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NPD Reverses Console Numbers Decision
The wailing and gnashing of teeth from the game-playing media seems to have gotten through to the NPD group. Despite earlier statements to the contrary, it looks like for the time being they plan to continue to release console sales figures to the press at large. Next Generation reports: "NPD Group's David Riley admitted in an e-mail Monday, 'Honestly, it was terribly naive of me to think that we could simply stop providing these after giving them freely for a year ... Nothing is going to change. All will remain the same ... The 'Big Three' [Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony] are on board, so we'll be providing these figures indefinitely.'"
For a minute there, I was afraid the console flame wars would have to rely on blind speculation.
One can go away and something else can take its place.
I.E, from Sega to Microsoft.
Maybe the next one will be Sony to Google?
NPD has played this game of teasing segments of the software industry with figures before... a few years back it was handhelds, and for a little while you could watch Palm and Microsoft and Sharp and the rest fight it out... but when they pulled the numbers there wasn't a peep.
Gamers, however, they're big business, and a noisy one. They don't go quietly away when you say "no".
This is great advertisement for them. Since all they DO is market research, giving away some was a good idea... Taking it away and then giving it back was even better. Just brilliant.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Gamers, however, they're big business, and a noisy one. They don't go quietly away when you say "no".
You're absolutely right. It's almost like they stomp their feet and throw a temper tantrum...
Or maybe there was a big to-do for about 3 days ... then nothing ...
And they figured "Holy shit - we'd better pretend this is a big deal and the sheeple are still whining about it, otherwise we'll fade into obscurity!"
I mean really, did anyone care after the first week?
Woah, NPD also the comment number decisions?
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
All it takes is one leak from Joe Nobody's blog and all these numbers they're trying to assign a value to will suddenly be open to the public anyway. So instead of building up all this bad karma with their customer base, it makes sense to give the general numbers out and keep the juicy stuff "premium", the boring facts and figures your average Xbox fanboy doesn't care about as long as he can rant about how the PS3 isn't selling as much.
So your armchair economist fanboy blogs get to overhype and exaggerate every nuance of the basic sales figures, NPD comes off looking like mysterious but benevolent database gods, and the industry keeps on churning out more sequels to the Sims and Madden.
Everybody wins, right?
From TFA:
"The widespread backlash took NPD games researchers by surprise."
And "Honestly, it was terribly naive of me to think that we could simply stop providing these after giving them freely for a year."
Anybody else find it funny that a market research firm was surprised by reaction to changes in its market?
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
The fact they couldn't predict that the general public didn't want to lose access to information is astounding. There is no greater way to make someone want something than to restrict it.
Every group, genre, industry sector, what have you, has a noisy minority. There were similar complaints when NPD pulled their handheld market share figures, but it didn't have an impact on their decision.
If the noisy minority is big enough to have this effect, that's significant.
but what the fuck is an NPD?