This is the third installment of the context clues series, each written roughly three months apart that include check-ups and analyzes current trends and reconciles them with the past.

The first two threads may be found here: Using Context Clues to Predict , and Using Context Clues to Predict 2

Just a little recap, these are the current numbers

Wii – ­­11.78 mil
PS3 – 4.64 mil
XB360 – 11.1 mil

A lot has happened in the last three months. E3, Wii passing XB360, as well as a slew of game announcements. This is very exciting stuff no matter which camp you belong too, so it’s a good time to be a gamer

Before I get to the individual companies, I’d like to point out a trend that I think is extremely interesting. Consoles sold per month. The formula is (consoles sold/months on market)

Looking at theses numbers I find the most interesting thing is that the 360 as of the last three months at least is outselling the PS3 just barely. I’m pretty sure most people would predict the opposite. I did.

Before I continue, something I was wrong about. I must give props to RolStoppable, who commented on my UCCP2 post and said this:

“Good post, but are you really thinking that average Wii sales per month will decline in the second half of this year?

There's the holiday season and two big games, Mario and Brawl, coming out.”

I failed to take into account the holiday season and I suppose I really didn’t look at my own numbers too closely. It’s easy to criticize others’ numbers, but not as easy to criticize your own. So thank you, RolStoppable.

Back to analysis

Sony

In third we have Sony, having sold 4.64 mil consoles in 10 months on the market, it’s not as strong as some may have hoped, but still a decent showing from last gens clear winner. Cutting the 60 G sku to $499.99 boosted sales temporarily, but unfortunately what went up came right back down as the new $599.99 80 G sku became the new standard. I really want to be optimistic about this, but without a blockbuster game coming out before the holiday season, I don’t know how optimistic you can be before it reaches denial… FF13 anyone?

In an interesting note, PSP sales in Japan went up…wait…how much? Holy cow! 551%.!! Take note Sony fans, the FF series moves consoles

Microsoft

In second place, MS with the XB360. with 11.10 mil consoles sold in 22 months, it’s clear that it’s not gonna win this gen by any stretch of the imagination. As such, it’s now in a battle for second with Sony, and with more than double the consoles sold (for now), it should be interesting to see what happens in the next year. Big news for El 360. Bioshock and Madden gave it a nice boost back in late August, and with Halo coming out in a few days, MS will have thrown out all of its aces before the holiday season. Whether or not it was smart to release all three so early will be determined by sales this holiday season. I almost forgot to mention the price drop, finally. However, the full impact of it still has yet to be seen.

Here’s the real question to be asked; Will the 360 outsell the Wii the week (or couple of weeks) in America after Halo 3 comes out? I’m sure most of you have already stated your opinion on this. My view is that for one week the 360 will outsell the Wii.

Nintendo

And just barely a month into the first place position, we have the Nintendo Wii with 11.78 mil consoles sold. MP3 came out this last August, and with Mario Galaxy out Nov. 12^th and the ever-so-popular SSBB coming out Dec. 3^rd, Nintendo will not be relinquishing the lead any time soon. The only thing more I’d like to see Nintendo doing is developing more third party relationships and try to get a bigger and more varied library. The Wii doesn’t need its Gears of War per se, but it would be nice to have the option to play something like that on it.

With 1.18 mil consoles sold per month it sells more than the competition combined.

Also, interesting news with Smash Brothers being confirmed having online on the official site. The developers admit lagging from the get go, and no voice chat confirmed yet. Surely Nintendo fans are waiting with baited breath for some sort of announcement like that

So taking into account inflation, lunar phase, and particular alignment of the stars, here are my predictions for the end of the year, 2007;

Wii – 16.2 mil
XB360 – 13.5 mil
PS3 – 6.7 mil

There’s no need to post the typical “your numbers for X are pretty low” comments, because these are my predictions, and I’m not changing them (until my next article).

So the next step at this point is next year. This year has been decided since E3 concluded in July. Just to stay with the series though, I will post article 4 in the series about three months from now.

Thanks for reading

Ps: Also, if you could tell me what you think of this either by PM or posting, that would be great. If you have any ideas to make the next one better, that would be fantastic as well.

Edit, sorry about the formatting, I transferred it from word and now it looks like crap :-

Well written, but I think you are not taking the holidays into account enough. In general the last 4-6 weeks of the year account for (up to) 40% of the total sales of the year.

My predictions (as before):

Wii - 18m

360 - 15m

Ps3 - 7.5-8m

Yeah. Great read. I'm very much looking forward to the next one.

Really? 40%? Even after to phenomenal year the entire industry has had already?

Great article, thanks for the read. Regarding PS3 sales until the end of the year, I predicted 6.5 million some months ago (without a price cut), but I'm now thinking it may be up to 7.5 million depending on the holiday sales! Most likely about 7 million though, depending on whether it gets a real price cut or not this time...

360 and Wii are too hard to predict for me...

 These numbers aren't very usefull.  Not trying to kill your arguments (still haven't read through your thread but I am going to after I write this).  

Anyways, launches have high points in sales and so will the holidays, so all of the consoles are clearly going to be coming down right now.  Then we have a situation where because the PS3 is closer to its launch/X-mas and also its EU launch (which was sizeable) its average is going to be deceptably high.  Same with the Wii to a lesser extent (only reason its a lesser extent is it didn't have a EU launch in spring). The 360 is going to be deceptively low relative to the others because of same thing, only in this case its much farther from its launch.  

A good way to use your method of averaging is to instead use weeks over identical periods (to preserve market condition factors) and eliminate outliers. You can determine what you would classify as an outlier but I would suggest setting it in advance rather than deciding when you know which consoles its for etc..., something like 3 standard deviations would do just fine in this situation.  

Or you could simply use the Mode of the consoles over those periods.

If your interested I have some basic stats for each console as of current numbers... I will post them and if you want to you can use them.  No worries if you don't, I get them from my spreadsheet automatically so its mostly copy/paste.

 Those are based on weakly WW sales since launch of each console. 

Interesting read, I don't agree with some things but in a breath of fresh air you at least justify your thoughts with some interesting points.

Just wondering but I take it you don't think Nintendo is stockpiling for the holidays?

As for the 40% thing if you look at a couple consoles its a pretty strong trend...

360 (2006)
- 2,831,517 Nov/Dec '06 WW
- 6,638,463 2006 WW
- Holiday Percentage = 42.65%

I don't have more data on that readily available but I'm sure if you look at PS2, PSP, DS, etc you will see very similar trends.

 Wow, Sqrl, you have a really good point that I just didn't think about. 

I think a sales per month per quarter would be more accurate. Market conditions do vary a lot during the different quarters, and I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I didn't think about that.

Thanks so much for the insight and I think this was exactly the information I needed to make my next article a lot better. I'm glad to see there are people on this site that can state what they feel or disagree without needless bashing.

Anyway, thanks again, Sqrl. 

I actually meant to say Median not mode in that lone sentence by itself...mode wouldn't be very useful in this situation.

blah now I feel silly