4) Next Month: This gives us a glimpse of what to expect next month, it shows a little bit of the history of the console during the month and it shows what console holds the record for this particular month.

5)Year on Year: This component shows each year how much the console sold, it also splits the bar to show how much each of the months represented. It is important to highlight that a year is not calendar or fiscal, it starts counting from the moment the console is released and ends after the 12th month ends. This allows for all consoles to have a year 1 with 12 months (making them easier to compare).

Thank you for your time reading this, hopefully you will find that this sort of report could be fun to look at each month. My plan is to only have it here on vgchartz, therefore I am extremely interested in your opinion. I am completely open to any cool ideas, suggestions and constructive criticism. Please let me know if you like this with a vote or a thumbs up.

So what do you think? What seems to be the most interesting component? Is there anything you would add or change? 

Very nicely presented. I presume the plan is to have one of these per month per console?

For visual aesthetics, and possibly for ease of reading it, I think the main "total sales" graph would be better with a taller ratio. Like 50% if not 100% taller... if you are trying to make the whole "profile" fit into a space maybe just move the graph key to the side.

Also you say 84th month but if launch month November is month 1 (or technically month 11 as you are aligning months), then the most recent November should be 85 afaik... your graph also goes up to month 86, but I presume that is because you have to have some data in for December (even though it's incomplete) due to the month aligned nature?

And not sure I fully understand the "trend" column in your gaps table... specifically what's a "retraction", and in general what is it comparing with what?
If i'm reading it correctly the top 9 consoles are the difference in LTD sales to the PS4s 84th (85th?) month, so it's 34mil behind DS but ahead of everything else at the equivalent point in it's life... then the final 3 consoles will just be comparing The LTD at their most recent November, to the equivalent PS4 November (probably need to separate them more visually somehow , maybe put in something to note which year is being compared)

Actually come to think of it, how does the gaps table deal with staggered launches... the 4th November for Switch was it's 45th month on the market, but the 4th November for PS4 was only it's 37th month, comparing the equivalent months is fine but when bringing LTD totals into the equation I presume you are adding in the other months of the 4th year for PS4?
So the comparison is: (Switch LTD to Nov2020) VS. (PS4 LTD to Nov2016 + PS4 Mar-Oct2017) ???
Please let me know if I got that correct, if so then it's just the "trend" column I still need explaining.

Hmm, looking at WiiU (& possibly Vita) I think I got that wrong unless it's a mistake in the table, as the gap between PS4 & WiiU should be at over 100m by 85th month, but instead you seem to have based that on WiiUs early death (it's 6th November)

Obviously you have to compare the newer consoles with a shorter time period, but I think it would be better to just continue WiiU sales as 0 every month after it's death so it ends up being equivalent to the other older consoles. (same with Vita if it's not already)

Hi @HigHurtenflurst Thank you very much for your wonderful feedback, I will try and respond to each part:

a) My plan would be to post this profile for all the active consoles every month.

b) I have made as much of an adjustment possible for the large graph, hopefully it is easier to read now. I though of other options, but for now this was the best version.

c) The 84th month is a mistake I made, it is actually like you mention, the 85th. The 86th is showing due to it being partial right now, but it is not being considered for comparing the Gap.

d) The trend refers to the past 5 months, what I look for is how much the gap has grown or fallen in the past 5 months. Depending on the amount I label it as fast, medium or small. You may notice that the 360 shows a retraction, here is the Month Aligned graph between the two consoles:

as you can see, the PS4 was growing this gap for a long time, but recently the X360 is starting to shrink this lead, "Retraction" is the word I came up with, but I am open to any ideas you might have.

e) You are correct in how you are reading the gap, basically up to month 85, only the DS was ahead of PS4, the other consoles are compared based on how long they have been released. I made the adjustment based on your suggestion, I think it is much better to show the WiiU with 0s instead of truncating it.

f) The way I calculate the offset of months is just comparing a month that both consoles have. Here is a color coded version of what I compare:

Everything in color will be compared, the rest won't because both consoles don't have a value for that month. Therefore for the PS4 vs Switch only 45 different months are compared. You may notice that month 38 (december for PS4) is not being considered yet but months that came later are being considered.

Thank you again for such a wonderful feedback, if something is wrong with my explanation or you need more details I will very gladly keep adjusting the profile.

Thanks, that makes sense... perhaps you could just do it in numbers rather than text
e.g.

If you do one of these on a regular basis you may also need to include an explanation, or a link to an explanation regarding how month-aligned comparison works, as people are so used to seeing graphs in linear time.

Hi @HigHurtenflurst

As always, thank you for your valuable input, I was trying to do something fancy with the text, but you are right, it ends up being more confusing than anything else. Here is the adjustment:

Any more ideas that you can think of are greatly appreciated. I am going to follow your advice and write a post explaining the Month Aligned Concept so that it can always be referenced.

I would love to hear what everyone else is thinking, I am sure that together we can create a very polished and useful report.

Hi @HigHurtenflurst I followed your advice and created a post about Month Aligned, I would appreciate your opinion on it, if it is clear and if you think it is a good idea.

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread/244053/month-aligned-gap-charts/1/

I also invite everyone else to check it out and share your thoughts.

Thanks

Perhaps a little over-explained, something I tend to do myself most of the time (as well as going off on a tangent in the middle of my sentences ).... unfortunately it tends to mean people lose interest or get confused, though I think the images you included should help mitigate both those. That said it's a difficult thing to get across to people (as mentioned due to them being used to linear time)

Nice work though, and something I would be interested in seeing if you are up to it... on reflection I don't know how useful it will be for early stage comparisons just due to the broken-time aspect, so PS5 & XBS/X comparison with Switch or any other non-November launch is tbh going to be confusing until they have all got a non-launch holiday under their belt.
Switch being in the middle of it's life & seeing the tail-off of PS4 & XBOne would be nice though.

Hi @HigHurtenflurst Lol, I know, It is a bit tough to explain it, so hopefully in the end It will be there for anyone interested to dive deeply into knowing how it is calculated. But for most they could just see it as comparing the same month of both consoles. December with December, March with March.

As a reference here is what the Gap chart looked like on September 2017 between the Switch and the PS4:

You can notice that the Switch started with a big lead but it has been losing a little bit of ground in the following months. Specially in September, the PS4 sold an incredible amount of units.

If you look at the months side by  side, the Switch won launch month and August, the rest has been all PS4. 

My idea with this is that by looking at this chart, 6 months in, it can spark interesting conversations. People can discuss games that were released on that September for the PS4 or any deals. Or maybe try and question why sales would drop for the NS.

Like I mentioned in the other thread, these are not meant to predict the future, but rather to spark conversation. Hopefully something aligned like this could help achieve this goal.

As always, thank you very much for your time and wonderful feedback.

@dmillos - Thanks for taking the time to put this together, it's always nice to see the data presented differently than we're used to. My only suggestion is, in the graphs, to make the Switch the red line and the PS consoles in blue, just to keep it consistent with the other graphs on the site :)