I can attest to the trend that the XB1 sales were... slow, in May. And I think some of you are misjudging how informed people might be about the price drop/new sku. Just cause I have had a powerup card in the past from Gamestop, I received 3 separate emails telling me I could pre-ordered the cheaper SKU, their site has been plastered with huge banners stating it, and even a good chunk of the in-store advertisements have been projecting the upcoming new model.
Best Buy is typically more subdued about gaming advertisements, since we don't make a lot of profit on the hardware (Effectively zero, really. No employee discount at all, like apple products), and they make money on accessories and protection plans, stuff that has margin on it (Except for the 360, which they lost so much money on before MS extended the warranties and admitted the hardware faults). Even with the subdued display info, there's been signs in the gaming area around the XB1/ and actually a good bit in the 360 area (as though to sway customers away from that system and towards the new hardware).
MS is really going in hard to try and make the price parity a big 'win' for them. How that will turn out? We don't have many pre-orders for the new sku... But this isn't expected to be a 'launch' situation, it's not like we expect shortages. I'm pretty sure everyone that wants a kinectless XB1 could get one on Monday and we'd still have some left over. At least, of the initial sales (Not saying lifetime, just immediate purchasers, no 'need' to pre-order, it's not like there's any advantage to do so).
Given that Best Buy / bestbuy.com represents an approx. 12% of NPD retailer marketshare, this kind of channel check is quite important in projecting an overall trend of console stagnation.
The only question is how do you precisely measure Xbox One's decline?
I think we can all agree that Xbox One will not match last month (115K).
Seeing as you replied to my sub-100K assumption, I assume that it's safe to downgrade Xbox One below that as well.
Originally I predicted that the early price cut will result in a 50% reduction (115K -> 58K).
When you take into consideration all of the data I could find, I think 70K is a reasonable estimate.
PS4 I expect greater stock than last month due to major releases like Watch_Dogs and MLB 14: The Show. It should elevate the console an extra 35K...not enough to match prior months due to a natural May decline, but still an uptake from a slow April because of the circumstances.
I really don't expect a large Wii U hardware boost. There is no doubt that Mario Kart 8 will sell an awful lot, but its effect in the May 2014 results seem to be mostly delegated to existing Nintendo fan adoption.
A 50K boost (48K to 98K) seems appropriate. While Mario Kart 8 will probably elevate the Wii U beyond Nintendo's prior non-holiday tactics to elevate sales, its numbers in May will heavily suffer from a tiny 2 days of tracking.
So with the 2 days of tracking, I expect we will see results reminiscent of a full month of Nintendo's usual non-holiday tactics (see September 2013 Wii U sales).
With the rest, I don't think there will be any change beyond a downward adjustment for May.
So when you put all of these predictions together:
[360] 60K
[3DS] 90K
[PS3] 32K
[PS4] 235K
[WIU] 85K
[XB1] 70K
