Forget Reading About the Console War, Instead Watch it in Real-Time

Ran across this interesting site that tracks the number of consoles sold and said platform's market share. It's kind of pointless now prior to the launch of the PS3 and Wii, but if its sales tracker is accurate it could be quite interesting to watch the battle in real-time.

But how accurate are these numbers?

"The next generation of gaming is upon us, and the console wars has begun. NexGen Wars.com has spent countless hours researching sales facts from dozens of sources to track the sales of the consoles and monitor the next generation of console wars between the Microsoft Xbox 360, the Sony Playstation 3, and the Nintendo Wii. Remember, these numbers are only estimates, but they are constantly monitored and upated to assure the closest estimates possible for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Wii."

I love how they don't name these "dozens of sources." I couldn't find any hardware sales trackers on Google, and how the hell are these accurate? Are all the retailers around the world hooked up to some database adding a unit the tally after each 360 transaction? I don't even think Microsoft could really track real-time 360 sales. There would have to be a hell of a lot of cooperation from sources. Am I the only one that finds this site shady as all hell?

Can't wait to see mainstream publications citing this as a source for sales data (/sarcasm). Should be good message board fodder though...