Yesterday NPD numbers were released and shortly after it Microsoft released a statement about them (and rightfully so, since they had quite some things to brag about) But one part really caught my attention since it was essentially stating that software sales on 360 and Wii were almost equal when you take Halo 3 out of the equasion, something that seemed pretty contradictionary to the numbers we have seen on this site for the last few months. So I did a few calculations and these are the results:

This shows VGchartz software totals for the mentioned periods, where Wii numbers have been corrected for Wii Sports and XBox 360 numbers are without Halo 3. I took out Wii Sports since NPD isn't counting them as software sales and I took out Halo 3 because I am interested about sales of other XBox 360 titles, cause we already know how many units Halo 3 sold.

According to Microsoft, september 2007 software numbers showed (on next-gen platform only):

Software revenue:

Xbox 360:Wii = 4:1

Xbox 360:PS3 = 8:1

Xbox360:Wii+PS3 = 3:1

Xbox360 without Halo3:PS3 = 2:1

They also stated total revenue for Halo 3 to be 225M and an average retail price of 69 dollar.

Without Halo 3, Xbox 360 still outsold PS3 2:1, which means that if PS3 accounted for 9% of total revenue than Xbox 360 without Halo 3 accounts for 18%. This gives the following numbers:

Personally I think my scenario 2 is likely to be closest to numbers for real average retail prices. Maybe Xbox 360 and PS3 are somewhere in between scenario 2 and 3, but that still would only put their software sales at around 1.7M for all Xbox 360 titles except Halo 3 and 800k for PS3 titles. Considering VGchartz has Xbox 360 at 3.8M at the moment and PS3 at 1.4M those platforms seem to be overstated by huge amounts all across the board.Wii numbers seem to be a lot closer to NPD numbers for total software sales. Hopefully this information will help ioi to improve his software numbers in the future.

Link: the original Microsoft response can be found here: http://kotaku.com/gaming/npd/npd-numbers-the-microsoft-take-312653.php

I noticed part of the table was cut off, so I split it in 2. Also added another table where I put total 360 sales at 27%, considering the numbers are highly depending on the 2:1 number Microsoft uses. At 27% it is at 3:1 against the PS3 so it is safe to assume it will definitely not be higher than that.

First table (XBox 360 at 18%):

Second table (XBox 360 at 27%):

As you can see, even at 27% marketshare for XBox 360 it still seems to be around 1M too high compared to VGchartz numbers.

Edit: Changed some numbers in table 1 because they somehow got screwed up. Thanks for pointing it out TWRoO.

thats alot of software sold

I don't see how this would help ioi at all. It's just putting the numbers together after npd is out.  He gets numbers a completely different way.  His only problem is his variety of retailers is smaller than npd's so the software sales are usually off a lot more than the hardware because of the randomness of the game purchasers.

Your working make no sense

you can't say this; "Without Halo 3, Xbox 360 still outsold (should be out-revenued) PS3 2:1, which means that if PS3 accounted for 9% of total revenue than Xbox 360 without Halo 3 accounts for 18%."

It makes no sense, this is percentages we are talking about, PS3 software accounted for 9% of software revenue with halo 3, If you take Halo out the PS3 percentage will be higher because percentage adds to 100 whatever information is excluded.

If anything, because Halo3 accounts for slightly over half of total revenue itself
(56% in fact) the PS3 percentage of total without revenue should be more than double (up to 20%) with Wii also being more than double (18% up to 40%) which means that 360 had very similar software REVENUE to Wii (both about 40%)

here are my workings;
total software revenue- PS3 9%, 360 is 8:1 over PS3 making 360 72%, Wii is 1:4 of 360 meaning Wii 18%....adds up to 99% (allow for innacuracy of ratios)

If you use the 2:1 ratio of 360-Halo:PS3, that means Halo made up 3/4 of all 360 software revenue;
so 72% /4 = 18%.....18% X3 = 56%
That means you have taken 56% of software out of the equation yet still used PS3s 9% of total as a base, which is why you should be multiplying both PS3s and Wiis percentages by 2.3 (100/44% = 2.2727....)

EDIT; wait, i think i see what you have done with the table now.....i'm not totally sure but i may be wrong in my accusations, but like everyone else says, you have assumed price points (average 360 game $75?) and have used VGC data which has overtracked PS3 hardware this past month so it's safe to assume it overtracked software too.

Hard to compare when you don't actually know the average price per unit. I mean... shouldnt the 360 for example have more "cheap" titles considering it has been out a year longer? (Platinum series and whatnot)

And isnt Wii play (250k?) more than 50$? (I realy have no idea what the prices are in US)

Ahh yes, i understand now, you were keeping Halo 3 in everything but using it like a seperate platform almost.

and i think scenario 2 has the most likely average prices.... and i assume scenario 1 with $75 for 360 is meant to be $65.

Wow , the PS3 is really close to the Wii ... that was unexpected :o

About that first part, the article stated: Even without the sales of "Halo 3" the Xbox 360 portfolio outsold the PS3 portfolio 2:1. I have no further comment on that part.

The exact marketshares based on revenue don't need to be calculated, considering they are given in the article. It is 74% for Xbox 360, 17% for Wii and 9% for PS3. 

I never took Halo 3 out of the equation, I just tried to separate total XBox 360 sales in 2 parts, one part Halo 3, the other part all the other titles. And yes, then I got a 56% marketshare for Halo 3 alone, with a total revenue of 225M (also given in the article). Which puts PS3 at (9%/56%)*225M = 36M revenue.

Of course there are some problems with the calculations I made, first one already mentioned by Alvar, I don't know the average retail price. That is also the reason why I used 3 different scenarios there so you can see what different prices do to the total numbers.

The numbers within the article can create problems as well. First of all the ratios give an opportunity for large deviations. For example, the 2:1 ratio between PS3 and XBox 360 without Halo 3 can put Microsoft anywhere from 18-27%. Those percentages do make quite a difference considering they also affect the size of Halo 3 compared to the whole market.

So yes, there are quite a lot of complications, but if you all put them in a way that will favour XBox 360 it still seems like there remains quite a gap between the numbers on the site and the NPD numbers. Maybe ioi's numbers have a tentency to overtrack games at launch (although Halo 3 was the other way around) and both XBox 360 and PS3 had relatively a lot of of new games released. I have no intention to criticize ioi's work, I only started this thread thinking it might be helpful information to try to improve software figures in the future.

Basic Assumption an Numbers:

Total Console Software $335.8 million
Halo3 = $225 Million

X = 4*W
X = 8*P
X = 3*(W+p)
X-225=2*P

Lets see if the basic assumptions make sense
X = 4*w -> W = x/4;
X = 8*p -> P = X/8:

Now wi set it here in:
X = 3*(X/4+X/8) = (6/8+3/8) x = (1 + 1/8)X

That suggest we have at most an error of 1/8 of the market

Lets caluculate the seperate revenues:

X-225 = 2*p -> x= 2*p+225
X = 8*p

that means (Playstation)
8P = 2p+225 ->6P=225 -> P=37.5 Million dollars

that means (Wii)
4W = 8P -> W=2P -> W = 75 Million dollars

that means (360)
X = 4W -> X = 300 Million Dollars

So koffiebons calculation are correct! Just thought I explain it, so everybody can follow it.