August 2010 NPD Sales Data

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

• US Hardware in August 2010

  Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  Nintendo DS	342,700	406,400	-15.67%
  Xbox 360	356,700	346,500	+2.94%
  Nintendo Wii	244,300	255,900	-4.53%
  PLAYSTATION 3	226,000	213,100	+6.05%
  PlayStation Portable	79,400	74,000	+7.30%
  Total Hardware Units	1,936,000	1,799,600	+7.58%

• US Software in August 2010

  Rank	Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  1	Madden NFL 11 (Xbox 360)	920,800	894,700	+2.92%
  2	Madden NFL 11 (PS3)	893,600	682,800	+30.87%
  3	Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii)	124,600	--	--
  4	Mafia II (Xbox 360)	121,600	130,600	-6.89%
  5	New Super Mario Bros (DS)	110,400	--	--
  6	New Super Mario Bros (Wii)	--	--	--
  7	Mafia II (PS3)	--	--	--
  8	Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360)	--	--	--
  9	NCAA Football 11 (Xbox 360)	--	--	--
  10	Wii Fit Plus	--	--	--
  	Total Software Sales	$403.5M	$434.7M	-7.18%

The market also tracked the sales of Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days (Xbox 360) which did not make the top 10. The trades for this future will be rolled back.

Where do the expected sales numbers come from?

The simExchange is the video game stock market. Gamers and developers sign up on the simExchange for a free trading account. Using fantasy money, players buy virtual stocks in video games they believe are under-predicting sales and short sell stocks they believe are over-predicting sales. This concept is widely known as "the Wisdom of the Crowd" and this system is known as a "prediction market." Sign up and play today.

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).