alt Hacker NewsI read the analysis and I don’t see anywhere that it claims to measure demand.
It seems pretty clear it’s about how many units Valve is selling (charging for, shipping) and explicitly not about reservations or demand.
Valve is being smart here. It is far better to be supply constrained at launch than to have enough capacity to meet initial demand (and then far too much capacity when demand slows over time).
Ya, the article doesn't specifically use the word demand but in the final section Is It Good? says "The estimated 12k to 15k weekly sales volume reflects the fact that this is not a mainstream home run." this implies that the 12k-15k is a demand number but we can't reach that conclusion with this data.