NPD: USA Aug, 360 beats PS2 to 3rd, Wii still King

[Darksaviour69]

NPD (http://www.npd.com/corpServlet?nextpage=corp_welcome.html) has release the American sales for August. An other month and Nintendo are still on top with the Wii and DS. But the interesting story is that the Xbox 360 has Finally beaten the PS2 with 276.7K units sold (up over 100k from last month), Spurred on no doubt by the recent price cut and the release of Bioshock and soon Halo 3. Bad news for Sony as the PS3 was the lowest selling console, 130k, down 30k from last month.

* Nintendo Wii: 403.6K (4 million total)
* Nintendo DS: 383.3K (12.7 million total)
* Microsoft Xbox 360: 276.7K (6.3 million)
* Sony PlayStation 2: 202K (39.1 million total)
* Sony PSP: 151.2K (8.3 million total)
* Sony PlayStation 3: 130.6K (1.75 million total)

Software wise, its more good news for MS with the 360 taking 1st and 3rd place, while the PS3 only has the one game at 4th with the Wii and PS2 filling out the rest of the places.

Top 10 games:

1:Madden NFL 08—360—EA—896.6K
2:Madden NFL 08—PS2—EA—643.6K
3:BioShock—360—Take-TwoEA—490.9K
4:Madden NFL 08—PS3—EA—336.2K
5:Wii Play/ w remote—Wii—Nintendo—256.8K
6:Metroid Prime 3: Corruption—Wii—Nintendo—218.1K
7:Mario Strikers Charged—Wii—Nintendo—147.4K
8:Guitar Hero 2 w/guitar—PS2—Activision—145.4K
9:Mario Party 8—Wii—Nintendo—138.3K
10: Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s—PS2—Activision—127.1K

[DarthPaul]

BioShock 3rd? Haha, people really buy crappy stuff. It freaking deserves 1st.

[Pilot_51]

If in that chart, for example, Wii has sold 403.6K units in America and 4 million worldwide, as I think it's meant to be, that hardware sales chart is way old. According to http://vgchartz.com Wii has sold 4.69 million in America and 11.54 million worldwide. All the others are also much higher than what you have there.
Software sales seem to be a bit old too, but not as old since it at least lists BioShock and MP3:C.

A source link would be very helpful.

[Cap'n 1time]

If in that chart, for example, Wii has sold 403.6K units in America and 4 million worldwide, as I think it's meant to be, that hardware sales chart is way old. According to http://vgchartz.com Wii has sold 4.69 million in America and 11.54 million worldwide. All the others are also much higher than what you have there.
Software sales seem to be a bit old too, but not as old since it at least lists BioShock and MP3:C.

A source link would be very helpful.

I agree that a source link is needed. Im not sure, but I think this only refers to last quarter maybe? That would be much more reasonable.

[Darksaviour69]

Its the official NPD figures (as stated in the title), but yeah I should have said that again in the main text.

Vgchart are amateur guesses, while NPD are the Official sales figures for America. Vgcharts are very inaccurate at times, don't rely on them. But these are American sales, not north American sales, (which Vgcharts are) which would explain the difference

[Pilot_51]

There's a difference between production (shipped) sales and retailer sales. Most of the sales numbers we see are production, while VGChartz is retailer. Nobody can really figure out the actual retail sales because not every single retailer publicly keeps track of how many they've sold on a real-time basis, so of course VGChartz makes guesses. On the plus side, they don't put into account channel stuffing as Sony did to meet their quota, and it more accurately shows actual popularity among the consumers.
If NPD actually does manage to keep track of retail sales, then I suppose I can forget about VGChartz for that info. If you know a different site you trust for retail sale numbers, please tell.
BTW, define "official". Anyone can call something official. What is it official to, the American economy (such as stock brokers rely heavily on it) or NPD affiliates or what? Or is it official as in guaranteed most accurate (which I find unlikely if it's retail sales)?
I'll give... The reason I'm all up in arms about it is because I don't like being told that something I've trusted to be accurate is actually just inaccurate junk. I don't like being wrong so I try to defend my dignity by saying "prove it".

Regardless of the type of American region, that doesn't explain the difference, because they all were different. Look at Japan.
I think the major reason would be that the info you provided was for a month instead of the all-time as I originally thought. I've seen so much focus on all-time sales lately that I completely forgot about periodical sales figures, that was completely my bad as I didn't notice the part that said "sales for August" and "Aug" in the title only made me think it was all-time up to August.

A link to the NPD source data would still be nice, I couldn't find it even with a Google search in NPD.com and about 20 minutes of browsing through the site. The closest I could find was a link from NPD.com to Bloomberg.com which includes July sales, but since Bloomberg isn't NPD as far as I can tell I wouldn't consider it a NPD source I can trust to be completely accurate.
I'm sorry if I'm being picky about source info, but just telling me that it came from NPD (as I knew in the first place) doesn't cut it for me if I can't find the source page myself. If you quoted the actual article I wouldn't care for a source link, but it's courtesy to include the source link in any case.
If I know where to find sales figures for one month, I shouldn't have any trouble finding it for other months.

[Darksaviour69]

NPD is the industry standard, its what all the publishers use. You know the official Music charts? well they do the same as them only for games. VGCharts use the NPD figures all the time, to make there own guesses. VGcharts update their guess when NPD reports come out
http://vgchartz.com/news/news.php?id=531

Generally i find that VGCharts over estimate (bar the 360 which they seems to under estimate, but i doubt its on purpose)

I wrote the article myself (if i did copy it i would have sourced it), but the figures are allover the net (but NPD do not publish them on their website) just search "NPD august 2007" in google.

But yeah, your right i should have made it clear it was for one month and for the USA only.

[Pilot_51]

I think I can trust VGChartz to be more accurate to the day, even with an estimated guess. Considering they update their numbers with the NPD numbers each month so they're as accurate as NPD at least once a month. The NPD data gets old quick if they only update monthly, which is about as frequent as new games and consoles get patches and firmware updates for a rough comparison. For accuracy of each report, I'll give that to NPD, but for accuracy on a more frequent basis I'll give it to VGChartz (unless you know of a better one that has more accurate daily estimates). Overestimate or not, I doubt they would blow anything way out of proportion. They give a pretty detailed comparison between their estimates and the NPD results, so no doubt they're trying hard to be accurate.

So... NPD has a press pass system or something where they only give their numbers to those registered as press?
In that case it would help if they had up-to-date links to a site that gave the details, or if they do already link to an August report they need to make it easier to find on their site.
Oh well, at least I have a better understanding of NPD and the sales data in general.

[kjetil1991]

its strange wii sudenly owned the list for so long with it specs in the next gen console war