14 DAY TRIAL // Apparently, not all holiday sales figures are 100% accurate, and even better, what seems like a reliable news source is not that accurate. All the major gaming news websites (except Softpedia) reported the sales numbers of next-gen for the holidays.
GamesIndustry.biz (a reliable source on many occasions), wrote: "According to the firm's preliminary estimates, as reported by CNBC, around 2 million Xbox 360 units were sold in North America from November up until December 25. The figure for Nintendo Wii stood at 1.8 million units - despite the fact the console only launched in North America on November 19, and the first batch of stock sold out within hours. Stock shortages were an even bigger problem for Sony. Around 750,000 PlayStation 3 units were sold during the same period."
Today, the same website clarifies some erroneous information that slipped in their material. By the looks of it, the holiday sales figures were falsely attributed to the NPD Group. Here's what NPD's David Riley told GameDaily.biz: "Recent media reports erroneously cited The NPD Group as having provided to CNBC December '06 retail sales for the video game industry. Although the specific CNBC segment included NPD's November '06 console hardware install base sales figures, there were no sales figures or forecasts from NPD for December 2006. NPD's December/Year-End sales data will become available Jan 11".
So, it is certain that the Xbox 360 sold the most in pre-holidays period, with Wii trailing behind. This is not questioned, but the source of the information. Is it that important?