Poll: Wii U Google Search Results Compared System

[medv4380]

I put together this graph of Google Correlate data to the Wii, WiiU, PS3, and 360 search result data. You can see it here [http://pic.twitter.com/ceTUHYwt] on this twitter pic. It is just of the Highest Search value for each year. Which is around the holiday season, but not always. 2012 data points are also a partial since the data only goes up to September.

It's a bit interesting that the Wii U data is nearly double to Wii peak, and it's nice to see the standard trend that everyone used to follow to justify the 5 year system cycle. Prior to the Launch year the current gen systems also didn't have much data to plot, but the Wii U has plenty of data.

I'm a bit curious about some data analysis like the Wisdom of the Crowd style of analysis. Basically it's a way of getting data you shouldn't be able to get from people. For example you have a jar of jelly beans and you ask 100 people to guess how many beans are in the jar. Take the average of all their guesses and you'll actually get fairly close to the correct answer. So I've included a poll for anyone to guess the number of Units they they the Wii U will sell in its cycle compared to the Wii's 97 Million Units.

 

[Mr.Mattress]

I believe the WiiU will sell 3/4ths of what the Wii did, unless it keeps selling like hotcakes, then I think it will sell 1 and 1/4ths the Wii did, but a little less then the PS2 has sold. So, I just put the Same.

Your graph intrigues me though, as it says that not only was Interest (Google Searches) for the WiiU higher then the Wii, but it has been higher then every other console out there, even before launch. I wonder how this actually translates to sales though...

 

[medv4380]

I wonder how this actually translates to sales though...

I've seen the sales figures before, but finding them in a nice clean format seems to be an issue. I can look at their Life Time Totals.
Using that I can create two figure. A Millions Per Search and a Million per Yearly Average.

Wii gets ~7.1 Million per Search and ~42.5 Million per Average
360 gets ~5.7 Million per Search and ~45.7 Million per Average
PS3 gets ~6.2 Million per Search and ~43.5 Million per Average

You should be able to tell their is a tight correlation in the long term values. I was able to find some Yearly data for the Wii sales to see if it hold, but it wasn't complete enough for me to want to post them. 2.5 years is not enough. What I did see though is that the Launch year had the highest divergence from the expected. The 2006 data, which I believe pairs up to PY 2007 Sales, only sold 5 Million but had a search of 2.5. This is easily explainable. The Launch year almost always sells out, and always has a shortage. That shortage spills over into the next year causing it to be higher and make up for the prior years shortage. This is also why System Sales don't match up with other Sales trends like Game or Movies. Games and Movies typically have a Logarithmic trend where each week makes less and less. Systems on the other hand have a massive shortage at the start so the demand keeps spilling over into the next week until that shortage is finally covered.

The problem with using the Wii U search data to estimate is that their is search data prior to launch. The other systems don't have this issue because they kept their Name under wraps until the year the system was released. I remember the GameCube was something like Project Dolphin up until the year of release when they relieved the name. We've known the Wii U's name since last year. We also don't have any competing systems on the horizon. Sony and MS haven't really said much about what a NextGen system from them would be So everyone's been looking at Nintendo because they are the only New game in town. We've also been in a Development Drought. Game sales are down accost the board, but each time it's coupled with Sales are down by 25% and New Game Released are down by 20%. I'm personally willing to buy new games but their hasn't been much the last 6 Months outside of shooters.

That being said I can make some Assumptions. If the 2012 search results are inflated and aren't the High. If the 2012 search results are 20% of the total search results of a 5 Year System. Assuming it makes at least 40 Million per search result, which is lower than each of the current gen systems. Then it is on track to sell 240 Million. But if the Search results are Inflated for any reason then it will make less, and if they aren't at their high yet then it will sell more.

 

[Mr.Mattress]

That being said I can make some Assumptions. If the 2012 search results are inflated and aren't the High. If the 2012 search results are 20% of the total search results of a 5 Year System. Assuming it makes at least 40 Million per search result, which is lower than each of the current gen systems. Then it is on track to sell 240 Million. But if the Search results are Inflated for any reason then it will make less, and if they aren't at their high yet then it will sell more.

240 Million units?! I could never believe the WiiU could sell that much. Odds are, these numbers are inflated, at least to some degree. I can't imagine the WiiU outselling the PS2 by Over 90 Million! And I'm one of the 'Optimists' for the system!

 

[medv4380]

240 Million units?! I could never believe the WiiU could sell that much. Odds are, these numbers are inflated, at least to some degree. I can't imagine the WiiU outselling the PS2 by Over 90 Million! And I'm one of the 'Optimists' for the system!

That wouldn't be too unprecedented. It's that the current gen systems are a bit messed up. If Sony hadn't messed up the pricing model with the PS3 and gone with a more traditional development path then I'd bet the PS3 would have sold 200 Million, and MS and Nintendo would be out in the cold. But because MS and Sony inflated the price too quickly so the prior sales trends didn't apply to them.

Using only these systems
PlayStation 2, PlayStation, Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis, Xbox, GameCube, Sega Saturn, Dreamcast
I left out anyone that barely sold anything... like the Sega Master System

Now by grouping them up into their generations we can get this nice table
Gen 1 - 61.91
Gen 2 - 77.64
Gen 3 - 146
Gen 4 - 208.27
Gen 5 - 235.49
You can see it's a fairly Linear trend for the number of successive systems sold. The trend line is about 95% accurate and is expressed by this formula: Million Units Sold = 48 * Generation + 2.5

Now I'll define a Generation Winner as anytime a System Sells over 60% of the total available. The Winners are
NES 100%
SNES 63%
PS 71%
PS2 73%
For the Current Gen their is no winner. The Wii only sold ~40%.
If any one of the systems had been like the prior winners you'd expect them to be at least 140M to 160M and I'd bet if they did it right Sony could have hit 200M. But because the two major contenders went the over priced route (3DO did that and Died), and left an opening for the lost child Nintendo to find its way back things got messed up. Gen 6 should sell about 289 Million Units and Gen 7 should sell 336 Million units. If I'm right in my analysis then Nintendo stand to sell 80% of the Gen 6 Systems. If you believe that the PS3 and 360 are both in the Gen 5 and 6 then they will together only sell an additional 50 Million Units. If only one makes a Gen 6 System then the other will wait till Gen 7 to even make a system or both die.