I'm making this thread as the official response for people who use Amazon as a source for proving sales. While I do see some value in the Amazon rankings, I see far too many people misuse the ranks to push their own agenda. I'm only giving one example here, however feel free to add your own observations.

Now to the business. GTAIV should be outselling everything by several multiples. Yet on Amazon(US), it has never been a #1 seller. Some have said this is because sales are split between several versions, but even if you subdivide sales, it should be outselling Wii Fit and Mario Kart by a substantial margin. Yet Wii Fit hasn't budged from the top spot during the release of the biggest game of the year. 

Amazon rankings while interesting should never be used as a source of reliable information. There are just too many variables that can effect an individual retailer, especially an online retailer.  

I've been (casually) trying to understand Amazon users buying habits for some time, and I didn't manage yet. It seems to me that most people choose Amazon due to its frequent promotions, which would explain why its sales ranking correlates so poorly with total sales.

Fishy, I agree with you in principle but you're assuming sales instead of providing proof of sales. While I agree that GTAIV is likely leading them both overall, we don't have any proof of that just yet.

I've also noted how front heavy GTAIV will be. A massive portion of GTAIV sales took place on day one. Sales of MKWii and especially Wii Fit would be more spread out and not as day one front heavy. Meaning that GTAIV could have sold more in that first day than Wii Fit will all week but since GTAIV had a huge front day, it's possible Wii Fit is currently outselling it on an hourly basis.

When the weekly numbers come in, we'll have a clearer picture but it should also be understood that Amazon tracks hourly sales such that in that one hour, Wii Fit very likely was outselling GTAIV at Amazon.

Your thread would work better if you suggest that everyone only use Amazon for exactly what it is, a single segment of the market that is representative only of itself and only for that hour.

My understanding is that the rankings don't represent the sales for a particular hour, but are updated every hour. Otherwise the Wii would never be ranked because it's usually sold out.

"...updated each hour to reflect recent and historical sales of every item sold on Amazon.com"

Ah, gatcha.  I wonder HOW historical the numbers are tabulated for the rankings.

It's probably taking a slightly bigger timeframe in order to calculate the rankings (I'd guess between a day and a week). Can't be more than that since items on promotion move up really fast in the ranking.

Amazon cannot be used seperatley, their numbers must be integrated with other sources to get a true representation.

Bububububu ...

Amazon makes me feel better about my purchase when it supports my console of choice!!!!!

 No seals? Don't hold out on me.

saw this post title and just knew it was gonna be one of yours Fishyjoe, dont ruin it - the "omg <> has gone up 3000% on amazon" threads are great.

They still make me smile