Well... in a thread titled "Sea of Thieves is the currently the best selling Preordered game on PSN U.S." I thought it was worth pointing out, because that word "currently" is doing a metric fuckton of work there and context matters. Look at the twitter replies and it's obvious most people don't know.
We have no way of knowing what the actual best performing pre-orders are by total at any point unless Sony outright gives us that data in a press release for whatever reason; the chart does not offer that data to us, just what's
currently hot in an unspecified window. That's why I made the parallel to Amazon Movers & Shakers which is a similarly constructed chart that people are aware of and know not to put too much weight into (doesn't stop warriors from endlessly trying to though).
Some people seem to think it's a running total but that's not how it works, so I think the "duhhh" comment and the giggles are a little unfair - I'd rather people view and use data with the appropriate context, otherwise what's the point?
PSN pre-orders chart is a temporally-windowed snapshot into what's happening right now - not a running tally. That's why games jump to the top right after pre-orders become available and why titles jump around form day to day - they're not battling it out neck-and-neck for pre-order totals, they're just the most popular right there and then in the moment. It's a marketing tool intended to reinforce the new hotness and convince people to spend.
@Vertigo pointed this out but nobody seemed to blink an eye, so I thought it was worth mentioning since people are now showing screen shots from a few days later where games are jumbled up from previous positions, to simply suggest reasons why this happens.
People like Benji who profess to be analysts should know better. In fact they do know better most of the time, but it seems the one metric they're truly concerned with is their own engagement.
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