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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Switch Data Analysis: May Update (NS has record best May Year 5)

HigHurtenflurst on 17 March 2021
PDiddy said:
HigHurtenflurst said:

From your previous posts you seem to have either copied or scraped a lot of the VGC weekly data into your own spreadsheets... do you think there could be a pattern to how VGC treats months? (btw if you copied it from the hardware by date charts then I admire your dedication... must have taken ages)

Definitely would be better if it was more consistant.

Anyhow so for your comparisons last year was 4-5-4, and this year is 5-4-4 correct? If so then yes May was similar in weekly sales to what Switch is doing now, so if there is a stock or game release boost this year in May there is a good chance it will be up that month. April is obviously not possible as with 5 weeks it was almost 2.7 million last year. And March I agree there is a slim chance, but even with 5 weeks I think it will be down compared to last year.

I believe how it works is if at least 4 days of a week are in a month, it is counted as one week for that month. For example March 28-April 3 will be apart of March, not April, because 4 March days are in that week

Yes thats how dmillos does it for his charts, but not on the VGC graphs.

Exceptions:
the week ending May 2nd 2020 was included in May
week ending Oct 3rd 2020 was included in October
w/e Nov 2nd 2019 was included in November
w/e Aug 3rd 2019 included in August

and plenty more.

The most odd offender being w/e Jan3rd 2015 is not counted in either Dec 2014 nor Jan 2015, but instead is put into Dec 2015. (so Dec 2015 is possibly the only 6-week month)



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dmillos on 17 March 2021
HigHurtenflurst said:
PDiddy said:

I believe how it works is if at least 4 days of a week are in a month, it is counted as one week for that month. For example March 28-April 3 will be apart of March, not April, because 4 March days are in that week

Yes thats how dmillos does it for his charts, but not on the VGC graphs.

Exceptions:
the week ending May 2nd 2020 was included in May
week ending Oct 3rd 2020 was included in October
w/e Nov 2nd 2019 was included in November
w/e Aug 3rd 2019 included in August

and plenty more.

The most odd offender being w/e Jan3rd 2015 is not counted in either Dec 2014 nor Jan 2015, but instead is put into Dec 2015. (so Dec 2015 is possibly the only 6-week month)

I think we can solve this puzzle, I am drawing a blank here, but I am sure that with what I am about to show you, you will be able to come up with a good idea of what could be going on.

Here is a comparison between the numbers VGChartz has for the months vs my numbers (all for Switch). 
You will notice that in yellow are highlighted months when we both have 5 weeks for that particular month. 

It seems interesting that all of those start on a Wednesday and end on a Friday....

 

Hopefully you can see something interesting here....

There are months that seem like were manually edited, and that seems to happen a lot after december.



DAMA (Month Aligned) Gap Charts Explanation

Switch Data Analysis: May Update (NS has record best May Year 5)

PS5 Data Analysis: OCT Update (PS5 Second best console after 12 Months)

XS Data Analysis: APR Update (XS hits a road bump)

PDiddy on 17 March 2021

Maybe VGChartz is going off months that have 5 fridays?



HigHurtenflurst on 18 March 2021
PDiddy said:

Maybe VGChartz is going off months that have 5 fridays?

January 2021 had 5 Fridays but w/e 2nd Jan was put into December, so unless there is an additional rule for year boundaries.



dmillos on 18 March 2021
PDiddy said:

Maybe VGChartz is going off months that have 5 fridays?

I think you are on to something!

HigHurtenflurst said:
PDiddy said:

Maybe VGChartz is going off months that have 5 fridays?

January 2021 had 5 Fridays but w/e 2nd Jan was put into December, so unless there is an additional rule for year boundaries.

There seems to be another situation of consecutive months being 4 weeks long


PDiddy mentioned the 5 fridays and it seems to match perfectly with what is going on.

There seems to be some manual editing in January and February.  (or some other rule)

But in general the number of fridays seems to determine the weeks. 

With this theory, March 2021 should be 4 weeks (instead of the 5 weeks I will be counting).

I guess we don't have to wait long to test the theory out.

Thanks both of you for your input!



DAMA (Month Aligned) Gap Charts Explanation

Switch Data Analysis: May Update (NS has record best May Year 5)

PS5 Data Analysis: OCT Update (PS5 Second best console after 12 Months)

XS Data Analysis: APR Update (XS hits a road bump)

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mk7sx on 18 March 2021

I would say ignore how VGChartz is counting months and just count VGChartz weeks. Use your own standard for the months so that year to year is comparable. Follow NPD standard of 4/4/5 per quarter (or whatever you prefer, as long as its the same methodology each year). Every 7ish years will need a 6 week December but that's okay as long as it is annotated.



HigHurtenflurst on 21 March 2021
dmillos said:
PDiddy said:

Maybe VGChartz is going off months that have 5 fridays?

I think you are on to something!

HigHurtenflurst said:

January 2021 had 5 Fridays but w/e 2nd Jan was put into December, so unless there is an additional rule for year boundaries.

With this theory, March 2021 should be 4 weeks (instead of the 5 weeks I will be counting).

I guess we don't have to wait long to test the theory out.

Turns out we were all wrong, March 2021 doesnt even exist, Switch, PS5 & XBS have put in some impressive December 2000 sales though.



mjk45 on 21 March 2021
dmillos said:
HigHurtenflurst said:

Yes thats how dmillos does it for his charts, but not on the VGC graphs.

Exceptions:
the week ending May 2nd 2020 was included in May
week ending Oct 3rd 2020 was included in October
w/e Nov 2nd 2019 was included in November
w/e Aug 3rd 2019 included in August

and plenty more.

The most odd offender being w/e Jan3rd 2015 is not counted in either Dec 2014 nor Jan 2015, but instead is put into Dec 2015. (so Dec 2015 is possibly the only 6-week month)

I think we can solve this puzzle, I am drawing a blank here, but I am sure that with what I am about to show you, you will be able to come up with a good idea of what could be going on.

Here is a comparison between the numbers VGChartz has for the months vs my numbers (all for Switch). 
You will notice that in yellow are highlighted months when we both have 5 weeks for that particular month. 

It seems interesting that all of those start on a Wednesday and end on a Friday....

 

Hopefully you can see something interesting here....

There are months that seem like were manually edited, and that seems to happen a lot after december.

The best way to solve this may well be to contact VGChartz admins like Trucks they may well know or be able to investigate it, otherwise talk to VGChartz itself it may well be sentient.



Research shows Video games  help make you smarter, so why am I an idiot

badskywalker on 21 March 2021

Edit: This post was made referring to another post, and not the post I quoted, so to get rid of any confusion I will go ahead and delete it to the best of my ability. (I don't actually know how to delete a post)

Last edited by badskywalker - on 21 March 2021

badskywalker on 21 March 2021
HigHurtenflurst said:
dmillos said:

I think you are on to something!

HigHurtenflurst said:

January 2021 had 5 Fridays but w/e 2nd Jan was put into December, so unless there is an additional rule for year boundaries.

With this theory, March 2021 should be 4 weeks (instead of the 5 weeks I will be counting).

I guess we don't have to wait long to test the theory out.

Turns out we were all wrong, March 2021 doesnt even exist, Switch, PS5 & XBS have put in some impressive December 2000 sales though.

Glad I'm not the only one that noticed