November 2007 NPD Sales Data

Video games sales for November exceeded the market's expectations. Total hardware units came in at 4.32 million units, 6.41% ahead of the market's expected 4.06 million units. Sales of all consoles, except for the Nintendo Wii, beat market expectations.

Many industry observers were concerned that the slowing US economy and slower Holiday shopping this year would dampen game sales, which explains conservative forecasts across the board. Data released by the NPD Group indicate that the pessimism was unwarranted.

As expected by the market, the Nintendo Wii lead home hardware sales with 981,000 units, just below the expected 1,085,500 units. The miss in Wii sales is likely due to a shortage of supply as the console is sold out across America. Xbox 360 came in second for home consoles with 770,000 units sold, 2.23% ahead of market expectations of 753,200 units. Once again, the PS3 came in third with 466,000 units sold, which breaks months of disappointing market expecations. The market had only expected 424,400 PS3 units to be sold.

Nintendo DS sales smashed market expectations with at 1,535,000 units sold, compared to 1,297,700 expected unit sales. The PSP sold 567,000 units, also beating expectations of 497,900 units.

Growth in video game sales was also beyond market expectations. Total video game software sales grew 61.7% from $804 million in November 2006 to $1.3 billion, ahead of the market's expected $1.16 billion.

The month's big winner, Activision's Call of Duty 4 crushed market expectations. The Xbox 360 SKU sold 1,565,404 units compared to an expectation of 840,000 units.

Electronic Arts' Rock Band also smashed expectations, selling 311,900 units on the Xbox 360, more than doubling the market's expectation of 147,900 units.

The following tables compare market expectations on the simExchange and actual results as reported by the NPD Group.

• US Hardware in November 2007

  Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  Nintendo Wii	981,000	1,085,500	-9.63%
  Nintendo DS	1,535,000	1,297,700	+18.29%
  Xbox 360	770,000	753,200	+2.23%
  PlayStation Portable	567,000	497,900	+13.88%
  PLAYSTATION 3	466,000	424,400	+9.80%
  PlayStation 2	496,000	--	--
  Total Tracked Hardware Units	4,319,000	4,058,700	+6.41%

• US Software in November 2007

  Rank	Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  1	Call of Duty 4 (Xbox 360)	1,565,404	840,000	+86.36%
  2	Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)	1,123,070	1,304,800	-13.93%
  3	Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360)	980,000	--	--
  4	Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PS2)	967,000	--	--
  5	Wii Play (Wii)	564,000	--	--
  6	Mass Effect (Xbox 360)	472,793	395,400	+19.57%
  7	Call of Duty 4 (PS3)	444,000	--	--
  8	Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Wii)	426,000	--	--
  9	Halo 3 (Xbox 360)	387,000	--	--
  10	Assassin's Creed (PS3)	376,843	272,300	+38.38%
  NR	Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (Wii)	328,314	246,600	+33.13%
  NR	Rock Band (Xbox 360)	311,903	147,900	+110.89%
  NR	Crysis (PC)	86,633	68,600	+26.28%
  NR	Unreal Tournament 3 (PC)	33,995	70,600	-51.84%
  NR	Manhunt 2 (Wii)	18,494	47,100	-60.74%
  	Total Tracked Software Units	4,317,390	3,483,300	+23.95%
  	Total Software Sales	$1.3 billion	$1.16 billion	+12.07%

How exactly does this work?

Gamers and developers sign up on the simExchange for a free trading account. Using virtual currency called DKP, players buy virtual futures contracts that are under-predicting sales and short sell futures that are over-predicting sales. This concept is widely known as "the Wisdom of the Crowd" and this system is known as a "prediction market."

About the predictions

Predictions on the simExchange should become more accurate over time as (1) the diversity of the pool of traders increases and as (2) more accurate players are rewarded with more virtual currency for their accuracy (thereby enabling them to form more predictions) and less accurate players lose virtual currency (thereby discounting their ability to form more predictions).