June 2008 NPD Data

Sales of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (PS3) as reported by NPD here do not include copies bundled with the PS3 hardware.

Neither Grand Theft Auto IV (Xbox 360) nor Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3) made the Top 10 this month and so we will need to get the data from NPD manually. There may be some delay due to E3.

• US Hardware in June 2008

  Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  Nintendo DS	783,000	721,200	+8.57%
  Nintendo Wii	666,700	755,800	-11.79%
  PLAYSTATION 3	405,500	316,900	+27.96%
  PlayStation Portable	337,400	286,000	17.97%
  Xbox 360	219,800	248,700	-11.62%
  Total Hardware Units	2,412,400	2,328,600	+3.60%

• US Software in June 2008

  Rank	Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  1	Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (PS3)	774,600	720,100	+7.57%
  2	Guitar Hero On Tour (DS)	422,300	--	--
  3	Ninja Gaiden II (Xbox 360)	372,700	--	--
  4	Wii Fit (Wii)	372,700	471,500	-21.06%
  5	Wii Play (Wii)	359,100	--	--
  6	Battlefield: Bad Company (Xbox 360)	346,800	--	--
  7	Mario Kart (Wii)	322,400	316,800	+1.77%
  8	Lego Indiana Jones (Wii)	294,500	--	--
  9	Lego Indiana Jones (DS)	267,800	--	--
  10	Lego Indiana Jones (PS2)	260,300	--	--
  	Total Software Sales	$872.6M	$627.6M	+39.04%

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).