March 2008 NPD Data

Correction: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (PS3) sold 154,700 units

Video game hardware sales in March were in line with the market's expectations. Total hardware units came in at 2.235 million units (excluding the PlayStation 2), 0.59% above the market's expected 2.222 million units.

Although the market accurately predicted the total market for hardware, Nintendo took significant market share from its competitors this month even beyond what was expected. The Nintendo DS sold 698,000 units compared to the expected 613,600 units. Nintendo Wii sold 721,000 units compared to an expected 642,200 units.

The Xbox 360 retook its lead over the PS3, sliding ahead with 262,000 units against the PS3's 257,000 units. Both platforms underperformed the markets expectations, leading us to believe that the Wii and DS had directly taken market share from these two consoles.

The Sony PSP sold a very respectable 297,000 units, 9.48% below the expected 328,000 units.

Growth in video game sales were well ahead of expectations for March. Total video game software sales grew 63% from $579.1 million in March 2007 to $945.6 million. The simExchange prediction market expected $842.7 million.

The month's big winner was Nintendo's Super Smash Bros Brawl with 2.7 million units, dethroning the reigning champion, Activision's Call of Duty 4, which came in 9th this month.

Sales of Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (Xbox 360) beat out EA's competing Army of Two (Xbox 360) on the Xbox 360 platform; however, the PS3 version of Army of Two came ahead of Ubisoft's counterpart.

PSP hits God of War: Chains of Olympus and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 both sold beyond the market's expectations with very strong opening month results.

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

• US Hardware in March 2008

  Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  Nintendo Wii	721,000	642,200	+12.27%
  Nintendo DS	698,000	613,600	+13.75%
  PlayStation Portable	297,000	328,100	-9.48%
  Xbox 360	262,000	307,600	-14.82%
  PLAYSTATION 3	257,000	330,400	-22.22%
  PlayStation 2	216,000	--	--
  Total Hardware Units	2,235,000	2,221,900	+0.59%

• US Software in March 2008

  Rank	Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  1	Super Smash Bros Brawl (Wii)	2,700,000	2,314,800	+16.64%
  2	Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (Xbox 360)	752,300	606,100	+48.21%
  3	Army of Two (Xbox 360)	606,100	407,900	+48.59%
  4	Wii Play (Wii)	409,800	--	--
  5	God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP)	340,500	252,700	+34.74%
  6	Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 (PSP)	301,600	202,900	+48.64%
  7	Guitar Hero: Legends of Rock (Wii)	264,100	--	--
  8	Major League Baseball 2K8	237,100	--	--
  9	Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360)	237,000	--	--
  10	Army of Two (PS3)	224,900	190,100	+18.31%
  NR	Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (PS3)	154,700	181,400	-14.72%
  NR	Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates	67,300	69,700	-3.44%
  NR	Bully: Scholarship Edition (Wii)	37,400	47,100	-20.59%
  NR	Hot Shots Golf (PS3)	36,200	49,900	-27.45%
  	Total Tracked Software Units	5,221,000	4,224,100	+23.60%
  	Total Software Sales	$945.6M	$842.7M	+12.21%

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).