Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

I think Xbox 360's relationship with Netflix is helping them considerably. It has become a more versatile console, plus it was the first one to hit the market, which can make a difference in the end since a lot of people with multiple consoles own more games for the oldest one.

Posted by sek | October 6, 2009 06:51 AM

I think this is a sound call. The 360 with it's Xbox live and most complete library of some of the very best gaming you can get.

Netflix
Xbox Live Gaming
Low price of Hardware

Posted by Trekster_gamer | October 7, 2009 07:49 AM

Given the disparity between sales rate (an actual measure of popularity) and the search frequency, it's very unlikely to be due to popularity.

More likely is that it's because of it's high failure rate. A lot of people are experiencing 360 hardware failure (RROD, etc...), disc-scratching, and so on. Statistically it makes sense.

Posted by Mark | October 7, 2009 02:32 PM

Very misleading title. This is an article based on internet searches.

Posted by David | October 7, 2009 04:47 PM

um you know could be this game which fans kill for it call , halo, though is crap they will fall flr it anytime you know, as for consoles getting fixed or bought cause the warranty not use anymore.

Posted by BlackSharinganX | October 7, 2009 05:12 PM

Funny that the PS3 and the 360 seem to have consistently higher search rates that the Wii, which has absolutely dominated the market during much of that period. That alone calls your conclusion and the value of this data in supporting it into question.

Robin, I don't think you can draw this conclusion based on just search data. There are too many other variables at play. For one, I would confidently wager 360 and PS3 people are a more internet-centric breed than the Wii demographic. That would inflate the search numbers for both above those of the Wii. Further, the 360 gets a lot of heat (no pun intended) for their hardware issues.

In short, you aren't exactly comparing apples to apples here. The demographics are different, and the data clearly shows little historical correlation with sales or even install base.

Search data is an ok tool for trending (product A increased, product B decreased), but comparing relative absolute numbers (product A got more than product B) is always a bit of a crapshoot at best, and when taken without additional context can be absolutely unreliable. This appears to be such a case.

Posted by mike | October 7, 2009 05:27 PM

Thanks for all the commnents!

It may well be that some of the people searching for Xbox 360 are looking for technical info, but explicit searches for such terms rank quite low down the list. Last week for example, 'xbox 360 red ring of death' was the most popular technical Xbox related term, but only ranked 25th amongst all xbox related terms.

Robin

Posted by Robin Goad | October 7, 2009 05:42 PM

@mike

Regarding your comment about the Wii, this chart is just over the last year. If you follow links in the first paragraph, they point to our data from the last couple of years showing that the Wii was much miore searched for during 2007 and 2008.

Thanks, Robin

Posted by Robin Goad | October 7, 2009 05:47 PM

Robin, fair enough. I also realized you are looking at UK only, and not worldwide. So I checked Google Trends, and the charts are virtually identical. I overlayed this with the only free source of sales data I could dig up: VGChartz.com. So for the sake of argument let's forget the Wii for the moment, and look at Google Trends charts for the 360 and PS3 for just 2009.

The 360 has enjoyed a higher overall search rate for most of 2009. However, for much of this time global sales were neck-and-neck. Further, the PS3 sold more units throughout September, despite the reflected 360 search advantage in that timeframe. This could be a result of purchase behavior trailing the August search bahavior, but...

...There's another odd thing: the huge search spike for the 360 in May and June had no visible equivalent in unit sales, either concurrently OR trailing.

So I'm not sure how the 360 regaining the lead in search traffic can be seen as predictive of being the dominant sales player, when such correlation has been suspect at best thus far. It does look like the 360 enjoyed a legitimate sales advantage when it had a 2-1 advantage in search (late May through August), but it's a rough correlation and even then, it's nowhere close to that currently.

In summary: having a lead in search has never seemed to correlate with a lead in sales in this space. Relative changes in search behavior, however, seem to have some sales correlation, but as I illustrated above, even massive spikes in search appear to sometimes impact nothing on the sales side.

And yes I am being very nitpicky, but I love the industry in question and I also love the science/art of predictive analytics. This is good stuff...thanks for the article. :-)

Posted by mike | October 7, 2009 07:02 PM

That is interesting, I thought Microsoft's XBOX 360 had lost all trust from the console users, you with the whole RRoD error all? but hey i still think it's Great! :D

PS. Can't wait for HALO REACH next year! :D

Posted by LTwitt3R | October 8, 2009 12:55 AM