Where's Peterboy?
Got all uppity with me last night for calling doubt on MS's claim that they sold '2million' XB1's to customers because they have a history of spin and obfuscation with such matters.
And bang, here we have it again today - apparently steady sales numbers over a short period beats total sales. Who are you fucking kidding.
Calm down friend. The stuff people were talking about in the "2 million" sold thread is that they "believe" MS straight up fabricates sales numbers. Which was (and still is) a ridiculous accusation. No one provided any actual proof of that. Just regurgitation of the same link about the Surface lawsuit (which is NOT the same thing as straight up making up numbers).
The press release by Major Nelson, while kind of silly (and poorly worded) is what always happens when a company doesn't win NPD. Nintendo spun their numbers to look good. Sony used to spin the crap out of their numbers almost every NPD during the PS3 era (were you around then?). And you know what, who cares? I really don't get why people even pay that much attention to PR releases.
I do think Major could have worded it better. He should have just said that the XB1 sold the fastest per week on average and left it at that. That in itself is pretty impressive.
Honestly, regarding the XB1/PS4 debate, I don't get why so many people here are getting so excited/emotional. This is really just about "who shipped more consoles?" They're both going to sell out. MS very likely could have had roughly about the same amount of consoles in its first 9 days worldwide that the PS4 had in its first 9 days. We know they both sold about the same in their first weekends. PS4 got to first focus just on NA (primarily the US), while MS spread out their consoles to their 13 countries. Since it's so early, Sony's one week advantage and their ability to strike NA hard first is possibly making a difference in the US numbers (and hence their Nov NPD win).
What we're probably going to see for December is that PS4 might have a harder time restocking in the US since they have more countries to supply. I wouldn't be surprised if MS won Dec NPD as I bet they're going to focus hard on the US in December. PS4 will probably win Europe easily (I would include the UK in that).
Since this is the holidays, both I'm sure will sell (or almost) out. This says nothing about demand for either. PS4 could have a higher demand (it likely does). But since they can only make so many consoles, they will be supply constrained.
Things really won't get interesting and meaningful until January. Or even February.