The only number I feel NDP got right was the Wii HW. They were too low PS360, I think this proves that they were too high in the Past, and they do adjust their numbers, they just add or sumbtract from the next month.

About the GTA4 numbers, is it possible that the 6 million number could be shipped? I do remember seeing massive stock sitting on store shelves the days after launch. Because that would make sense, 5 million sold to customers six million sold to retail (massive stock on store shelves). I have to beleive the GTA number more than the others since we cant say that they were "adjusting", however I would not be suprised if GTA4 "seems" to have good legs in may(small drop because of NDP adjustment).

The MKWii number feels good, could be a tad low(on VGC). I think the SSBB number is trash.

Remember last month when VGC was 1 million or so low for SSBB? Maybe it was more like at the most.... Now NDP is "adjusting" - So basically if ioi calibrates SSBB to a lower scale he will begin undertracking.

VGC should take the 200k "overtrack from this month" and reverse the 200k of the adjustments for last month.

peace.

Wow! Both the 360 and the PS3 HW sales went down. I guess we must be in a recession here in America. All the casual gamers chose the cheapest console the wii and everyone who was interested in buying GTAIV must of already owned a 360/PS3. I wonder if microsoft did that 100 dollar price cut in the NA market that everybody was predicting that they would one month before the GTAIV release would it had made any difference?

Dude, are you aware they have direct data from around 60% of the market? Their margin of error is max. 5% - if it somehow their whole staff stimated the remaining 40% (which btw, is mostly from wal-mart and they have historical data on walmart) while drunk driving at 150mph on the wrong side of the road, they might be at a 7-10% margin of error.

They didn't "get anything wrong" - that's the state of things in the USA, and that's it.

@the source: your estimations are off as much as 50% on hardware and 84% on software - while the average might be lower, the data is unreliable as we can't predict on which titles/consoles you'll be way off. I'm very happy for the existence of vgchartz but it's clear you guys *need* to increase your direct data. The 2% you have now is clearly not enough.

Something that caught my attention this morning. Dozens of analysts, supposition suppliers and part time fortune tellers at the quickie mart are suggesting that the hardware boom from GTAIV will make an appearance in May as opposed to April.

Now on the surface, just below the first epidermal layer, is a level of plausibility since GTAIV only had 5 days of tracking in the retail period but will obviously have several weeks worth for NPD May.

So what's the problem? I'm hungry and it's lunch time but aside from that, I've never seen a system seller not have an impact during its release month even with just 5 days or data. Go take a look at some big name late month release titles and compare their NPD.

But just for the sake of argument, let's say all those wanting to buy a PS360 (above normal demand) decided to wait arbitrarily until after May 3rd to make their purchase. How does one come to this assumption? What factors suggest that people are waiting until a week after launch to buy their console? This is the most front loaded, or hyped, game in history so you'd think the largest uptake in consoles would be the first week.

Software launch sales, hardware launch sales, opening week for movies, etc....week one typically carries a huge % of sales across the next several weeks. What makes GTAIV such the oddity? What suggest GTAIV is going against the grains of logical sales trends?

Now try applying this same gamers-will-arbitrarily-wait-to-buy-console theory on MKWii. Yep, sounds right silly to think would be Wii owners decided to wait until after May 3rd to pick up their console (outside of simply not finding any in stock, of course).

Ah such is the life of those-who-are-paid-to-give-us-their-opinions.

I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that a lot of bloggers and analysts are using this approach in a desperate effort to save face; they spent a lot of April 'bashing' the Wii and claimed that Grand Theft Auto 4 was going to be the second comming, and now are trying to buy time before people completely ignore them. If they're successful, in the middle of June (when the May NPD numbers come out) the 'failure' of GTA4 to sell HD consoles will be old news and they will move onto claiming that people were holding off for the Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle.

 Have you ever considered employment at Fox News? You could probably make a lot of money spninng the news. If the Wii were headed the same way as the Gamecube, it wouldn't have already surpassed it in sales. The big third party titles are on the way and some, like M&S, have already done really well. 

O.o

O-oh my... I didn't see this coming (I mean I did but...). I mean, just wow.

Does Not Compute! Gah!

Eh... on second thought... I don't mind the numbers too much. As someone somewhere once said, Nintendomination! (Or some other clever play on word usage that eludes my thought process at the moment)

wow Vgchartz really burns this month.