NPD Will No Longer Publicly Provide Games Hardware Sales Data

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."

Comments

Re:Perhaps this should read...

[Gothic_Walrus]

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.

Summary is seriously lacking here.

[Gothic_Walrus]

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.

Re:Summary is seriously lacking here.

[badasscat]

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.