the impressive thing i see is that the rest 65%+ of xbone users are likely DOOFUSes and they havent got titanfall yet.
tsk-tsk
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Microsoft Q4: 1.1M XBO/360 Shipped
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the impressive thing i see is that the rest 65%+ of xbone users are likely DOOFUSes and they havent got titanfall yet.
tsk-tsk
It's certainly illegal over here. We have compulsory training at work reminding us not to engage in this behaviour.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)
serversurfer
Member
Sorry for the late reply, but I wanted to get some sleep before I tackled this one.
You criticize the age of my data, and it's a valid complaint, but "end of gen before last" isn't that long ago. I don't think the size of these markets relative to their brethren has really changed significantly one way the other during Gen7, and over several countries, any such variations are likely to cancel each other out more than anything else, I suspect. Plus, I did give Mexico a bump specifically because I saw something saying they'd doubled their "video game" though not necessarily "console" spending since 2007, but again, I imagine most or all of the countries in question have increased their spending significantly since then, and we're just comparing them against each other anyway. It's only significant relative changes that need to be accounted for; present some evidence of such change, and I'll be happy to make the appropriate adjustment to the numbers. Bring me a headline like, "CANADA TRIPLES CONSOLE PURCHASES IN GEN7; US STAGNANT."
Regardless of the age of the data though, by using the PS2 as my baseline for demand, what I've effectively done is say, "Let's assume that XBone is just as popular in Mexico as the most popular console of all time. Then how much would it sell?" The data I have access to isn't ideal, but I've tried to "assume the best" for MS as much as possible.
Me: These numbers don't add up.
You: Of course they do. You can't just alter them to achieve the result you want. The alteration needs a justification beyond, "This gives me the result I expected."
Me: Who, me? I didn't alter anything. Here are the numbers; add 'em up yourself.
You: Of course you altered them, or you wouldn't be getting the result you want. You failed to vastly increase the size of these markets relative to the US.
Me: Err, what would be the justification for such an alteration of the available data? =/
You: Because otherwise we don't get the result I expected!! How is this hard to understand?? ><
Me: *head explodes*
Well, yes, obviously fresher data is better. I used the freshest data I could find. Ideally, I'd probably look up the XB360's LTD for the countries in question, compare it to the US LTD to get a baseline demand, and then maybe adjust that down a bit to account for the fact the XBone isn't likely to be quite as popular outside the US as the XB360 was.
You criticize the age of my data, and it's a valid complaint, but "end of gen before last" isn't that long ago. I don't think the size of these markets relative to their brethren has really changed significantly one way the other during Gen7, and over several countries, any such variations are likely to cancel each other out more than anything else, I suspect. Plus, I did give Mexico a bump specifically because I saw something saying they'd doubled their "video game" though not necessarily "console" spending since 2007, but again, I imagine most or all of the countries in question have increased their spending significantly since then, and we're just comparing them against each other anyway. It's only significant relative changes that need to be accounted for; present some evidence of such change, and I'll be happy to make the appropriate adjustment to the numbers. Bring me a headline like, "CANADA TRIPLES CONSOLE PURCHASES IN GEN7; US STAGNANT."
Regardless of the age of the data though, by using the PS2 as my baseline for demand, what I've effectively done is say, "Let's assume that XBone is just as popular in Mexico as the most popular console of all time. Then how much would it sell?" The data I have access to isn't ideal, but I've tried to "assume the best" for MS as much as possible.
I wasn't hellbent on doing anything but finding the most accurate number I felt I could. I was typing up the post as I did the math; I didn't know the outcome much sooner than you did. I was actually a little surprised it came out as high as it did, but as I said, I did an awful lot of cheating in their favor, like assuming it'd be just as popular as the PS2 was. I think that's a pretty favorable assumption for XBone, especially if we're talking about its appeal outside of the US and UK. If I wanted to stick it to MS, I could've said, "but obviously isn't nowhere near as popular as the PS2 was; n * 0.75" but instead I boosted the numbers in some cases, and still fell well short of their announced total.
Okay for real, dude, are you trying to mock me, or do you seriously not understand how hypocritical you're being here? =/
Me: These numbers don't add up.
You: Of course they do. You can't just alter them to achieve the result you want. The alteration needs a justification beyond, "This gives me the result I expected."
Me: Who, me? I didn't alter anything. Here are the numbers; add 'em up yourself.
You: Of course you altered them, or you wouldn't be getting the result you want. You failed to vastly increase the size of these markets relative to the US.
Me: Err, what would be the justification for such an alteration of the available data? =/
You: Because otherwise we don't get the result I expected!! How is this hard to understand?? ><
Me: *head explodes*
SwiftDeath
Member
Surfer CA sales of Xbox are closer to 8% by your own methodology, not mine
360 LTD which is more recent, and also the same brand comparatively in CA was 600k
For the comparable US November 360 LTD was 7833k
Thus by your estimation method, CA represents around 7.65% of the US market when it comes to Xbox sales
Thus the estimate for CA would be 139k
360 LTD which is more recent, and also the same brand comparatively in CA was 600k
For the comparable US November 360 LTD was 7833k
Thus by your estimation method, CA represents around 7.65% of the US market when it comes to Xbox sales
Thus the estimate for CA would be 139k
serversurfer
Member
Works for me. I don't think the data is any newer, since it's from the same table, but I like the brand loyalty angle. That brings us to 2905K WW, or 62.4% US.
I'm still not happy with the Australian numbers though. I think doubling post-launch is way too much given their purchasing history, and it seems like the initial 66K report may have included NZ, since it seems like they get lumped together a lot. So yeah, PM me, leakers.
I'm still not happy with the Australian numbers though. I think doubling post-launch is way too much given their purchasing history, and it seems like the initial 66K report may have included NZ, since it seems like they get lumped together a lot. So yeah, PM me, leakers.
theprodigy
Member
So... XB1 actually reached 3.3M sold WW in February 2014?
I'm not exactly sure how that would contradict 3 million as of the end of 2013, because there's no way they did 300k WW in January?
SwiftDeath
Member
Those 600k 360s were bought in the 2 years prior to that post whereas those 2576k PS2's were bought since 2000 over 7 years, likely with the bulk in the first 4. IE the US/CA trend for 2007 would likely be shown better on the newer system then the 7 years old system.
I just "found" 40k units in Canada based off the initial information being used being off by less than 2%. Your PS2 method underestimated CA's numbers by ~26%, wouldn't it then be logical to apply +26% to any XB1 estimation that relies on past PS2 sales to determine market size? I mean I set the historical trend of that right now
I am of course being facetious but I think you get my point that there are quite large margins for errors in your market sized based estimations. Do you really think ~3% of the XB1's 2013 LTD is too big to be within the margins of error on your calculations?
I have seen no reason to believe that NZ numbers were included in the 66k number for the Australian launch.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=731365
Seems pretty clear it's only talking about Australia
So yeah, PM me, leakers.
Not sure if this is directed at me?
serversurfer
Member
Fair enough.
Except it's not a 2% adjustment. It's a 35% increase in projected Canadian demand. I'd call that a significant change, and one worthy of adequate justification. I think basing it on 360 sales instead of PS2 sales is a good justification. Changing them because otherwise Microsoft's numbers don't add up, not so much. See where I'm coming from?I just "found" 40k units in Canada based off the initial information being used being off by less than 2%. Your PS2 method underestimated CA's numbers by ~26%, wouldn't it then be logical to apply +26% to any XB1 estimation that relies on past PS2 sales to determine market size? I mean I set the historical trend of that right now
I think 3-5% can be relevant if you're talking about a small sample of sales and then multiplying them out over the course of the generation, if that's what you're getting at. If the claimed 3M was really 2.8M, that's a 7% increase for six weeks of sales, which you're then projecting out over 33 weeks. You don't think a 7% error in your starting value can add up pretty quickly when doing math like that? How big will those errors have become by the holidays? As such, doesn't it seem prudent to examine our input data as closely as possible before putting too much stock in our output?
Edit: Also, if their 3M is within the margin of error for my 2.8M, wouldn't 2.6M be as well?
Here's my issue with the Australian numbers. Based on combined demand of Gen7 consoles as of mid-08, compared to US demand at the same time, and then multiplied against the US launch of the Bone, there should be roughly 80K in Australia and New Zealand combined, but we're counting 144K there. That's a 80% increase over projected demand, with nothing to support it beyond a hunch that 66K wasn't enough. Oh, and that's 80K based on their combined thirst for Gen7. As we were saying, basing demand on XB360 sales is likely to be most accurate, but demand for the 360 in Australia was actually lowest of the Gen7 consoles, when compared to their performance in the US. It was the PS3 that was "outperforming" in Australia at the time. Based strictly on the 360's performance, demand for the Bone should be only 71K for both countries together.
But we've estimated 144K for the region, based mostly on a hunch that 66K wasn't enough. 144K basically amounts to an increase in demand of 80-103% over what the US saw at launch. What would cause the Bone to be twice as popular in Australia as it is in the US? This feels like adjustment without sufficient justification. Or rather, we were justified in adjusting the launch-weekend numbers, but it seems we may have done a horrible job of it. lol Anyway, it sounds like we needed to bump it, but to 75K, not 145K, and just assume the 66K on launch weekend tells more about front-loading than anything else.
It should really be 71K, yes, but again, I'm trying to be as generous as I can.
Maybe. Do you have the sell-through numbers for Australia and New Zealand?
serversurfer
Member
Okay, let me try explaining it like this. I updated AUS to 70K and NZ to 5K, giving us 2836K total.
Now, your contention is that if we increase my estimate by 5.8%, we'll hit Microsoft's claim, and I can easily be off by 5% over the entire world. Yes?
Here's the thing, of those 2836K sales, 2506K were leaked; they're not an estimate. It's just reading the receipts. There's only 330K in estimates. That means you'd need to increase my estimates by at least 50% to hit 3M. Does it seem likely that demand for XBone in Canada, Ireland, Brazil, Mexico, New Zealand, Italy, and Austria is all running 50% higher than it is in the US?
That's why it may seem like I'm quibbling over peanuts, but it's actually a fairly significant anomaly. You're not really focused on the numbers I'm actually questioning. How does a market of 300K magically become a market of 500K without anyone noticing?
Now, your contention is that if we increase my estimate by 5.8%, we'll hit Microsoft's claim, and I can easily be off by 5% over the entire world. Yes?
Here's the thing, of those 2836K sales, 2506K were leaked; they're not an estimate. It's just reading the receipts. There's only 330K in estimates. That means you'd need to increase my estimates by at least 50% to hit 3M. Does it seem likely that demand for XBone in Canada, Ireland, Brazil, Mexico, New Zealand, Italy, and Austria is all running 50% higher than it is in the US?
That's why it may seem like I'm quibbling over peanuts, but it's actually a fairly significant anomaly. You're not really focused on the numbers I'm actually questioning. How does a market of 300K magically become a market of 500K without anyone noticing?
SwiftDeath
Member
Right but what explains the discrepancy between the XB1 prediction using PS2 as your baseline for CA's install base and for using 360 in your install base? And how are you sure that discrepancy isn't happening in other estimations also relying on PS2 data? I've just shown that specific discrepancy in estimation approaches objectively exists within Canada.
Again though I was merely trying to show how inaccurate estimations are that are made by assuming market size like 7 years ago or greater correlate to launch sales of a console.
I think 3-5% can be relevant if you're talking about a small sample of sales and then multiplying them out over the course of the generation, if that's what you're getting at. If the claimed 3M was really 2.8M, that's a 7% increase for six weeks of sales, which you're then projecting out over 33 weeks. You don't think a 7% error in your starting value can add up pretty quickly when doing math like that? How big will those errors have become by the holidays? As such, doesn't it seem prudent to examine our input data as closely as possible before putting too much stock in our output?
Edit: Also, if their 3M is within the margin of error for my 2.8M, wouldn't 2.6M be as well?
lol I was saying that your estimates could easily contain 3% error, not MS. Not at all saying MS was making a 3% error.
I certainly agree that if MS made even a 3% error on what they said in this case could lead to terrible estimations and I have said previously that such an error is possible.
My point though was that your estimations could easily be off by 3%
What? 66k was announced by MS to be sales of XB1 in the first 3 days of launch in Australia. So with the bolded above your claim is that MS wouldn't sell anymore XB1's than in the first 3 days? And that it's somehow a "hunch" and not I don't know logic that they might sell some more XB1's in 2013 after the first 3 days of sales?
You've managed to make the following claims in the post above:
- MS lied about their Australian numbers too and/or sneakily included NZ in the numbers
- Somehow MS also lied about it being over 3 days??? or what?
Did you not read the blurb I posted above that very clearly specified the sales, over what time period and in what region? So you're now trying to discount two data points as being blatant lies? Two of the most recent ones we have to work with by the way.
Also it would be helpful if you posted your math for
as it's always nice to see the numbers and sources.
Are you kidding me? MS's PR announcement specifies 3 days of sales = 66k. THREE DAYS of SALES. What do you think happened after those 3 days? Please do tell
Do you just not read what I post or what?
No no it doesn't. See below. It's very simple logic to get near that number unless you know MS is magically including NZ in its PR announcement about Australia and even then your numbers for both are nowhere near what your own methodology would dictate
Wait? You do know those sales were over 3 days? How is it a "hunch" that XB1 sold at least 1 more console after its first 3 days in Australia into the new year? What the hell are you on about?
And what is your backtracking? You bumped up Australian numbers not me.
XB1 sold the same in November in the US as December in the US or thereabouts [1k of difference, 909k versus 908k]
Thus there is no logical reason by your methodology that Australians 2013 YTD would be any less than 2 x 66k = 132k. And technically since there was another 5 days in November after those 66k sales that number is likely at least 68k - 70k in just November and thus 136k - 140k 2013 YTD.
Maybe. Do you have the sell-through numbers for Australia and New Zealand?
I wish
Nobody seems to be understanding your motives here. I think they're all assuming you're in it to prove MS is literally Hitler. That's not the impression I'm getting.
SwiftDeath
Member
All right I'm going to bed. I have like 6 hours of driving to do tomorrow so my response to whatever you post Surfer will have to wait until tomorrow night sometime but rest assured I'll pop back in at some point
Welfare
Member
Not going to read all that, but I'm wondering, wouldn't historical data be less helpful, and more of a hinderance, as Xbox One was the fastest selling console (Besides PS4)? Sorta breaks any data you guys are bringing up, as trends would be different. Could be completely off base, and you guys could've already discussed that, but that's just how I look at it.
serversurfer
Member
But even after adjusting CA, you'd still need to increase all of my estimates by an additional 50% to hit Microsoft's numbers. Per your own rules, an adjustment like that should require justification beyond hitting some expected result, but hitting their numbers is the only justification you've offered for making these adjustments.
I'm all for updating the methodology, as long as that doesn't include, "But they said so!!" You're basically insisting we believe these ghost markets have all grown significantly faster than the US, but the only evidence of such a change such as it is is the implication from MS. "Oh, trust us, it's actually wildly popular in all of the places you can't investigate. In Mexico and Brazil, they laugh at Americans for not buying it." Sounds legit.
No need for the pitchfork. You're the only one getting bent out of shape, brah. S'all good. <3
I'm not saying MS lied at all. I'm sure they sold 66K in 3 days. At first, it seemed reasonable that they sold 130K in 38 days or whatever. Looking at the actual market though, 130K in just over a month seems incredibly unlikely. That's 31% of the installed base the 360 had in Australia and New Zealand by the middle of 2008, after 28 months on the market. Does that strike you as a reasonable estimate of their likely launch performance down under? It would be equivalent to a launch of 3.24M in the US alone.
You dismiss me with, "meh We're talking about 40K units per country," but 40K units is a lot for the countries in question. That's what you're missing here. According to this linkless B3D post, after 26 months on the market in Austria, the Mighty PS2 had sold 26,988 units. Not thousands of units. Units. Think about that for a second. I already have them down for 30,000 XBones, and you're suggesting I tack on another 40K? Are they using them to repave the roads?
Why didn't Australia sustain their opening weekend performance like the US did? Well, maybe it's because they weren't moving 100K units a day like the US was? With all of the pre-orders and home delivery this generation, is it really so hard to believe that a demand of 75K measly units across Australia and New Zealand could be 90% fulfilled on the opening weekend? XBone was actually sold out for a few weeks in the US, so it simply took time to fulfill that initial wave of demand. Did they stop at 66K because the money was spilling out of the register on to the floor, or because they'd emptied the line?
I already posted the sources. Do you not even read what I post?
Anyway, here's a clip of the spreadsheet I made.
Code:
1H/08 LTD AUS/NZ AUS/NZ%
Wii 10,853,000 456,000 4.2%
XB360 10,463,000 410,000 3.9%
PS3 4,853,200 285,000 5.9%
Total 26,169,200 1,151,000 4.4%I came up with 130K while we were discussing it in the thread, because at the time, doubling their launch sales seemed like a reasonable thing to do. When I was calculating the numbers for New Zealand, I realize I grossly overestimated the size of the Australian market, so I eventually adjusted it. And even my revised estimate still cheats a bit in MS' favor; I gave them a 5.6% bump over projected demand to 75K.
This, in much the same fashion that we corrected the estimate for Canada. Except this time it was a decrease. You win some, you lose some. /shrug
No, we avoid that because all of the estimates are relative to its actual measured launch performance, primarily in the US. Thus, "fastest selling console" is already factored in.
MrNyarlathotep
Banned
I don't know US law, but that article seems to be about to consumer bundling, rather than to retailer bundling. I'd also surmise its difficult to prove; its not uncommon for 'hot' consoles to only be available to consumers in more expensive retailer bundles
Not that I can find. If it went through these things take years, or are settled with NDAs.
Tying is only illegal if the two items are unrelated. So you can sell a console with anything else game related in a bundle, but not only sell consoles in conjunction with bread makers (though having to buy a PS4 together with three xbox one games could likely raise some eyebrows too).
SwiftDeath
Member
Maybe just maybe what we're doing, your methodology for calculating launch sales based on comparing LTDs between countries then using that as a percentage of the US's launch sales is a horrible horrible estimation method? Like I've been trying to tell you?
What I would love absolutely love for you to do is use that formula you used but failed to post [this is me asking you to post your work, not trying to be snide] to predict the first "month" [first 8 or 9 days] of XB1 sales because what you are trying to tell me is that your data shows it's impossible for XB1 to sell 130k+ in two months in Australia and yet we know it to have sold 66k in its first "month" on market.
Doesn't it strike you as odd that your data doesn't lead you anywhere near where the actually announced numbers are? Instead of perhaps thinking that this LTD based approach is not always very accurate you conclude that Australia must face what has to be the worst case of front loaded sales I have ever heard of
Australia: 66k in 3 days, 75k in 38 days
US: 909k in 9 days, 1817k in 38 days
Since you believe 75k is the accurate measure of the Australian market that would mean it represents 75/1817 = 0.0412768299394606 -> ~4% of the US market
.04*909 = 36.36k is the projection based on your method for the first "month"
Actual is 66k -> Your method under-predicts what we know to be the market behavior by 45% in real world use.
Why didn't Australia sustain their opening weekend performance like the US did? Well, maybe it's because they weren't moving 100K units a day like the US was? With all of the pre-orders and home delivery this generation, is it really so hard to believe that a demand of 75K measly units across Australia and New Zealand could be 90% fulfilled on the opening weekend? XBone was actually sold out for a few weeks in the US, so it simply took time to fulfill that initial wave of demand. Did they stop at 66K because the money was spilling out of the register on to the floor, or because they'd emptied the line?
I already posted the sources. Do you not even read what I post?
Anyway, here's a clip of the spreadsheet I made.
Code:1H/08 LTD AUS/NZ AUS/NZ% Wii 10,853,000 456,000 4.2% XB360 10,463,000 410,000 3.9% PS3 4,853,200 285,000 5.9% Total 26,169,200 1,151,000 4.4%
I came up with 130K while we were discussing it in the thread, because at the time, doubling their launch sales seemed like a reasonable thing to do. When I was calculating the numbers for New Zealand, I realize I grossly overestimated the size of the Australian market, so I eventually adjusted it. And even my revised estimate still cheats a bit in MS' favor; I gave them a 5.6% bump over projected demand to 75K.
This, in much the same fashion that we corrected the estimate for Canada. Except this time it was a decrease. You win some, you lose some. /shrug
It is not across New Zealand as well
The quote comes from the NPD GROUP, not MS
http://www.afr.com/p/technology/xbox_one_smashes_sales_records_yLa9DIIeFWDNqNGF8QPPQI
This is a respected third party tracking group that very clearly specified the sales amount over what time period and what region in very clear terminology. Furthermore we are basing pretty much all other estimations from US NPD numbers thus questioning their sales announcements seems counterproductive to what we're trying to achieve
How about estimations lead to ~ 28,500 XB1's unaccounted for in ROTW?
XB1 US 2013 YTD: 1817k
XB1 WW 2013 YTD: 3000k
XB1 ROTW 2013 YTD: 1183k
Known XB1 ROTW 2013 YTD: 626k
In countries: UK, France, Germany, and Spain
1183k - 364k in UK - 126k in France - 100k in Germany - 36k in Spain
Unknown XB1 ROTW 2013 YTD: 557k
In countries: Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, and New Zealand
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Projections
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reasonable-Tier: [Reasonable information known to extrapolate to some degree of accuracy]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Australia: >= 132k
66k in first 3 days, following the US sales behavior, another 66k at least is expected in December 2013. As there were likely sales in those 6 days in November after the data point we have, 68k or 70k at least is probably more reasonable for Australia's November, thus probably closer to 136k - 140k YTD
-------------------------------------------
Italy: 35.5k
So from this we know that Ubisoft is projecting 150,000 XB1's sold in Italy by 2014 YTD. In the same frame of reference PS4 is at 210k and projected to be at 550k by 2014 YTD. Hence Ubisoft expect sales to be 2.619 times higher.
Thus 150k/2.619 = 57.2777k XB1's sold in Italy as of June 26, 2014
In the US, XB1 sold 1817k in 2013 YTD, and 2916k LTD at the end of June
Thus the ratio is 1817k/2916k = .623 -> 62.3% of sales were in 2013 YTD
So .623*57.2777k = 35.68k in Italy 2013 YTD
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LTD Method-Tier: [Weak estimation based on previous markets LTDs in relation to US market]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Austria: 11k
Based on 360 LTD in Austria from November 2007
US 360 LTD as of Nov 2007 = 7.865M
Thus 47/7865 = 0.0059758423394787 ~ .006
1817k*(0.006) = 10.902k
-------------------------------------------
Brazil: 54.5k
Based on 360 LTD in Brazil as of March, 2013
As pointed out by Raist, the percentages don't correlate with marketshare but household purchasing habits [I think gaming households specifically though I would assume?]
Brazil's LTD for Wii, 360 and PS3 up to March 2013 is 3100k
US 360 LTD as of March 2013 < 39.865M [I subtracted 360 sales from November 2013 to June 2014 from current LTD so it's actually higher than it should be]
I will use 39.3M for 360's March 2013 LTD then to counteract the missing 7 months of sale from my records
US PS3 LTD as of March 2013 < 25.0775M again this includes monthly sales from April to October of 2013 [also don't have Dec 2013 numbers handy] so let's say 24.5M considering December should be larger than November's 424k of sales
So I will use 24.5M for PS3's March 2013 LTD
Wii LTD as of March 2013 < 41.8M I don't actually have solid numbers for any months between March 2013 and June 2014 when the LTD was given.
I will then use 41M as it has sold far worse relatively then PS3 and 360
Thus 39300 + 24500 + 41000 = 104800
3100/104800 = 0.0295801526717557 ~ .03
1817k*(0.03) = 54.5k
-------------------------------------------
Canada: 139.5k
As shown here
CA 360 LTD up to November 2007 = 600k
US 360 LTD up to November 2007 = 7833k
600/7833 = .0.0765990042129452 ~ .0767
1817k*(.0767) = 139.36k ~ 139.5k
-------------------------------------------
Ireland: 32.5k
PS2 LTD in Ireland in Sept. 2007 was roughly 700k
US PS2 LTD until Sept. 2007 ~ 39.266M
700/39266 = 0.017827127795039 ~ .01783
1817k*(.01783) = 32.397k ~ 32.5k
-------------------------------------------
Mexico: 109.5k
Based on 360 LTD in Mexico from December 2007
US 360 LTD as of Dec. 2007 = 9.125M
Thus 550/9125 = 0.0602739726027397 ~ .06
1817k*(0.06) = 109.5k
-------------------------------------------
New Zealand: 14k
Based on 360 LTD in New Zealand from December 2009
US 360 LTD as of Dec. 2009 = 18.6795M
Thus 140/18695 = 0.0074886333244183 ~ .0075
1817k*(0.0075) = 13.6275k
-------------------------------------------
Summary
-------------------------------------------
Unknown XB1 ROTW 2013 YTD: 557k
Estimates: 132k in Australia + 35.5k in Italy + 11k in Austria + 54.5k in Brazil + 139.5k in Canada + 32.5k in Ireland + 109.5k in Mexico + 14k in New Zealand
Total Estimate = 528.5k
Discrepancy with Unknown = 28.5k ~ 0.95% of total 2013 YTD, 2.4% of total ROTW 2013 YTD, and about 5.1% of Unknown ROTW 2013 YTD
Notes: For Australia, it is unlikely that after selling 66k in 3 days, 0 XB1's were sold in the following 6 days. Thus Australia numbers are likely to be higher.
*Except in Australia because I, ServerSurfer, believe the market can't possibly support the numbers that results even though we have solid numbers on at least the first month of sales that strongly suggest otherwise
But yes let's say US sales aren't applicable in Australia because the numbers don't work but just assume that using that method for every other country works out perfectly. Okay...
Inceptional
Member
Has anyone seen the new ONE commercial with Rocky Balboa himself talking about "It's not how hard you get hit, it's how hard you can get hit and can get back up"? It even ends with the voice over guy emphasizing the 3 when he says "Now $399", I don't know I just felt I had to mention it because it came off as trying a little too hard or something. It also said that it's the only place to play the best games THIS YEAR. I have to emphasize that it said this year as this year the ONE only has 3 exclusive titles that I'm aware of and one of them's a remake/repackaging. I'm sorry but even as an owner of a One I think this commercial was a bit ridiculous.
SwiftDeath
Member
Not sure what would classify as a credible breakdown but there are estimates based on what the 360 likely shipped in this time period based on QOQ and YOY estimates
http://neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=122205397&highlight=#post122205397
QOQ estimates suggest 637k 360 shipped in Q4 2014 -> 463k XB1's shipped in Q4 2014
YOY estimates suggest 622k 360 shipped in Q4 2014 -> 478k XB1's shipped in Q4 2014
Thus somewhere around 463k - 478k XB1's shipped in Q4 2014 seems the most reasonable based on prior 360 shipment data
Just pointing out here, you'll notice it doesn't add up to 100%, because the percentages refer to households with console X Y or Z, while the number is an LTD figure for the gen. So you can't mix both.
SwiftDeath
Member
Ah yes you're correct. I'll edit that a bit later then. Somewhat tired right now
Edited in a corrected Brazil Estimation.
Raist you wouldn't happen to have March 2013 LTDs for Wii, 360 and PS3 in the US would you? Or perhaps sales between April and October for those 3 by chance?
Parmenides
Banned
Although the PS4 is outselling the XBO by a significant margin, sales of both the PS4 and XBO have cooled off.
Existing PS360 owners have little incentive to switch to PS4 and XBO (both consoles are expensive and there are a good bit of content being released on their predecessors)
For example:
Moreover, the steep pricing of PS360 is a significant barrier to entry in the emerging markets. They have to slash the price asap to broaden the geographic appeal of console gaming.
In other words, PS360 are failing to open up new markets and hurting the sales of their successors in the traditional markets.
As a reminder, the PS1 sold very well in developing countries (thus paving the way for the PS2 success in those countries) and offered little resistance in the traditional markets.
Quick comparison:
Existing PS360 owners have little incentive to switch to PS4 and XBO (both consoles are expensive and there are a good bit of content being released on their predecessors)
For example:
Moreover, the steep pricing of PS360 is a significant barrier to entry in the emerging markets. They have to slash the price asap to broaden the geographic appeal of console gaming.
In other words, PS360 are failing to open up new markets and hurting the sales of their successors in the traditional markets.
As a reminder, the PS1 sold very well in developing countries (thus paving the way for the PS2 success in those countries) and offered little resistance in the traditional markets.
Quick comparison:
serversurfer
Member
Are the ad homs strictly necessary? You keep going out of your way to depict me as unhinged. Why not let your arguments speak for themselves? If anyone is actually paying attention, I'm sure they can make their own decisions about who's trying to have a reasonable discussion and who has their fingers in their ears.
Err, no, Australia is the only case where we've changed the methodology to "double their launch." In all other cases, the methodology is "some fraction of what was sold in another, known market during 2013." You've convinced yourself the former is the only valid method of estimating sales in Australia and refuse to let it go, no matter how unlikely the results it produces. So I guess we may as well start with
Australia: First, "Let's compare November" doesn't really work. XBone was heavily supply constrained in the US during November, so those sales don't measure demand; they measure supply. Since we have no measurement of demand in the US, we can't make a prediction about demand in Australia or anywhere else. It's only because XBone was freely available worldwide by mid-December that we're able to use the full 2013 sales to estimate launch-holiday demand in the other markets.
But no, front-loading isn't a thing.
Okay, so let's get something clear. After 28 months, Australia and New Zealand combined to purchase 410K XB360s, an average rate of 14.6K per month. Your estimate of Australian sales has them down for a minimum of 132K in just over a month, which is about a third of what the XB360 had sold in almost two and a half years in Australia and New Zealand combined. Does that strike you as a realistic estimate of their likely launch performance? I thought front-loading wasn't a thing. Are you predicting XBone will end up outselling XB360 by a wide margin? Why? It seems like the sales would need to drop off at some point. But you feel they must have sustained their launch-weeked sales rate for at least as long as the US did because why, exactly?
Suppose, just for a minute, that the total holiday demand in Australia and New Zealand really was ~75K. From a strictly logistics perspective, what do you suppose is the minimum amount of time it would take to fulfill 75K orders there? Well, they did ~22K/day in Australia alone, so in theory they could sell 75K in both countries in 3-5 days, tops? Now, once they've satisfied the holiday demand in the first week, what do they sell for the rest of the year? Or rather, to whom do they sell it? Everyone who wanted one already got one by the fourth or fifth day, because there were no more lines, so why wait? If you had decided to get yourself the brand-new console for Christmas, would you actually wait until Christmas to do so, or would you go ahead and pick it up at launch? I imagine the vast majority of early adopters would want to be as early as possible. Hence, heavily front-loaded sales. Didn't we get reports of heavy front-loading in Germany? Is it your supposition that this could only happen in Germany, or that Australia has some special immunity?
Brazil: That works for me. You guys caught the 40% thing, so that's good. Based on 3.1M in Brazil and my ass-sourced estimates of 85M PS3 and XB360s plus 100M Wiis, I'd come up with "`~1% of global," but I don't know how accurate my estimates were, and they're probably based on shipments anyway. Measuring against US NPD is better, I agree. That said, that keep in mind that every time you "round down" in the US, you're bumping the Brazilian numbers a tiny bit.
Italy: Good job there. I couldn't find unit sales, so I just compared their spending to Germany. It didn't occur to me to look for sales predictions, but I suppose Ubi's predictions are better than anything we're likely to come up with on our own, and you seem to have massaged them appropriately. They didn't happen to make any other predictions, did they?
Ireland: So you want to use another article about how Ireland is Sonyland to justify doubling the XBone estimate there? lol Maybe we should use it as justification for cutting XBone in half instead.
We know they spend about 5% of what the UK spends overall, and everything we've found thus far indicates they spend more on PlayStation than just about anyone in the world. Wasn't Ireland actually the first country to start discounting the Bone? C'mon, son.Austria, Mexico, and New Zealand: Sorry, but can we get some better sources there? Personally, I've never even heard of everyeye, but none of their links work. Austria and Mexico point to sites that don't even exist anymore, and the link for New Zealand is broken. The only link I was able to follow on the site takes me to numbers for New Zealand that strongly disagree with the numbers you cited, but don't really seem to conflict with the numbers I posted earlier. All of the figures are actually substantially higher than the figures I was able to track back to verifiable sources for my estimates.
------------------------------------------------------
This would be interesting. We should try using this method to predict demand for countries like UK, Germany, France, and Spain, and see how our estimated demand compares to the measured results. That'll give us a better idea of its actual non-US appeal than simply assuming it to be equal to that of the PS2/360/etc. I predict substantial overestimations especially outside of the UK but we'll see. Anyone have XB360 LTDs for any of these countries?
Psykodoughboy
Banned
If Microsoft splits the Xbox division into their own company. Will they still be able to use Microsoft money?
freefornow
Gold Member
No point speculating, it aint going to happen.
serversurfer
Member
Is post-whining treated differently than thread-whining?
Shpeshal Nick
aka Collingwood
Australia: First, "Let's compare November" doesn't really work. XBone was heavily supply constrained in the US during November, so those sales don't measure demand; they measure supply. Since we have no measurement of demand in the US, we can't make a prediction about demand in Australia or anywhere else. It's only because XBone was freely available worldwide by mid-December that we're able to use the full 2013 sales to estimate launch-holiday demand in the other markets.These estimations wouldn't really work with PS4 for example, because we can't really measure the demand in 2013; only the supply.But no, front-loading isn't a thing.
Okay, so let's get something clear. After 28 months, Australia and New Zealand combined to purchase 410K XB360s, an average rate of 14.6K per month. Your estimate of Australian sales has them down for a minimum of 132K in just over a month, which is about a third of what the XB360 had sold in almost two and a half years in Australia and New Zealand combined. Does that strike you as a realistic estimate of their likely launch performance? I thought front-loading wasn't a thing. Are you predicting XBone will end up outselling XB360 by a wide margin? Why? It seems like the sales would need to drop off at some point. But you feel they must have sustained their launch-weeked sales rate for at least as long as the US did because why, exactly?
Suppose, just for a minute, that the total holiday demand in Australia and New Zealand really was ~75K. From a strictly logistics perspective, what do you suppose is the minimum amount of time it would take to fulfill 75K orders there? Well, they did ~22K/day in Australia alone, so in theory they could sell 75K in both countries in 3-5 days, tops? Now, once they've satisfied the holiday demand in the first week, what do they sell for the rest of the year? Or rather, to whom do they sell it? Everyone who wanted one already got one by the fourth or fifth day, because there were no more lines, so why wait? If you had decided to get yourself the brand-new console for Christmas, would you actually wait until Christmas to do so, or would you go ahead and pick it up at launch? I imagine the vast majority of early adopters would want to be as early as possible. Hence, heavily front-loaded sales. Didn't we get reports of heavy front-loading in Germany? Is it your supposition that this could only happen in Germany, or that Australia has some special immunity?
The Xbox One was regularly sold out (then re-stocked quickly) right through to Jan or Feb of 14.
I say this as someone who works casually in one of the two major retailers that sell videogames and also through observation seeing EB games (the one I don't work for) showing the One as sold out with requests for people to put orders in for future shipments.
Sales of the Xbox didn't just stop dead at 66K.
Psykodoughboy
Banned
i don't care about the console wars, so calm down. I'm interested in how it would work.
SwiftDeath
Member
The strongest data point we have for any of the Unknown ROTW countries corresponding to XB1 2013 YTD sales is by far Australia's 66k. I think you can agree with that as we actually know for a fact what sold there in a specific amount of time.
I don't know if Australian's predilection to purchase Xbox consoles at launch doubled compared to previous generations or if supply was a major factor in 360 days but the strongest data point we have available, the one that is for the product in question, in the region in question, during the specific time in question strongly suggests that.
XB1 sold 66k in its first 3 days in Australia
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=8723
I have no idea what the XB1 sold in Australia 2013 YTD, I simply have the most relevant, most recent data at hand and try to draw from it.
Australia: First, "Let's compare November" doesn't really work. XBone was heavily supply constrained in the US during November, so those sales don't measure demand; they measure supply. Since we have no measurement of demand in the US, we can't make a prediction about demand in Australia or anywhere else. It's only because XBone was freely available worldwide by mid-December that we're able to use the full 2013 sales to estimate launch-holiday demand in the other markets.These estimations wouldn't really work with PS4 for example, because we can't really measure the demand in 2013; only the supply.But no, front-loading isn't a thing.
Half of the data we're trying to use to explain the other markets behavior is from US in November though. This methodology relies on using the 1817k which represents US's 2013 YTD and includes the 909k from November so I don't understand why in this case November's numbers are terrible to use when they are clearly built into every other LTD estimation? Sure there's more data there that could be used if we had more Australian data but we don't.
Front-loading by far is a thing and one of the main reasons why I think trying to use 5 year old LTD data even on a Xbox product to predict launch sales of consoles in 2014 when supply is far less of a problem relative to past launches could very easily lead to terrible outcomes but if we are to use US 2013 YTD behavior as the measure for all other markets than we either have to accept it for all of them or be able to test all of them in the same exact manner to the same degree to see if they behave in the same way. Stating that one market's known data doesn't make sense compared to what the LTD approach says puts any other countries estimation that relies on LTD approach on thin ice until it can be reasonably shown what that market behaved like in November and December 2013 in regards to the XB1.
What you are arguing here is that the LTD approach utilizing a past product of the brand is a better estimate for launch sales than projecting using known launch sales numbers for the given product in the given region during the given timeframe. I don't see it personally.
For reference, XB1 sold 1817k in the US in its two launch months in 2013
360 sold ~607k in its first 2 months on market [and yes there was shortages galore] so XB1 roughly tripled its 360 launch sales in the US comparatively and supply would play a crucial role in that. I think Australia was probably heavily well supplied relative to past launches as MS only rolled out into 13 regions with several of them being quite small.
Let's try an experiment. 364k XB1's sold in UK in 2013 YTD. 1817k in US 2013 YTD
Thus for XB1 sales UK is ~20% of the US
Going by this, roughly 150k 360's sold in the UK in 2005 YTD [AND there was roughly 10 less days of 360 sales tracking in the UK compared to the US, Dec 2nd for UK versus November 22nd for US]
Compared to the US 360 launch where ~607k units were sold, UK represented ~24.7% of the US market [and that doesn't even account for the less days of tracking which would push the number up higher]
Therefore based on the LTD method and if we only knew the UK launch numbers for XB1 but not the US launch numbers
364/0.247 = 1473k or 344k off of the actual US sales, 19% off based on estimating using known LTDs
But like they did? 66k in 3 days is 22k a day, I'm suggesting that in the next 35 [I think it's 35?] days it sold about 1.88k a day, that's a pretty severe drop around 91%
Although with your 75k estimate, it would go from 22k a day to 257 a day, a drop off of about 99%
I don't get why this argument wouldn't be applicable to every market for these consoles? They all had strong sales initially that taper off quite a bit. Wouldn't we have to try and test all the other markets via LTD estimates to see if the approach holds merit to determine launch behavior different than the US market?
Front loading happened everywhere for probably every console ever? [relatively, spains front-loading is not very impressive because it's such a small market]
I mean did the PS4 keep selling a million in NA after its first day? Did XB1 keep selling a million WW a day after it's first day? Front-loading was certainly something and I am pretty damn sure that after the 2013 holidays XB1 sales in Germany turned into a ghost town.
I get you're talking about severe front-loading but its a spectrum and I'm not really sure the LTD based approach has more weight to it then the most relevant data point we have for any of the Unknown ROTW countries.
Brazil: That works for me. You guys caught the 40% thing, so that's good. Based on 3.1M in Brazil and my ass-sourced estimates of 85M PS3 and XB360s plus 100M Wiis, I'd come up with "`~1% of global," but I don't know how accurate my estimates were, and they're probably based on shipments anyway. Measuring against US NPD is better, I agree. That said, that keep in mind that every time you "round down" in the US, you're bumping the Brazilian numbers a tiny bit.
I think it'd be damn hard to get any accuracy using the worldwide totals to be honest especially as they are shipped not sold through. And I would love to get March 2013 LTDs for the 3 consoles as I did the best I could. It's hard to correctly communicate what data I'm missing but I'll tell you that I've tried to be as conservative as possible about the missing months of sales data so as not to lower the US LTD's too much considering what we're trying to do. There's probably at least 300k more than there should be on each of the LTD's although since I don't have the actual data I don't know for sure
They gave some PS4 estimates. I did link it under the Italy estimation but might be hard to see
Here's the link
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=849455&highlight=
Ireland: So you want to use another article about how Ireland is Sonyland to justify doubling the XBone estimate there? lol Maybe we should use it as justification for cutting XBone in half instead.
We know they spend about 5% of what the UK spends overall, and everything we've found thus far indicates they spend more on PlayStation than just about anyone in the world. Wasn't Ireland actually the first country to start discounting the Bone? C'mon, son.[/QUOTE]Ireland's estimation is actually a subtle poke at you
You used Canadian PS2 numbers to try and extrapolate XB1 numbers when 360 numbers were there. I assure you if I [or you for that matter] could find any 360 numbers of merit I would use those instead.
I think Ireland's estimate is crap but I also think all the LTD based estimates are crap personally.
360 based would be a fair stronger argument though agreed, this was the only information I could find on Ireland though.
I'm potentially ok using the market size relative to UK if and its a big if we have some objective measure that clearly shows it in relation to console buying or something, like actual numbers to estimate the size of the market.
Like MCV had this for the UK and splits out console spending in 2013 at 626M GBP [although maybe this includes Ireland???] so if we had something comparable to gauge the size of the market that approach might have some merit but for instance alot of sales-agers have stated that historically CA is 10% of the US market but that would imply that XB1 sales in CA are 182k for 2013 YTD or like 40k above what I estimated for it. [Not that I think my estimate is super accurate or anything]
Where is the 5% for Ireland in relation to UK from anyways?
Everyeye is used by a couple of other sales-agers for historic NPD data. I see no particular reason to disbelieve their other claims considering they simply post what they find in articles. There was only one set of data that I found suspect and that was the first set of NZ data that was Chartz based. But the second set [for NZ] is from MCV, and most of the other is from Gamasutra or notable local outlets [such as Mexico which is from a large Magazine chain there]
The figures that you say are higher than what your sources say, do you mean for NZ, Mexico, and Austria or just NZ? I can't remember any notable sources for Mexcio prior to this. I assumed everyeye would be okay considering you pointed me to a source on Austria sales that was also either linkless or a broken link
Would you mind doing a quick summary of the numbers you have that contradict the figures I posted? I remember an Austria source that showed PS2 numbers and one way back that showed PS1 numbers but that's it. And I don't think you've shown any numbers from Mexico? At least not that I remember.
Yes this would be very useful to do as it would allow for testing of the strength in the LTD based estimation approach. Technically everyeye has LTD's for a lot of those countries but I guess you wouldn't be interested in that? I of course much prefer direct articles for past sales numbers but internet articles often disappear after 5 years or so :\
serversurfer
Member
I'm trimming some of your quotes. Not to cherry pick, but just to shrink my own post. lol Lemme know if I miss anything important.
Okay, we're trying to estimate launch-holiday demand for the XBone, right? Looking at US Nov NPD would seem like a reasonable enough place to start, in and of itself. However, we know XBone was heavily supply-constrained in the US during November; it was as sold-out as you could reasonably expect a new product to be. Because of that, we don't really know what the actual demand was in the US; we only know the US supply was smaller than the demand. US Supply < US Demand
Now, if we take the measurement of US supply, and try to use it to estimate AU demand, we have an apples-to-oranges comparison. Since we don't really have a direct measurement of demand in the US, we're effectively trying to make extrapolations from an empty data set, or rather, a set which contains a single point of data that we know to be flawed.
We know that your input data was "too low," and sure enough, at the other end it produced a prediction of demand that was lower than the measured demand. But that's not an anomaly, because we knew going in that we didn't have a full measurement of US demand, so our predictions in AU can't do anything but come up short.
Once we add in Dec, we know in hindsight that the Nov sales turned out to be about half of the actual US holiday demand. Thus, US Nov sales you used were only a half-measure of total US holiday demand, because the sales were actually a measure of supply. USS = USD * 0.5
Armed with that information, we can now rexamine your Nov-only analysis, and lo and behold, your half-measure of US demand produced a prediction of Australian demand that was roughly half of their actual, measured launch demand per NPD-AU. That's how it works; if you multiply one side of the equation by 0.5 knowingly or otherwise the same thing is gonna happen at the other end.
Lastly, we know the full 2013 NPD was indeed a full measure of US holiday demand, because XBone was fully stocked there by mid-Dec no one who actually wanted one for Christmas had failed to get one and therefore it's safe to base other estimates of demand off of it, unlike the Nov-only NPDs, which only measured supply.
Does that make more sense?
You seem to feel that supply wasn't really a concern in Australia, and I tend to agree; the launch-weekend articles I've seen didn't really mention any attendant sellouts, and a bit of light googling on the subject only revealed people laughing about the fact it still hadn't sold out three days after launch, etc.
So if we're assuming XBone to have been freely available down under, then what factors exist to limit the rate of sale? "Not much," from what I can see, so no, massive front-loading doesn't surprise me very much. Anything other than massive front-loading is what would be surprising.
Yup, entirely possible, and as I've been saying, there's really nothing to stop it looking like that. I mean, is there any reason to think it wouldn't sell "as quickly as possible" once available? It's not physically impossible to ring up 45K consoles in a day, I'd imagine. All of the PS4s around here got snapped up in a day. Even the cameras were all gone when I checked the following morning. Do we have some data showing Australian XBox owners to be exceptionally lazy? If there were really 140K Australian gamers champing at the bit to get the Bone, then where were they on launch day? The PS4 buyers kept showing up until they were turned away, after all, as did XBone buyers in the US.
So if the sales slope for the first three days looks anything like that, which would be a more likely prediction for the month that followed, ~9K or 66K+?
But 3.7:1 for PS4 after a year damn
If they're buying 5% as many games as the UK, I would assume they have roughly 5% as many consoles to play them on.
If we're assuming all info on everyeye to be reasonably accurate, then it implies a massive mid-generation leap in NZ sales for the XB360 after mid-2008. The earlier article tells us it was averaging 1607 units per month in NZ for its first 28 months on the market, but then the second article tells us sales immediately jumped to 5278/mo for the 18 months that followed.
That's quite a bump for me to swallow without explanation, and everyeye offers none; just lists of numbers and broken links. With this pre-dating the release of Kinect by 11-17 months, I can't really think of a reasonable explanation for such an increase. The MCV article may have offered one, but I don't know, because I can't read it. Maybe it was Chartz-sourced.
When looking for Austrian numbers to put in to The Estimate, the top hit was the discussion about the 27K PS2s, but since there was no link to the original article, I kept searching. I used the PS1 data in The Estimate, because while older, we were able to examine it directly ourselves. FWIW, both reports seem relatively consistent with one another at first blush 15K PS1s in a year Vs. 27K PS2s in two. The PS1 article basically told us that Austria was ~0.25% of the global market, which would imply sales of 7-8K XBones, assuming it was equally popular there. That's a good bit less than your estimate of 11K percentage-wise so I'd like a chance to examine the "original" data for myself to try to determine the source of the discrepancy.
You say "SalesAgers know" Canada is 10% of the US, but when we actually looked at it ourselves, it turned out to be a fair bit smaller than that.
See where I'm coming from on this?
I got 860K PS2s in Mexico at the end of 2007 from vgsales.wikia, though upon further examination, I'm embarrassed to say it in turn cites an Edge article which is now 404, so I guess it's not substantially better than an everyeye citation. Regardless, that worked out to 2% of the US market, and I gave them a 50% bump to 54K units because I was feeling generous, basically. So when you produced an estimate that was more than double my already-inflated estimate, I wanted to see where you got the numbers you were working with. Turns out that neither of our sources are super-solid though.
The only reason I mentioned the Austrian PS2 numbers later was to attempt to illustrate the absolute size of the Austrian market for you. It took them a year to buy 15K PS1s, and supposedly it took two years to buy 27K PS2s, so 11K Bones in a month seems hard to swallow.
For the record, this is all linked and explained in Post #1516 at the top of the page, where I laid out the initial Estimate.
I'm not really against everyeye per se. I'd just like to be able to read the source, especially if the information seems to conflict with sources I've already read.
Sorry, I thought I'd explained that. Lemme try again.
Okay, we're trying to estimate launch-holiday demand for the XBone, right? Looking at US Nov NPD would seem like a reasonable enough place to start, in and of itself. However, we know XBone was heavily supply-constrained in the US during November; it was as sold-out as you could reasonably expect a new product to be. Because of that, we don't really know what the actual demand was in the US; we only know the US supply was smaller than the demand. US Supply < US Demand
Now, if we take the measurement of US supply, and try to use it to estimate AU demand, we have an apples-to-oranges comparison. Since we don't really have a direct measurement of demand in the US, we're effectively trying to make extrapolations from an empty data set, or rather, a set which contains a single point of data that we know to be flawed.
We know that your input data was "too low," and sure enough, at the other end it produced a prediction of demand that was lower than the measured demand. But that's not an anomaly, because we knew going in that we didn't have a full measurement of US demand, so our predictions in AU can't do anything but come up short.
Once we add in Dec, we know in hindsight that the Nov sales turned out to be about half of the actual US holiday demand. Thus, US Nov sales you used were only a half-measure of total US holiday demand, because the sales were actually a measure of supply. USS = USD * 0.5
Armed with that information, we can now rexamine your Nov-only analysis, and lo and behold, your half-measure of US demand produced a prediction of Australian demand that was roughly half of their actual, measured launch demand per NPD-AU. That's how it works; if you multiply one side of the equation by 0.5 knowingly or otherwise the same thing is gonna happen at the other end.
Lastly, we know the full 2013 NPD was indeed a full measure of US holiday demand, because XBone was fully stocked there by mid-Dec no one who actually wanted one for Christmas had failed to get one and therefore it's safe to base other estimates of demand off of it, unlike the Nov-only NPDs, which only measured supply.
Does that make more sense?
Doesn't all of this imply XBone had a comparatively weak launch in the UK? In the US, XBone tripled the 360's launch numbers, but only managed roughly 2.5x in UK. For every four US XB360 sales, there was one in the UK, but it took five US XBone sales to "generate" a sale in the UK. Was XBone freely available in the UK by Christmas? IIRC, they'd actually already started discounting by then, hadn't they? So if the UK launch wasn't particularly supply-constrained, that would seem to imply a fairly significant drop in non-US appeal for XBone when compared to XB360, even in a stronghold like the UK. No?
Okay, so your prediction calls for 91% front-loading, and mine calls for 99% front-loading which takes it completely outside of the realm of possibility? Srsly? It's only 99/91 = 108.8% of the front-loading you've predicted. Is that really such a huge variation?
You seem to feel that supply wasn't really a concern in Australia, and I tend to agree; the launch-weekend articles I've seen didn't really mention any attendant sellouts, and a bit of light googling on the subject only revealed people laughing about the fact it still hadn't sold out three days after launch, etc.
So if we're assuming XBone to have been freely available down under, then what factors exist to limit the rate of sale? "Not much," from what I can see, so no, massive front-loading doesn't surprise me very much. Anything other than massive front-loading is what would be surprising.
But again, what factors exist to prevent massive front-loading? MS was doing at least 100K/day in the US. Sony had a million-unit day in North America, FFS. Is it possible that rather than simply "22K/day," Australia's launch weekend broke down more like this?
Code:
Fri = 45K
Sat = 15K
Sun = 6KSo if the sales slope for the first three days looks anything like that, which would be a more likely prediction for the month that followed, ~9K or 66K+?
That's fine, the adjustments you made only totaled a few K on the back end anyway. I only mentioned it because it sounded like you were trying to be conservative by subtracting, but now I realize you were being conservative about how much you were subtracting.
Yeah, I meant for other countries. lol
But 3.7:1 for PS4 after a year damn
lol Actually, the reason I used the PS2 numbers from Canada is because you'd already said they were 1/17.5th of the US market, and I thought, "Oh, good, he's already done that math for me."Ireland's estimation is actually a subtle poke at you
You used Canadian PS2 numbers to try and extrapolate XB1 numbers when 360 numbers were there. I assure you if I [or you for that matter] could find any 360 numbers of merit I would use those instead.
Earlier BKK linked figures showing Ireland to be roughly 5% of the UK by software unit sales, in response to Raist's claim that historically Ireland is roughly 10% of Germany or France.
If they're buying 5% as many games as the UK, I would assume they have roughly 5% as many consoles to play them on.
Ignoring the fact that the Irish consoles are apparently all PlayStations, natch.
That's actually the article I referred to just previously with the 45K figure. From what I could tell, only the worldwide data in that article was Chartz-sourced, and the NZ-specific information came from "industry data," which I assumed to be NPD-NZ or the like. The actual source of the NZ-specific data wasn't specified, but based on the wording of the article, it appears to be distinct from the Chartz-sourced worldwide data, at the very least.
If we're assuming all info on everyeye to be reasonably accurate, then it implies a massive mid-generation leap in NZ sales for the XB360 after mid-2008. The earlier article tells us it was averaging 1607 units per month in NZ for its first 28 months on the market, but then the second article tells us sales immediately jumped to 5278/mo for the 18 months that followed.
That's quite a bump for me to swallow without explanation, and everyeye offers none; just lists of numbers and broken links. With this pre-dating the release of Kinect by 11-17 months, I can't really think of a reasonable explanation for such an increase. The MCV article may have offered one, but I don't know, because I can't read it. Maybe it was Chartz-sourced.
When looking for Austrian numbers to put in to The Estimate, the top hit was the discussion about the 27K PS2s, but since there was no link to the original article, I kept searching. I used the PS1 data in The Estimate, because while older, we were able to examine it directly ourselves. FWIW, both reports seem relatively consistent with one another at first blush 15K PS1s in a year Vs. 27K PS2s in two. The PS1 article basically told us that Austria was ~0.25% of the global market, which would imply sales of 7-8K XBones, assuming it was equally popular there. That's a good bit less than your estimate of 11K percentage-wise so I'd like a chance to examine the "original" data for myself to try to determine the source of the discrepancy.
You say "SalesAgers know" Canada is 10% of the US, but when we actually looked at it ourselves, it turned out to be a fair bit smaller than that.
See where I'm coming from on this?
Well, the only down-under numbers I was able to find initially was this IGN article which stated that by mid-2008, XB360 had sold a total of 410K in Australia and New Zealand combined. That works out to an estimate of 71K holiday demand if we base it directly on their XB360 sales, or 80K if we use the more favorable comparison of 4.4% Gen7 consoles overall when compared to the US. So I basically just split the difference lest I be accused of going out of my way to punish MS by using the agreed-upon XB360 comparison as-is and called it 75K. Then I split that arbitrarily between the two countries 70/5, since for our purposes, it didn't really matter who sold what.
I got 860K PS2s in Mexico at the end of 2007 from vgsales.wikia, though upon further examination, I'm embarrassed to say it in turn cites an Edge article which is now 404, so I guess it's not substantially better than an everyeye citation.
Regardless, that worked out to 2% of the US market, and I gave them a 50% bump to 54K units because I was feeling generous, basically. So when you produced an estimate that was more than double my already-inflated estimate, I wanted to see where you got the numbers you were working with. Turns out that neither of our sources are super-solid though.The only reason I mentioned the Austrian PS2 numbers later was to attempt to illustrate the absolute size of the Austrian market for you. It took them a year to buy 15K PS1s, and supposedly it took two years to buy 27K PS2s, so 11K Bones in a month seems hard to swallow.
/rimshot
For the record, this is all linked and explained in Post #1516 at the top of the page, where I laid out the initial Estimate.
Yeah, it sucks. Storage is cheap, so you'd think they'd archive this stuff, especially places like Edge and MCV. Anyway, I hope the apparent incongruities in the NZ data helps explain why I prefer data I can examine to data I can't, wherever possible.
I'm not really against everyeye per se. I'd just like to be able to read the source, especially if the information seems to conflict with sources I've already read.
SwiftDeath
Member
Your theory or approach relies on there being comparatively greater stock shortages in November in the US than in Australia so much so that it invalidates an half of the data we try to use on a regular basis.
While I don't think there was the same type of shortage in Australia as in the US in November, there is a poster on this very page
I do better understand your approach now with the blurb above and can see the merit in utilizing the full holiday sales where possible as demand clearly met supply sometime in December for the US. I'm still unclear how we have evidence that launch demand was adequately satiated in Australia in those 9 days. I have found several articles in December that dictate the availability of XB1's but quite frankly that's exactly what happened in the US as well
Maybe? It's hard to tell considering shortages for the various products can differ. There are a lot of extraneous variables that we can't account for when comparing cross-generational or cross-country data
My point is the LTD based approach especially when we're talking millions versus like 100k that we're trying to predict or god 11k that we're trying to predict will involve dividing by small decimal places and even the slightest deviations can cause large swings in the estimations.
Basically take all the LTD estimations with a grain of salt [well all the estimations but the LTD specially rely on correlating a very small amount of data with a very large amount of data] including my own of course
Wat? Shouldn't my response just be "dude my number is only 8% lower than your number, it follows the data, why you giving me beef?"
There is context to that 8% difference because while it seems slight relatively it is a difference of ~50k which is fairly large in absolute terms for the market as I think we both agree hence this debate
Eh the problem I have is your approach relies on Australia XB1 demand equaling supply in November for it to not follow the US behavior but we really don't know that. In the US we saw easing of XB1 shortages from pretty early December via online retailers and the articles about Australian XB1 availability are all from December.
Plus there's still that post on this page directed at you, not that I think it's a smoking gun or anything. Simply meaning that it doesn't appear obvious what Australia's XB1 launch behavior was.
Again I'm not assuming XB1's demand/supply relationship during launch months outside of the initial data point and extrapolation [IE that it follows US behavior until other evidence appears to the contrary].
Anything is possible. I have said that before and will reiterate it again.
I try to work based on the most likely outcome the data is telling me. But without strong evidence to suggest the contrary I won't dismiss what a data point is trying to tell me. You state that November had supply shortages for XB1 in the US, that much I agree on, to what extent I'm unsure but it happened. You then assert that there was no shortage problems at all in Australia during November thus leading to assuming Australia doesn't follow the US behavior and quite frankly that is not a compelling argument based on any objective or measurable data. It's certainly possible but so is XB1 selling a fair bit more than you think it did in Australia in 2013 YTD.
What do you think the US slope looked like? Are you suggesting it had a nice flat sales across November or perhaps maybe it had a bit of a spike on its first day?
For instance we know XB1 sold 1M WW in its first day, 2M+ WW in its first 18 days, and the point we're discussing 3M in 40 days [I think it's 40? counting days is my kryptonite]
That suggests 33.33% day 1, 33.33% in Days 2 - 18, and 33.33% in Days 19 - 40
1M/Day for first day, 58.8k/Day for the next 17 days, 45.5k for the next 22 days
So yes while XB1 sales are of course front-loaded as is any new product of the type they appear on a WW scale to level out with far less severe drops after the initial surge and drop
So even if it was super front-loaded like you said [~45k day one] WW sales behavior would suggest ~136k so simply because there was front-loading doesn't indicate lack of demand. Lack of demand indicates lack of demand
That's fine, the adjustments you made only totaled a few K on the back end anyway. I only mentioned it because it sounded like you were trying to be conservative by subtracting, but now I realize you were being conservative about how much you were subtracting.
Yeah no worries. It's actually quite hard to describe what I did but basically I have LTD for all three consoles as of June 2014 and tried to backtrack but was missing some 2013 months of sales. I did try to stay super conservative in how I subtracted as you now understand it.
That would be great but alas not from what I've seen.
Yeah Italy is Playstation country for sure [well compared to Xbox at least, they also love their Nintendo handhelds after all]
lol Actually, the reason I used the PS2 numbers from Canada is because you'd already said they were 1/17.5th of the US market, and I thought, "Oh, good, he's already done that math for me."
lol I do worry about how variable our approaches seem to be. Utilizing PS2 LTDs is of course going to result in whatever results but using market size has the potential to alter predictions quite a sizable amount considering the numbers we're playing with.
Earlier BKK linked figures showing Ireland to be roughly 5% of the UK by software unit sales, in response to Raist's claim that historically Ireland is roughly 10% of Germany or France.
If they're buying 5% as many games as the UK, I would assume they have roughly 5% as many consoles to play them on.Ignoring the fact that the Irish consoles are apparently all PlayStations, natch.
I kind of worry about predicting a market based off its relative size to a massively larger market [basically what we're doing for all estimates since US is biggest]. For example if Ireland was 95% of the UK market then trying to project one onto the other would be a very good comparison because being off by a percentage or two won't change results very much in that comparison but when the market is 5% of the other? Then a percentage or two change can result in a large relative change in the smaller market's size.
Yeah I couldn't quite place where that articles NZ numbers come from but the other data set was further into the generation so more data and plus from MCV so highly trustworthy assuming there wasn't a conspiracy amongst everyeye posters back in 2008 to purposefully mislead visitors once the links went dead.
MCV would never be chartz-sourced. They are the most respectable online publication I have ever seen for console sales and market data. Better than gamasutra in my mind. But of course that specific everyeye poster could be lying about those numbers back in 2008 since we don't have the original article to check against but since there is a general sentiment that the historic NPD data within everyeye is accurate and that poster specifically is responsible for quite a lot of that NPD data I'm fairly trusting of it.
Comparing to the global market is quite frankly not the best approach much like what I did with Brazil. You're talking about using what the 100M+ shipped [not sold to customers] PS1 consoles to estimate the Austrian market? And it's coming in at like 1% so even the smallest changes in the market over these past 18 years could lead to massive absolute number estimations [relative to the size of the market at least].
Barring that I think that 18 year old information on a console in a different brand 3 generations ago probably isn't going to lead to a greatly accurate estimate
Pretty sure that's what I said to you in regards to a general sentiment to the size of a market as such things can be fairly inaccurate as it's just a rough approximation. So I agree with you [and potentially myself?]
Why do you think I asked for the specific numbers that lead to the 5% Ireland|UK comparison?
I got 860K PS2s in Mexico at the end of 2007 from vgsales.wikia, though upon further examination, I'm embarrassed to say it in turn cites an Edge article which is now 404, so I guess it's not substantially better than an everyeye citation.
The link on that site for Mexican PS2's is dead though.
Times change though and presuming the everyeye information is correct which personally I believe it to be, it shows that. Maybe Austrians weren't so interested in consoles back then or more likely maybe PS1 and PS2 were heavily supply-constrained which after November the XB1 was clearly not.
Again my stance on these estimates both my own and yours is that they are probably fairly inaccurate bullshit as the UK|US XB1 launch number test I ran showed. And that one even had good information whereas these we're relying on PS1 information of all things.
For the record, this is all linked and explained in Post #1516 at the top of the page, where I laid out the initial Estimate.
Thanks always good to see what the other person is on about in more detail
That's fine I suppose but it eliminates quite a bit of the more useful data [more useful if it was accurate mind you]
I mean PS2 era data and back probably isn't going to be particularly relevant to today's VG markets considering those consoles are often described as having grown the VG market from the core to larger demographics and we're talking about their first 2 years or less on the market
Again just for your record your Mexican PS2 source is not readable to me
VG Sales is nice but it's just a wiki that's editable by any member so while I personally think those numbers are probably accurate by your own admittance, you shouldn't
serversurfer
Member
Yes, I skipped that post intentionally, because it was basically just a strawman. An "insider" popped up to say I had no idea what I'm talking about because they know for a fact that post-launch sales in Australia have been non-zero. Great, but I never claimed they were zero, so whatever.
That, or they were trying to claim that XBone was effectively sold out through February, which I deemed equally unworthy of response.
lol Yes, I just said as much in the very block of text you quoted, and concluded by saying thus far we've both failed to produce any verifiable data for Mexico.
Yeah, and I worry about taking markets that traditionally account for 10K and saying, "Well, 40K isn't that much more, and it makes my numbers work "
You seem to have missed the basic point here. Yes, everyeye's numbers are all perfectly legit and there was no conspiracy in 2008 to make me look like a fool on GAF today. Granted.
But the data points they posted for NZ are not internally consistent with one another, and only the figure I can examine myself seems to match up with other figures I can also examine. Therefore, the anomalous, unavailable data carries less weight, no matter to whom it was originally accredited.
If you think all their data can be taken at face value, then maybe you can explain to the class why XB360 sales tripled in NZ beginning mid-2008, because I certainly can't.
Umm, no, because I never made the claim that your front-loading was unrealistically small. You basically rebutted my estimation with, "No way it's that high, dude!!" I responded with, "Huh? It's practically the same value you just called for. =/"
I dunno, man. I feel like we're just spinning our wheels here.
I say, "If another 75K Aussies wanted the Bone, where were they on launch day? Everyone in the US showed up. It's not like they were turned away down under; we haven't seen a single report of supply shortages, and I actively looked for them. So what gives?"
And then you come back with, "Yeah, I couldn't find any reports of shortages either, but c'mon, son. I think we have all of the evidence we really need here. We know MS only shipped 66K for launch day, because they didn't sell any more than that. Duh."
/facepalm
Dude, you have absolutely no evidence of that whatsoever beyond your firm belief that the XBone is just as popular as MS wants us to think. Look at the launch articles again. Did any of them say, "Yeah, we sold the entire shipment of 66K in under four hours, so come back next week," or anything of the sort?? /sigh
After all of our back and forth, I remain convinced that even with fairly generous estimates about the size of these markets and XBone's potential desirability therein, we still fall well short of the sales MS claimed. You remain convinced that with ridiculously generous estimates, we actually can get sorta close to their estimate.
And don't forget that what you're clinging to so desperately is their "internal estimate." Likely generated by the same team that produced an "estimate" of 1M day-one sales before Day One had even ended, FFS. For all we know, their estimations began with Hyrb saying, "Well, obviously, it's gonna be more popular than XB360, amirite, team??"
But I suppose the knowledge that they play fast and loose with their estimates will do nothing to sway your belief that this estimate is accurate, much like the knowledge that they misled people about Surface sales to make it seem like it was a lot more popular than it really was did little to sway your belief that they would never mislead people about XBone sales to make it seem like it was more popular than it really was.lol Yeah, maybe we should take this opportunity to try to reboot things. I do think it's possible to get a reasonably accurate estimate of potential XBone demand around the world, but yes, I think our approach has been haphazard at best.
To be fair, I may have started us down that path with my back-of-the-envelope estimations of just how tiny these markets really are using whatever data happened to be at hand, so sorry for that. Anyway, take for example the US/UK launches. Yes, as you mention, supply constraints in either country for the XB360 launch could easily throw off your analysis, and in turn, the conclusions I drew from it. In fact, "early-gen" issues like supply constraints and front-loading brings up one of the things that's been bugging me the most about our methodology.
I think looking at LTD numbers to glean historical info is inherently flawed. Not because the data is out of date necessarily, but because it can give us a very skewed perception about the state of the market depending on when our snapshot was taken. If we sample too early, our data becomes polluted by things like supply constraints, front-loading, and perhaps most importantly, launch-date variations.
Let's look at Canada. IIRC, those numbers were from 2007. So PS2 had been on the market for 7 years, XB360 for 2, and PS3 for 1. You claim the XB360 sales as most relevant, because it's on-brand and the sales are more recent than the bulk of the PS2 sales, meaning it would give us a better sense of the current state of the market. Fair enough, but the thing is, it only gives a sense of the state of the market as of 2007.
Why is that important? Well, because in 2007, XB360 was just coming off of a year of being the only game in town. For half of the two years prior, XB360 was literally the only choice if you wanted a next-gen console. Meanwhile, Sony were still struggling with manufacturing issues going in to the year. So armed with that additional information, is it any wonder that shifting from 2007 PS2 LTD to 2007 XB360 LTD made us go, "Damn, XB360 is more popular than PS2!!" If you snapshot XB360 sales in 2006, then you're effectively doing your estimations by saying, "What if it was the only Gen8 console available Then how much would it sell??"
See where I'm coming from on this? Yes, new data is better than old data, but full-gen data has had a lot more time to "mellow" than early- or mid-gen data. Just look at New Zealand; if we'd taken our snapshot in 2008 instead of 2009, we'd only be working with a third of the XBone's true appeal.
I think a better approach would be to compare full-year sales, from as recently as possible. So, if we can find out how many XB360s were sold in the UK in 2011, we can then compare that directly to 2011 US sales, and from there we can start estimating the comparative strength of the XBox brand there "these days." Maybe Australians bought 47 hojillion XB360s by 2009, and in 2010 collectively said, "You know what, fuck MS," and purchased nothing but PlayStations from there on out.
So yeah, I realize that such data may be even harder to find, but I think it's likely to produce better results than what we've had up to this point. We need to try to find out how popular the XBox brand is now, not how popular is was back when it had no competition. If we could get annual sales data for any of the leaked countries from say 2010-2012, we can then use that to make a better prediction of "brand demand," and then compare that prediction to the leaked results to start getting an idea of how much mindshare XBox has really lost outside of the US when compared to the XB360.
Is this making sense? lol
SwiftDeath
Member
Hmm right but my point was we don't have any objective data one way or the other. We have a lack of data on Australia's XB1 Launch sales behavior aside from subjective posters and some articles that barely mention stock allocation in any real detail.
lol Yes, I just said as much in the very block of text you quoted, and concluded by saying thus far we've both failed to produce any verifiable data for Mexico.
All right then we both have a hole :\
Not that I find PS2 numbers if we have them that compelling after we saw the discrepancy between Canadian predictions using PS2 LTD and X360 LTD
Yeah, and I worry about taking markets that traditionally account for 10K and saying, "Well, 40K isn't that much more, and it makes my numbers work…"
When did I ever suggest a market that "traditionally" accounts for 10k should be 50k? Those markets are what NZ and Austria? I never suggested either should be 50k. I did once say that the average across like 6 or 7 of the Unknown ROTW countries would have to be ~40k or something to that extent but that in no way is equivalent.
You are right I can't explain NZ's market behavior because I don't have adequate information available albeit if I did it would probably render the argument moot anyways.
Maybe there was a larger push by MS into the market in 2008.
I choose to believe the data because it seems unlikely that what appear by all accounts to be seasoned sales-agers of an other forum chose to believe it and MCV is just about the publication I trust with sales data the most.
You are of course welcome to your own opinion on the matter but well so am I.
Ah so then I guess we both agree that each other's theory on Australian sales is possible and call it a day on that one? Until one of us [or someone else] finds better data.
I have never and would never say we have enough evidence as we clearly don't for any Unknown ROTW country. My take throughout all this is that we have an overwhelming lack of evidence or data.
I have no idea if there was shortages in Australia during November of the XB1. How is the lack of articles somehow now objective proof?
And why is it now 75k more? It's always been 66k? As per all my previous estimates.
I have a firm belief that it is possible that MS were telling the truth about the 3M sold WW in that timeframe and hold it as the most likely possibility. I also hold the belief that it is possible that MS lied about that with a lower probability.
From everything I've discussed with you, you seem to to believe it is impossible for MS to have sold that many in that timeframe and are trying to utilize what we have shown to be highly variable methods to "prove" it was a lie.
My whole purpose in all this is to simply show you that it is a real possibility that MS sold that many within that timeframe. Whether they did or not is not something I know nor something I can prove.
Launch articles without any specific details are entirely subjective. I thought you were after verifiable facts? Maybe as I've said before Australian XB1 sales fell off a cliff or maybe they very closely mirrored US sales but I don't take some lack of articles telling me about XB1 shortages as some objective fact that clearly shows one over the other.
I remain convinced that our methodology has been shown to be entirely variable and inaccurate.
Canadian LTD estimation based approach resulted in undertracking it via 21% or so when using PS2 over 360 and UK's LTD based approach undertracked it by around 24%
Those are numbers we know and can compare and contrast. So I have no idea why you have such great faith that these estimates hold some silver bullet to one side of the argument or the other?
And don't forget that what you're clinging to so desperately is their "internal estimate." Likely generated by the same team that produced an "estimate" of 1M day-one sales before Day One had even ended, FFS. For all we know, their estimations began with Hyrb saying, "Well, obviously, it's gonna be more popular than XB360, amirite, team??"
MS could've lied. I believe that as a possibility. I will reiterate that my point in this whole thing is simply your continued close-mindedness about the possibility that the numbers might actually be accurate.
Sure maybe MS lied, but hey it's also possible they told the truth. I don't know and more importantly after working with the data I don't find any of the results particularly compelling as evidence they lied simply because of how variable and inaccurate it all is.
lol Yeah, maybe we should take this opportunity to try to reboot things. I do think it's possible to get a reasonably accurate estimate of potential XBone demand around the world, but yes, I think our approach has been haphazard at best.
Honestly I don't particularly find any of our methodologies that compelling. :\
I should run some mock estimations on France and Germany or something to see how I feel about it as the whole Canada and UK thing kind of deflated my hopes for them.
Agreed. One thing I was wondering about but didn't know how to bring it up without it sounding like a cheap shot but for your Australian/New Zealand market size comparisons, you made sure to start counting US NPD as of March 2006 right? When it launched in Australia. If not, there'd be about another 1M or so 360s sold in the US given the timeframe.
Holy crap just realized I never did that for Brazil's NPD estimations 0_0
Welp that estimate should be higher I guess. My bad there
I think I show your point? Ha but yeah I've been feeling the same since we started this
Eh but PS2 was the only console on the market for 18 months [we don't talk about dreamcast :'(] basically and had a ~20M advantage I believe when the other kids came to play. It was also the best selling console of all time. So if anything that just further insinuates how flawed the LTD based approach probably is because even with some like for like scenarios [early market appearance] and some disadvantages [No way 360 had a 20M WW lead by the time Wii launched] the 360 is shown to sell quite a bit better than the PS2 in Canada relatively
Don't get me wrong, I have been iterating again and again that I find the LTD based approach to be flawed and for many of the reasons you do. I mean I've kind of complained about the clear lack of accuracy and drawing conclusions from LTD's since we first looked at the Canadian numbers.
See where I'm coming from on this? Yes, new data is better than old data, but full-gen data has had a lot more time to "mellow" than early- or mid-gen data. Just look at New Zealand; if we'd taken our snapshot in 2008 instead of 2009, we'd only be working with a third of the XBone's true appeal.
Potentially. I wouldn't be surprised though if the further along in a generation you take the data from the least comparable to launch demand you are able to perceive as the data will be averaged out across longer periods of far less demand. Not sure if that makes sense?
Hmm but you would have more data to play with technically. Looking at Canada's discrepancy between PS2 sales and 360 sales I'm not sure what the best approach would be.
I think a better approach would be to compare full-year sales, from as recently as possible. So, if we can find out how many XB360s were sold in the UK in 2011, we can then compare that directly to 2011 US sales, and from there we can start estimating the comparative strength of the XBox brand there "these days." Maybe Australians bought 47 hojillion XB360s by 2009, and in 2010 collectively said, "You know what, fuck MS," and purchased nothing but PlayStations from there on out.We have no idea.I mean, since MS started the generation with a lead and eventually Sony passed them, we know that's what really happened, amirite?
Yes I do certainly agree that more recent data would be better, and for like-for-like brands if possible [360 for XB1 etc.]. It'd probably be fairly difficult to find yearly sales for all those regions though.
Yes
I actually fully agree with that notion.
Perhaps I should go back to making PAL chart graphs of software rankings as they paint a very clear implosion of the Xbox brand in Germany.
Surfer in your searchings, if you ever find like a Top 40 or Top 50 software charts with actual sales numbers for either the UK or Germany please let me know as I have always meant to build a general ranking system off of such data. kind of off topic though
serversurfer
Member
The GF and I gotta go out of town for a couple of days, so it'll likely be this weekend before I can respond with anything meaningful.
Niteandgrey
Neo Member
Would love to be a fly on the wall at Microsoft right now.
I don't want to see any console manufacturer fail but I'm not unhappy to see Microsoft going through some pain right now. This is a bitter lesson for them to learn after trying to curb ownership rights and for ignoring their core consumer.
And yes, before anyone jumps down my throat, I'm aware that they had some "neat" features being planned for digitally loaning out games. Regardless, their policies were restrictive at best and draconian at worst. They exacerbated the problem by releasing hardware that's simply underpowered relative to the PS4 despite having the same price point. The market so far as loudly and clearly informed Microsoft that they're not happy with MS' effort.
The positive here is that Microsoft has the financial means to weather this storm and if they have the right decision makers in place, they're going to release a much stronger product in the next generation.
I don't want to see any console manufacturer fail but I'm not unhappy to see Microsoft going through some pain right now. This is a bitter lesson for them to learn after trying to curb ownership rights and for ignoring their core consumer.
And yes, before anyone jumps down my throat, I'm aware that they had some "neat" features being planned for digitally loaning out games. Regardless, their policies were restrictive at best and draconian at worst. They exacerbated the problem by releasing hardware that's simply underpowered relative to the PS4 despite having the same price point. The market so far as loudly and clearly informed Microsoft that they're not happy with MS' effort.
The positive here is that Microsoft has the financial means to weather this storm and if they have the right decision makers in place, they're going to release a much stronger product in the next generation.
Who says they have to wait till the next generation to make a much stronger product?
With the updates they're pushing out, they're making a good case that they can reverse all the Don Mattrick nonsense out and still have a great console.
I love my PS4, but it doesn't get the use my X1 does. It's on every day since the cable box runs right through it. Being able to cook dinner in the kitchen and change channels with my voice has been great.
Did I want that ability going into this generation? No. But now that I have it, I don't know that I can give it up.
The convenience of having everything on one input on my TV and ditching all the remotes is starting to make the case to me I need to get more 3rd party games on the X1...even if I can see the 900p low rezness on my 55" TV I sit 4 feet from.
That said... TLOU remastered is quite nice...even if I have to pull out the remote to change the input to the PS4 to get to it.
eddfromtheriver
Banned
Yeah about that... i don't think they will, ever since they were planning to enter gaming with the OG XB, i remember reading features on MS and owning the living room was always their number one priority, but now it's become quite clear that they're not gonna achieve that lofty goal, what are they going to keep fighting for now?, specially when they're not making much profits out of the XB division?, i'm thinking it getting axed is more likely than there being a successor.
How much say would Nadella have with seeing these lackluster numbers and want to start cutting certain losses? He never seemed like a huge fan of the Xbox division, but could he then use something like these figures as fire to shift around resources to the things he is more openly passionate about (cloud computing).
Niteandgrey
Neo Member
In answer to your first question: Nobody. But in terms of the hardware, they won't have the opportunity to show that they learned from their mistakes until next gen. For this gen, obviously, the die is cast.
As I said in another thread, Microsoft can still prevent this generation from being a disaster for them and the key to that is creating as much compelling 1st party content as possible. Can they create enough to close the gap with Sony? Very doubtful considering their 1st party resources are far more limited than Sony's. But they can make this a good and profitable generation by bringing the games. If they do that, they'll sell consoles. Period.
I'm glad you're enjoying the multimedia features on the Xbone. The problem is that the market (at least so far) has spoken rather loudly that those features aren't terribly important to them as a whole.
Link?
Niteandgrey
Neo Member
Heh, I'm trying to be positive man, lol. If I don't sound at least a little bit positive, I get accused of being a Sony fanboy despite the two 360's that are sitting in my living room and my office.
But you bring up a really good point. Microsoft's goal was for their console to be the entertainment hub of the living room. The Xbone has (so far) failed at doing so and given how differently people consume content these days, I'm not sure that it's possible for any console to become the hub. And if Microsoft realizes that, what's their new strategy? Do they keep swinging away trying to claw out a profit with a pure gaming machine or do they pack it in? I agree with you that the latter is definitely possible.
I suspect their future in the console business hinges greatly on what their new CEO Satya Nadella thinks about the gaming market. At least so far, I haven't heard him say anything that gives me an idea of how he perceives the console market and the Xbone.
It is not what he considers a "core" part of Microsofts business (http://fortune.com/2014/07/14/microsoft-ceo-until-we-really-change-culturally-no-renewal-happens/) not a full on hate, but he definitely sees it as an extra thing and not what MS is really about.
eddfromtheriver
Banned
Yeah, that's what i'm wondering as well.
He is basically telling us that we shouldn't confuse Xbox with their productivity strategy, no where does this article tell us that he isn't a huge fan of the Xbox, which is what you stated earlier.
theDeeDubs
Member
To me, I bolded the important part of that quote “I want us to be comfortable to be proud of Xbox, to give it the air cover of Microsoft,” Nadella said, “but at the same time not confuse it with our core.”
Though “you need to have places you can incubate things,” you also need to “innovate from the core,” he said. It’s how Microsoft will be renewed again.
I think Nadella feels the Xbox is a way to introduce and keep Microsoft in the minds of the kids entering into the console demographic, especially now that many of them are handed apple hand-me-downs from the time they're three. I'm 34 and MS is ubiquitous with computing, but to upcoming kids, they're probably more familiar with Apple. This is a big reason they're streamlining the OS on all the devices. IMO of course.
The problem with the media stuff isn't the media stuff, it's how they tried to jab it down everyone's throats in the initial unveil.
They should have focused on games first. The market spoke like it did because they didn't know they wanted the media stuff.
I didn't want it at the time, but now that I have it, I can't imagine going without it.
I believe MS should have sold the X1 on games. And games. And a launch Halo so that everyone bought the box right at launch and then people would realize it is this media Mecca you can't do without.
Not saying that's how it would have played out, but it was a far better strategy than where they came from.
How Matrrick got that high in a company with marketing ideas he had, I don't know. Misstep doesn't begin to describe it. It's like he knew stuff his audience would like if they tried, he just lacked the vision to sell people on it.
theDeeDubs
Member
Yeah. I was excited from the reveal because I still love the idea of an all-in-one box, but I think revealing with all the TV features first left a sour taste in the mouth of core gamers. This essentially alienated the early adopters from the get go. I honestly think all these features would've helped with the more casual audience a few years into its life cycle. All jokes aside, they're messaging was pretty bad. They should have followed Sony's route: court the gamers first before sliding in all the things they're going to be leveraging.