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NPD Will No Longer Publicly Provide Games Hardware Sales Data

Posted by Zonk on from the end-of-the-fun dept.

Newsweek's LevelUp blog has the big news of the day: the monthly releases of NPD sales information for the games industry have (for the time being) come to an end. N'Gai Croal and Geoff Keighly have a lengthy discussion about the withdrawal of that information from a reliable source. They also discuss the huge number of AAA games releasing this month, and which of those are likely to come out on top. N'Gai also notes that, as far as the NPD was concerned, we should have seen this coming. "NPD Group director David Riley contacted us with a statement to clarify his company's new position, which reads: At this time last year, it was made very clear that NPD will provide media with hardware sales figures, but that it would only be temporary. As you may recall, we never provided these numbers until Nov.'06, the first month when all three new consoles were on the market. It's been a year, so it's time to pull back. It's better to pull back and leave it up to our clients to release their numbers. Or, if manufacturers tell us it's okay to release their hardware sales numbers, then we'll go back to providing them, but that shouldn't be our call."

56 comments

  1. Perhaps this should read... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Perhaps this should read "pressured by Sony", since who else would care about their console sales being revealed? Bit of a coincidence that it happens at the same time the PS3 flounders compared to the competition IMO.

    1. Re:Perhaps this should read... by PresidentEnder · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Hasn't the PS3 had lackluster sales for its entire lifespan? A serious question, rather than a disagreement with parent or an attempt to troll.

      --
      I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
    2. Re:Perhaps this should read... by moderatorrater · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't know about the US, but in Japan their sales are picking up quite quickly. If they were going to suppress the numbers because of low sales, they would have done it a year ago. As it is, it looks more like it was either a legitimately temporary policy that came up for review or else they realize that their sales are going to start surpassing the Wii's within a year or two and they want to be the only ones that know when that happens for sure (and being able to claim it whenever they want to).

    3. Re:Perhaps this should read... by Gothic_Walrus · · Score: 2, Interesting

      His use of "same time" is up for interpretation, though I'd agree with you that it implies a shorter period than the PS3 has been available for.

      I guess we can't entirely discount the theory that Sony was involved in this; if they're worried about the upcoming holiday system, they may well have asked NPD to stop releasing the figures. Unfortunately, we'll probably never have a more definitive answer than the quotes that are in the article...which aren't saying much.

      --
      Goo goo g'joob.
    4. Re:Perhaps this should read... by king-manic · · Score: 1

      Hasn't the PS3 had lackluster sales for its entire lifespan? A serious question, rather than a disagreement with parent or an attempt to troll. In the US it is lack luster. World wide it's picked up a lot. Media creates data for the 22-28th of October shows the PS3 1:1.4 to the wii and 5:1 with the 360. Couldn't find data for the US. Apparently world wide it's shows a more 1:1 with the 360 and a 2:1 with the wii.
      --
      "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
    5. Re:Perhaps this should read... by Chibi+Merrow · · Score: 2, Informative

      I don't know about the US, but in Japan their sales are picking up quite quickly.


      They've been under 20k units/week in Japan since August. Are we talking about the same Japan?
      --
      Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
      Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
    6. Re:Perhaps this should read... by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 1

      But in Japan their sales are picking up quite quickly
      Really? They've certainly had a couple of weeks that aren't as bad as some of the others but I think it's a bit early to be claiming some sort of significant upswing.
      --
      Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
    7. Re:Perhaps this should read... by nschubach · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      You seriously used VGChartz for your example? You can go in to the game ranking page and see where the bias on that site lies. Not to mention, the site uses the ostentatious Z for an S. I can't wait for the "Wii-tail Report." I'm sure they have something childish like that planned with all the corn-balling on that site.

      That site and nexgenwars rely on guesses. They both posted Microsoft's 10 million sales number on trust, but they both degrade and berate anyone that posts Sony published numbers. Those sites are troll magnets and ad whores.

      (Sorry, I hate when people use numbers from those sites as truth, good or bad. It's like quoting Wikipedia.)

      --
      Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
    8. Re:Perhaps this should read... by Chibi+Merrow · · Score: 1
      Well I get my numbers secondhand from media create... And PS3 hasn't broken 20k/week since August in Japan. Compared to DS Lite clearing 75k. Granted Wii's been around the 30k mark for about a month, but that's after posting almost a year of straight 150-200k numbers every week. Eventually you run out of people in Japan.

      but they both degrade and berate anyone that posts Sony published numbers.


      Probably because Sony publishes "numbers shipped" as "numbers sold" which are vastly different. What's interesting is the sales reported by retailers, not how many PS3s are sitting in warehouses.
      --
      Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
      Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
    9. Re:Perhaps this should read... by Chibi+Merrow · · Score: 1

      I find it hard to believe it's anywhere near half the sales of the Wii. Maybe the current weekly sales are close to 2:1 in the Wii's favor (it was 1.46:1 in Japan Oct 22-28), but total sales are vastly different... Wii (in Japan) was selling at 5-10x the numbers of the PS3 for most of the last year, and its sales in the US were only limited by supply. The 360 also I imagine is beating the pants off the PS3 in total sales, as they moved quite a few units in North America and the PAL regions with their one year head-start.

      --
      Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
      Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
    10. Re:Perhaps this should read... by feepness · · Score: 1

      They've been under 20k units/week in Japan since August. Are we talking about the same Japan? I believe this is what he's referring to.
    11. Re:Perhaps this should read... by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 1

      You seriously used VGChartz for your example?
      I linked to them because I don't know of anywhere else that shows figures for a time period as a nice graph.

      Whilst I didn't check every week what I did check seemed to tie in with Media Create Simple 2000 figures which are presumably more than just "guesses". Given that the poster specifically mentioned Japan and the data from there should be quite good I don't have a problem with referring to it.

      Sorry, I hate when people use numbers from those sites as truth, good or bad. It's like quoting Wikipedia.
      And I hate it when people denigrate data because of the site it comes from. It's like Wikipedia. You should look at the information and see if it is supported.
      --
      Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
    12. Re:Perhaps this should read... by Chibi+Merrow · · Score: 1

      Yeah but that's due more to Wii's sales trending downwards in the pre-holiday slump. PS3 sales hit ~10k in Sept. and again for a week in Oct. It's not really on much of an upwards trend.

      Hell, if you'd just look at September you'd think that the PSP was ruling the handheld market with ease, but in October it's way behind the DSL, again... Sony's being beat by what they described as a "gimmick" and "a last generation system", I don't think they want the NPD numbers anywhere near a headline. They'd much rather tell people how many systems they shipped to their warehouses.

      --
      Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
      Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
    13. Re:Perhaps this should read... by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 1

      I believe this is what he's referring to.
      If he is then he is an idiot.

      Most of the change in ratio in Wii to PS3 sales has been because of a reduction in Wii sales, not the PS3 "picking up".
      --
      Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
    14. Re:Perhaps this should read... by \\ · · Score: 1

      Source for your numbers?

    15. Re:Perhaps this should read... by king-manic · · Score: 1

      Japanese Source

      --
      "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
    16. Re:Perhaps this should read... by LKM · · Score: 1

      Hasn't the PS3 had lackluster sales for its entire lifespan? A serious question, rather than a disagreement with parent or an attempt to troll. In the US it is lack luster. World wide it's picked up a lot. Media creates data for the 22-28th of October shows the PS3 1:1.4 to the wii and 5:1 with the 360. Couldn't find data for the US. Apparently world wide it's shows a more 1:1 with the 360 and a 2:1 with the wii.

      I don't think this is true. Right now, sales numbers are for Wii:360:PS3 are about 3:2:1. The 360 sells twice as much as the PS3, and the Wii sells three times as much - which is actually a comparably good number for the PS3, possibly helped by people trying to get the remaining PS3s with backwards compatibility until those are discontinued.

      These numbers are from vgchartz.com, which isn't the most reliable source, but has been pretty spot-on so far.

    17. Re:Perhaps this should read... by LKM · · Score: 1

      You seriously used VGChartz for your example? You can go in to the game ranking page and see where the bias on that site lies.

      I think the game scores are voted on by the readers of the site. It's not the site's bias.

      (Sorry, I hate when people use numbers from those sites as truth, good or bad. It's like quoting Wikipedia.)

      And what's wrong with quoting Wikipedia?

    18. Re:Perhaps this should read... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep, and contrary to the poster below it's sales are lackluster in Europe AND Japan as well.

      Japan is, as expected, it's strongest market, but in comparison it's losing to the Wii, and the XBOX as usual doesn't even register there. So, the Japanese market miight be enough to keep it alive, as it kept other company's consoles alive with only good bases in Japan and not elsewhere as most of the games are made in Japan and most of them never get exported to other markets.

      The PS3 is just way too high priced for what it does, and it has no killer game yet and arguably 1 or 2 decent games released for US/Europe.

      XBOX never interested me as it's titles consist, primarily, of consolejacked PC games which I'd rather play on my PC anyways.

      Wii: If I do ever bother with a current generation console, I'd be most likely to go with that one, but at the present time I'm still getting decent console mileage out of my PS2.

      Handhelds: As I really like RPGs and tactics/strategy games that makes the DS Lite the only real choice... If I were more into old console(and other) emulation the PSP may have stood a chance, but since I'm not really, it doesn't.

    19. Re:Perhaps this should read... by xhrit · · Score: 1

      No. The PS3 has has sales that are on par with the 360's at this point in its life cycle.

      --
      Dungeon Tactics : Free Open Source SRPG
    20. Re:Perhaps this should read... by king-manic · · Score: 1

      Media create is Japan only. My point was outside the US the Ps3 is doing okay.

      --
      "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
    21. Re:Perhaps this should read... by LKM · · Score: 1

      In Japan, the 360 is basically dead, of course. But in Europe, it doesn't look that great for the PS3, either: http://vgchartz.com/hwcomps.php?cons1=Wii&reg1=Europe&cons2=PS3&reg2=Europe&cons3=X360&reg3=Europe&start=39026&end=39390

    22. Re:Perhaps this should read... by rtechie · · Score: 1

      Actually, it's "pressured by everybody". The sales folks at both Sony and Microsoft (don't know about Nintendo) have decided that releasing the console sales charts to the "public" is hurting them because the accurate information puts them at a disadvantage in licensing negotiations with third-parties. i.e. "You are selling only half of the consoles of your competitor, why should we pay the same licensing fees if we can expect reduced sales?" And the marketing people don't like the data being "public" because it can lead to negative press (console X isn't doing well against console Y).

  2. LOL NO YOU DON'T IDORT by samwh · · Score: 0, Troll

    But how will I troll /v/ now?

    1. Re:LOL NO YOU DON'T IDORT by sykopomp · · Score: 1

      I don't know, but go figure it out. Oh, and don't come back here.

  3. What is NPD? by Sowelu · · Score: 1

    Can someone summarize what NPD is? The summary doesn't say (but it should).

    1. Re:What is NPD? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The summary says the following:

      At this time last year, it was made very clear that NPD will provide media with hardware sales figures, but that it would only be temporary.

      From that, you can infer that NPD tracks sales of hardware. At that point, if you're familiar with Nielsen or Billboard, you could deduce that NPD is of the same family (but probably not genus). Or you could just leave at the point where it says 'hardware sales figures' and call it a day.

    2. Re:What is NPD? by jimboinsk · · Score: 4, Informative

      The NPD Group, Inc. provides innovative market information products and services to help our clients understand their markets and optimize their businesses. We work with more than 1,400 clients - many of which are the best-known brands in the world.
      http://www.npd.com/corpServlet?nextpage=career-overview_s.html

    3. Re:What is NPD? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As usual, this is slashdot, and you are expected to pull your own weight! Google is simply a URL away ;)

    4. Re:What is NPD? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      pretty tough words from a geek

    5. Re:What is NPD? by trolltalk.com · · Score: 2, Funny

      "As usual, this is slashdot, and you are expected to pull your own weight! Google is simply a URL away ;)"

      Its okay for slashdotters to use Yahoo!, now that congress says they're evil.

      --
      Kevin Smith on Prince
    6. Re:What is NPD? by Schraegstrichpunkt · · Score: 3, Funny
      As usual, this is slashdot, and you are expected to pull your own weight! Google is simply a URL away ;)

      Fixed that for you.

      --
      http://outcampaign.org/
  4. Summary is seriously lacking here. by Gothic_Walrus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The summary neglects to mention two important parts of the (admittedly long) blog post I saw mentioned elsewhere that I think are important.

    First, NPD will still be releasing annual and quarterly hardware figures. Not as nice as monthly, maybe, but the data will still be out there in at least some form, even if it is in a form that's not nearly as useful for analyzing sales throughout the year.

    More importantly, though, NPD is going to cut back on game figures as well - they'll only be releasing a monthly Top Five instead of a Top Ten from now on (though the Top Ten will be quarterly and annually released as well). I don't have a clue why they chose to do this...anyone have any insights on why that decision might have been made? With the amount of software released in a month and the presence of perennial best sellers like Super Smash Brothers in the sales figures, I can't imagine the usefulness of a pared down list.

    --
    Goo goo g'joob.
    1. Re:Summary is seriously lacking here. by sanosuke76 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Now that they've gotten folks used to seeing a lot of info from them, they're probably hoping to start coaxing folks into paying for subscriptions in order to see the data.

      Given that NPD info was being watched by an ungodly number of gaming bloggers and such, there's probably more than a few who would pay for continued access at the same level.

      When in doubt, always ask, "Is there a way for them to monetize this?" Because if they can, it's probably why they're doing it.

      --
      My 229 is all the Sig I need http://thegunwiki.com/
    2. Re:Summary is seriously lacking here. by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 1

      I think the paying people got a lot more information either way. Maybe this last year was a publicity drive to show that.

    3. Re:Summary is seriously lacking here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Vgcharts is shit.

    4. Re:Summary is seriously lacking here. by whoop · · Score: 1

      If they are looking to increase sales by requiring subscriptions, I would think they'd likely have some sort of restrictions in their user agreement to prevent one blogger from just posting all the sales figures and everyone else pulling from him.

    5. Re:Summary is seriously lacking here. by badasscat · · Score: 3, Interesting

      With the amount of software released in a month and the presence of perennial best sellers like Super Smash Brothers in the sales figures, I can't imagine the usefulness of a pared down list.

      Wrong question. The real question is the utility in releasing these lists to the public at all.

      The industry gets a list that includes sales data on every currently produced game. They pay good money for that. That's not going anywhere.

      But what does anybody gain by releasing those numbers to the public? All it does is feed the trolls (some of which work under the title of "editor" for major gaming sites). Game makers hate it because unless you're #1, it just makes you look bad. The NPD feels like they're giving away part of the report they charge for, so they don't like it either. It's debatable whether or not it serves the public, because all we do is argue about what the numbers mean, as if we know anything. It's certainly not information we *need*, in any case.

      So I can't say I have much of a problem with the list being pared down, and I certainly understand the reasoning for it.

    6. Re:Summary is seriously lacking here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      VGChartz, is, at best, grossly inaccurate.

    7. Re:Summary is seriously lacking here. by nschubach · · Score: 1

      You know VGChartz compares their numbers to NPD and adjusts them to fit within 5-15% depending on the bias they prefer, right? Have you seen the game ranking page? There's no way in hell Nintendo has 8/10 top 10 games. Where are all the XBox and ever popular PS2 games? You'd think that with over 140 Million PS2 sales, the top ranked PS2 game might be higher than 36th place.

      VGChartz is no better than nexgenwars. They both guess at the numbers, adjust them when it suits their motive and have a forum full of drones kissing ioi's ass to try to prove that their purchase is the "winner" in this market competition. Hell, with "fanboys" like that, the big companies don't even have to pay advertising dollars. Their die hard fans do all the market manipulation for them.

      Even doing research for this post I realized why I stopped looking at that site. I see that the forum is still rampant with trolls starting arguments over their opinions and even the "mods" are joining in on it. Aren't mods supposed to be a little impartial? Not here my friend.

      For the record, as of today, going by the thread titles on the first page of all three forums (Nintendo, MS, Sony). Nintendo (1 dislike thread), MS (None, that I can find), Sony (9). That's just by reading titles. Don't you think a sales site that wants to reduce as much bias as they can would monitor this kind of thing and keep threads on the straight and narrow? Why, for a sales site, do they even allow opinion threads? Now, I don't know about you, but I seriously don't think that a console in it's first year, with less than 1% failure rate could ever get that much hate without some help. Price is one thing, but come on.

      --
      Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
    8. Re:Summary is seriously lacking here. by nschubach · · Score: 1

      Oh, and you'd also think that the "owner/administrator" of such a sales site would keep his profile page as neutral as possible as well.

      http://vgchartz.com/profiles/profile.php?id=74

      --
      Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
    9. Re:Summary is seriously lacking here. by DarthJohn · · Score: 2, Informative

      Before November last year they weren't giving out the numbers. When media folks were asking for the numbers for the new systems they decided to, for a limited time, make more information public for free. They have been selling the data all along, and presumably haven't been giving all of it out. The whole thing was just to answer what they thought would be a short lived higher demand due to the launching of the new gaming systems.

      Apparently they've noticed the whining from the blogs and are surprised at the outrage, but may or may not do anything about it.

      Got some updates from http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3164195

    10. Re:Summary is seriously lacking here. by rsmith-mac · · Score: 1

      They do, you're not allowed to publicize it. In fact this is very much an all-or-nothing situation: either NPD publishes it for free, or the public at large can never have it because the press can't report on it. Since it's basically up to the Big 3 to approve another year of public data, hopefully they'll go through with it.

    11. Re:Summary is seriously lacking here. by tepples · · Score: 1

      Where are all the XBox and ever popular PS2 games? You'd think that with over 140 Million PS2 sales, the top ranked PS2 game might be higher than 36th place. What if there are no blockbuster PS2 games, but all of the top PS2 games are still selling at a modest but profitable level? Then all the PS2 software sales get split among different titles, and none of them gets pushed to the top ten.
  5. oh no, what will we argue about now? by brokeninside · · Score: 1

    I think /. will lose half of its page views without the regular release of console sales numbers to spawn 500+ comment threads on why sucks.

  6. VGChartz by Krommenaas · · Score: 1

    Who needs NPD? http://www.vgchartz.com/ has detailed weekly sales data available for free, and they're no less reliable than NPD nowadays.

    1. Re:VGChartz by Dobeln · · Score: 1

      VGChartz aren't halfway as reliable as NPD.

    2. Re:VGChartz by rbarreira · · Score: 1

      Yes they are. The farthest they've been away from NPD was 30% (so there goes your "halfway" comment). BTW, Vgchartz was more reliable than NPD for the Wii and the DS in the last quarter.

      --

      The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
    3. Re:VGChartz by Shados · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They're good "enough", but the problem is that their numbers are adjusted to NPD... without NPD, they'll be progressively farther until their data is meaningless.

    4. Re:VGChartz by Turken · · Score: 1

      Try re-reading the parent post. His claim is that VGchartz is less than half RELIABLE, not half ACCURATE. If VGcharts was reliable, then they would not always be revising their numbers to match the industry-accepted NPD numbers.

      So... to check reliability, count the number of months where VGchartz's initially published numbers have been acceptably close to the NPD numbers, and then count the number of months where they had to make adjustments after the fact. I'm willing to bet that their initial guesses were on the mark much less than half the time.

      As pointed out in other threads here... without the monthly NPD numbers, all VGcharts has to go on is their wild prediction method which is wrong more often than not, and they won't have any way of fixing those wrong numbers until the quarterly/annual NPD results get published.

      And just out of curiosity, how do you know that VGchartz was "more reliable" than NPD last quarter? Did NPD goof up and change their results? Do you have access the the absolute true numbers that both organizations are only approximating? What metric are you going by for this reliability claim?

    5. Re:VGChartz by rbarreira · · Score: 1

      There are other ways of knowing whether your numbers are truly off or not. Each quarter, the manufacturers release shipped numbers which in some cases can show whether your numbers were correct or not. Of course shipped doesn't equal sold, but there's still something to judge numbers against without NPD.

      How do you think NPD judges if their numbers were correct too? They have around 60% of the market covered, which is obviously not enough for perfect estimates. There's plenty of historical data and news reports which help everyone make better estimates.

      NPD is not the be all end all of game sales. Vgchartz's owner actually said that he would stop taking NPD's numbers as gospel after he had to undo corrections he did due to NPD (which was wrong). As I said, they failed at tracking the Wii and DS more than Vgchartz did in the last quarter.

      --

      The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
    6. Re:VGChartz by Turken · · Score: 1

      There are other ways of knowing whether your numbers are truly off or not. Each quarter, the manufacturers release shipped numbers which in some cases can show whether your numbers were correct or not. Of course shipped doesn't equal sold, but there's still something to judge numbers against without NPD.

      Again, just asking for some examples. Can you point me to somewhere (give me a link, not just your assertion that NPD was wrong) where one of the console manufacturers has posted their own numbers which conflict with the NPD ones? If NPD is so wrong, why are the NPD numbers THE values quoted in all of the manufacturers' press releases? The only way there can be a difference is to use the "shipped vs. sold" argument, and we really don't want to start down that tired path...

      How do you think NPD judges if their numbers were correct too? They have around 60% of the market covered, which is obviously not enough for perfect estimates. There's plenty of historical data and news reports which help everyone make better estimates.

      Statistics. You've apparently never taken a class on business statistics. Contrary to popular game-blog-commenter belief, NPD does not need to survey 100% of retailers to project an accurate estimation of product sales. Just like you can't/don't have to measure every vibration of an atom to gain significant information from it. Mathematicians use models for a very good reason. In fact, from a statistical point of view, having 60% market coverage to work with is far more than they actually need to make reliable estimates. Sure, the results won't be perfect down to the absolute single unit for each product, but the results will be close enough that anybody who knows better will accept them as accurate. Again, that's why the major manufacturers use the NPD numbers in all of their press releases. NPD does product tracking professionally. They have their sales models which have been tweaked and adjusted over time to be as close to perfect as anyone could possibly get. As for the "historical data and news reports," if you trace those back far enough, you'll find that almost all of them come from (surprise, surprise) NPD's original data.

      NPD is not the be all end all of game sales. Vgchartz's owner actually said that he would stop taking NPD's numbers as gospel after he had to undo corrections he did due to NPD (which was wrong). As I said, they failed at tracking the Wii and DS more than Vgchartz did in the last quarter.

      Yes NPD is not the absolute authority. Only God knows the actual sales data down to the smallest detail. But, NPD is a professional third-party (that is, independent of manufacturer bias) organization with a significant history of accurate reporting and the trust of the major industry players. If they were as bad as you claim they are, then the businesses that depend on their data would stop paying for it, and the company would quickly fold. Funny thing is, that hasn't happened yet, and doesn't look like it will anytime soon. Mistakes may happen, but they are infrequent and quickly addressed.

      VGchartz, on the other hand, is one website run by a guy who is likely very good with statistics but simply does not have the time and resources necessary to accurately derive the data that his website sorely depends on. It has a history of frequent revisionism and routinely disagrees with the professionally derived data. Now, whether the website owner decides to believe NPD over his own calculations is a decision purely up to him.

      Which finally brings me back to the original question... aside from your own assertions and the personal testimony of one person with a vested interest in the success of Vgchartz, what proof do you have that it is in fact more reliable than NPD? By what standard did NPD "fail" on reporting Wii/DS sales numbers? Links, anyone? Searching for press releases and news reports of NPD errors and corrections only brings up news from last year over how they counted sales of Twilight Princess.

  7. This is bad for gamers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is very bad.

    Why? If it is up to Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony to provide sales numbers, how are we knowing they are telling the truth? The 3 companies already skew their sales in a positive manner (Sony mainly) and do not admit that they are losing (Sony again with the PS3). This is a bad day for gamers since we will never know the real truth of hardware and software sales anymore. BOO HOO