January 2009 NPD Data

Video game hardware sales in January 2009 were inline with the market expectations. Total hardware units (excluding PS2) sold were 1,874,500, just 1.41% ahead of the market's expectation for 1,848,500 units sold.

Nintendo Wii and Sony PSP were the only surprises. The Wii sold 679,200 units well ahead of the market's expected 584,800 units. The PSP sold 172,300 units, below the expected 225,300 units.

The Xbox 360, PS3, and Nintendo DS all sold within 4% of expectations.

Growth in video game sales were slightly below expectations for January. Total video game software sales grew 10% from $614.7 million in January 2008 to $676.6 million. Traders on the simExchange prediction market expected $694.7 million.

The market also tracked the sales of Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360), which did not make the top 10. The Monthly Sales Future will cash out at 11.3 DKP.

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

• US Hardware in January 2009

  Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  Nintendo Wii	679,200	584,800	+16.14%
  Nintendo DS	510,800	528,700	-3.39%
  Xbox 360	309,000	299,000	+3.34%
  PLAYSTATION 3	203,200	210,700	-3.56%
  PlayStation Portable	172,300	225,300	-23.52%
  PlayStation 2	101,200	--	--
  Total Hardware Units	1,874,500	1,848,500	+1.41%

• US Software in January 2009

  Rank	Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  1	Wii Fit (Wii)	777,000	665,300	+16.79%
  2	Wii Play (Wii)	415,000	359,300	+15.5%
  3	Mario Kart (Wii)	292,000	--	--
  4	Left 4 Dead (Xbox 360)	243,000	--	--
  5	Call of Duty: World At War (Xbox 360)	235,000	278,800	-15.71%
  6	Skate 2 (Xbox 360)	199,000	--	--
  7	Guitar Hero World Tour (Wii)	155,000	212,000	-26.89%
  8	New Super Mario Bros (DS)	135,000	--	--
  9	Mario Kart DS (DS)	132,000	--	--
  10	Lord of the Rings: Conquest (Xbox 360)	113,000	--	--
  	Total Software Sales	$676.6M	$694.7M	-2.61%
  	Total Tracked Software Units	1,582,000	1,515,400	+4.39%

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).