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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."
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
Can someone summarize what NPD is? The summary doesn't say (but it should).
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).
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.
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.
I don't know, but go figure it out. Oh, and don't come back here.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
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.
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
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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
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
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.
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
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
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
Source for your numbers?
Japanese Source
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Who needs NPD? http://www.vgchartz.com/ has detailed weekly sales data available for free, and they're no less reliable than NPD nowadays.
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.
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?
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
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."
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®1=Europe&cons2=PS3®2=Europe&cons3=X360®3=Europe&start=39026&end=39390
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).