Top 2009 Gaming Trends Published

I know many of you have joined Twitter to stay up-to-date with gaming news, so I thought I'd post this list of the top gaming trends over the 2009 holiday season.

Aggregame published their 2009 Holiday gaming trends for 2009 last week and here's what everyone on Twitter was chatting about. Looks like Nintendo had an awesome season w/ a 900% increase in social buzz. PS3 saw a 26% increase, and the 360 only a 13% increase...

http://blog.aggregame.com/2009/12/top-console-video-game-sales-christmas.html

The report is based on volume of tweets on Twitter before and after Christmas, but it still serves as a pretty accurate metric for potential sales performance for each. However, this kind of data is available in real-time, whereas we have to wait weeks or even months for formal sales data from NPD and others.

1) Nintendo Wii - 180,498 tweets
2) Playstation 3 - 76,544 tweets
3) CoD:MW2 - 54,520 tweets
4) Xbox 360 - 42,277 tweets
5) DJ Hero - 19,408 tweets
6) WoW - 18,430 tweets
7) Wii Fit - 16,997 tweets
8) Uncharted 2 - 15,684 tweets
9) L4D2 - 12,477 tweets
10) Sims 3 - 11,871 tweets

I was also surprised to see the various games in that report that did well, and did not do so well.

What do you guys and girls think of it?

While I always find numbers interesting, these are no were near as reliable as NPD numbers.  There is a bias in audience here.  Not everyone has a Twitter account, and even fewer feel the need to post on Twitter how they feel about their video game-related holiday gifts.
 
That being said, I think it can reflect massive trends, but not smaller ones.  We all know by now that the Wii's sales killed it from Thanksgiving on, and that Modern Warfare 2 was ridiculously huge, but I don't think one can extrapolate most individual game sales from something as this.

Wait, why are they basing sales figures on tweets? Why not ask retailers or the manufacturers or the publishers? You know, people who might have some sort of clue as to what sold how much.

I didn't tweet about my new games.  
 
Maybe I should tweet random games to fudge the numbers.

" I didn't tweet about my new games.   Maybe I should tweet random games to fudge the numbers. "

" @DanielJW said:

" I didn't tweet about my new games.   Maybe I should tweet random games to fudge the numbers. "

"Tony Hawk: RIDE", "Tony Hawk: RIDE" , "Tony Hawk: RIDE", "Tony Hawk: RIDE".  Let's do it.  Ready?  Go!  "

" While I always find numbers interesting, these are no were near as reliable as NPD numbers.  There is a bias in audience here.  Not everyone has a Twitter account, and even fewer feel the need to post on Twitter how they feel about their video game-related holiday gifts.  That being said, I think it can reflect massive trends, but not smaller ones.  We all know by now that the Wii's sales killed it from Thanksgiving on, and that Modern Warfare 2 was ridiculously huge, but I don't think one can extrapolate most individual game sales from something as this. "

" @MaTtKs: I like how you totally ignored the last half of my post. "

" @MaTtKs: You quoted my "newly added" paragraph...  You pretty much called me wrong, but ultimately agreed with me. "

" @MaTtKs: Yeah, there is an "inbetween" here.  Massive trending in the video game market is bound to be reflected in a report like this.  On Amazon, the top 5 items sold where Nintendo Wii products.  With that kind of grand "outlier-i-ness", I would expect tweets to reflect that.  But, on a smaller scale, like the sale of other, less spectacularly selling products, it's not going to reflect as accurately as the NPD sales. "

While i agree that using one merchants sales figures isn't going to be entirely accurate (as it isn't really a sample, only a member of a population), even though you give us this tweet chart and scream "Hey, look at this Amazon sales chart that Kotaku put up", I just don't think that there are enough people with twitter accounts that tweet about games.  Twitter has a massively older audience.  As of late March 2009, over 50% of the people that used twitter where older than 34, and I wouldn't really expect people that old to tweet about video game products.
 
Also, it's unfair to assume that a tweet is always used to positively describe a product.
 
But I agree this can be used to extrapolate certain, massive trends.  Just not smaller ones. 

" While i agree that using one merchants sales figures isn't going to be entirely accurate (as it isn't really a sample, only a member of a population), even though you give us this tweet chart and scream "Hey, look at this Amazon sales chart that Kotaku put up", I just don't think that there are enough people with twitter accounts that tweet about games. "