Ouch, if this is correct, VGChartz has Brawl and Wii Fit severely overtracked... what's up with that?

Hmm

So this is Famitsu and not Media Create huh?

This is very rough on my part but the global breakdown *by units - not revenue * is something like (i'm sure ioi has it down more precise than this) -

USA - 40%

Japan - 14%

Other Western/Northern Europe (Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Sweeden, Belgium, Lux, Switzerland etc are up to 1% each) 10%

UK & Ireland - 9%

France - 5%

Germany - 4%

Spain - 3%

Latin America (Mexico down to Panana through the tip of Chile) - 2.2%

Canada - 2.8%

China - 2.5% (the big three do have a small presence here)

Eastern Europe (Poland, Russia, Greece, Turkey, etc) - 1.5%

Australia & New Zeland - 1.5%

Central Europe - (Romania, Czech Republic, Austria 1.3%

Korea - 1%

Hong Kong & Other South East Asia (Hong Kong, Vietnam, Phillipines, etc) - 1%

Western Asia and the Middle East  (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Yemen, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, etc) - .7%

South Africa - .5%

Other Africa & Asia - .5%

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However close I am on the break down, if they are only going to base it on US+UK+Japan (probably includes Ireland & Canada and maybe Latin America estimates) your talking only 60-70% of the global market at most. Frankly none of these companies have 100% market coverage either, which means for the prices they will charge I think its essentially
highway robbery. You can say what you want about VGC data but we don't charge for it and we release estimates for the entire world every week.

The way I look at it is if they have 65% of the world market, and an average of 70% market coverage in those markets, theoretically the data could be (0.65 * 0.70) in worldwide tracking coverage, in other words its only 45% of world sales. Now that doesn't mean its 45% accurate, but the other 55% of world totals would have to be estimated which means even a 10% over/under estimation of the regions and data not covered would be 5% off worldwide. Its one thing to be off 5% in Japan...but 5% off worldwide is literally $4,000,000,000 off which is why I wonder if people would really pay for the data.

The other thing is I very much doubt this cumulative "worldwide" information will be released publicly very often.

I'm sure BKK2 or ioi will drop by with their worldwide estimates at some point.

@ Chrizum

They only released figures for the UK, USA, Japan, and only in 2008. Wii Fit for instance came out in Japan in 2007.

As I said in the previous post...those are the three biggest markets but there is still a huge chunk of the world not covered in those figures.

Does this discrepancy include hardware, or is it just software?

The biggest difference I see with Vgchartz isn't with those titles but with GTA IV. But even that difference isn't very big when you include Canada to the numbers.

@TheSource: I hope you're not really saying Luxemburg accounts for 1% of the total market...

No, I'm not. I meant the countries in that section may account up to 1% of the world wide market.

Edit: What I should have said is none of those countries likely top 1%, but now that I think about it Italy is probably 2-3% and Portugal is probably a bit over 1% too.

A good beggining ...but they better fix their concept of worlwide.

Actually....for USA it looks like GTAIV might be overtracked, and Wii Fit undertracked.... SSBB looks spot on, and MK Wii not too far away.

End of July:

Game - VGC/NPD (USA only)

Wii Fit - 1,474,584 / 1,433,000 (VGC 40k higher... should be nearer 140k higher)

GTAIV - 5,746,167 / 4,711,000 (VGC 1mil higher... should be nearer 500k higher)

SSBB - 3,913,448 / 3,539,000 (VGC just over 10% higher....so very close)

MKWii - 2,694,625 / 2,409,000 (Again just over 10% higher)

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Guitar Hero III confuses me... because I assumed it meant all platforms, but the PS2 version alone has sold what that NPD number shows..... so either they are only showing PS2 version (but forgot to mention it) or for some reason are only showing HD versions, leaving out Wii and PS2.

NPD (USA) - 3,037,000

VGC:
PS2 - 3,391,738 (about 10% higher, so it fits)

PS3+360 - 3,613,376 (just under 20% higher, so about 8% higher than it should be if the NPD number is for HD only)

Wii - 2,383,421

All 4 versions - 9,388,535

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Another combination that works is Wii + PS3, but I can't think of a reason why they would leave 360 and PS2 out, wheras leaving PS2 and Wii out makes some sense.

@TWRoO: These are only 2008 numbers, so all Guitar Hero 3 sales from 2007 aren't included.

Ah yes. silly me.