WMS highlights NPD 'discrepancies'

Wedbush Morgan Securities has told GamesIndustry.biz that there are discrepancies between NPD's latest US sales data and the figures released by some retailers and publishers - including Nintendo.

"The numbers were surprising to me. I truly expected higher sell-through, and there are a few things about the figures that raise questions," said analyst Michael Pachter.

"There was a discrepancy between the number of Wii units claimed to have been shipped by Nintendo to North America - approximately 2 million - and the cumulative sell-through measured by NPD - approximately 1.1 million.

"This difference alone is almost impossible to reconcile," he added.

Pachter said he was also surprised by the 19 per cent year-on-year drop in PlayStation 2 software sales, observing, "PS2 software has been running flat year-over-year since June, and this kind of decline was not expected.

"Again, it's not easy to reconcile NPD's figures with other company claims. For example, GameStop claimed its software sales were up 18 per cent in November-December. However, NPD figures show that November-December software sales growth was only 6 per cent."

Pachter conceded that it was possible GameStop had increased its market share considerably over the two month period. However, he continued, "Given comments from Best Buy and Circuit City about their sales, I find that possibility to be extremely remote."

According to Pachter, Sony had "a great month" and was the market leader, while Nintendo also enjoyed bumper sales was "clearly number two". It was also a good period for Microsoft, he went on, which secured "the largest share of next-gen console hardware and software sales".

In short, Pachter concluded, "Everyone's a winner."