The problem with VGChartz numbers *spin-off

I recall Square Enix sent used VGChartz-numbers in their quarterly reports about two years ago.
So they can't be that far off; they don't have the resources as the NPD, Media Create, or Chart-trk tough, but those aren't accurate either.
I recall one of the higher up's at Sega pf America, said that they'd seen sales of Sega-titles wich were sometimes as much as 30% wrong on NPD, compared to their own numbers. :-/

 

I have access to weekly GfK data and totals. VGChartz is not accurate at all for Europe. For the US I'm sure their historical data is fine since NPD eventually goes public and for Japan they just rip their "data" from M-C or Enterbrain.

For Europe and "other" they are almost 20% out for DS, 10% for PS3, 20% out for 360 and 10% out for Wii, and their Wii U sales for the US are not right either from the early NPD data I have seen. Oh, and for last month they have PS3 down at just over 700k when sales were just under 800k. For Black Friday Sony revealed in their press release that they had sold 525k systems in the US (tracked by NPD), they have it as 429k.

VGChartz is not a real sales tracker. It is a fanwank website which an egomaniac uses to make money from fanboys. The less it is used everywhere in the world of gaming the better as it will be consigned to the dustbin of history much faster.

 

I agree vgchartz is a farce and all that. I hate making posts like this cause people always misinterpet it as "omgosh ur defending chartzzz u fool". Which I'm not. But I happened to notice apparently their NPD prediction was surprisingly close last month (these are not post-corrected AFAIK, eg, they were released before NPD)




actual results

Hardware

their numbers seemed close enough for every platform to not be an anomaly.

long ago i'd always hoped they develop enough sources to be a pretty good pre-npd predictor. it never happened and i gave up. but maybe they are having another go at it. i dont know if theyve been accurate any other recent months.

 

Not sure where to post but SOny reached 30 millions units in "its" Eurozone (not sure what countries are included).

 

About the "trackers" like NPD, MediaCreate etc., they are estimates as well, right? I vaguely remember they aren't actual sales numbers either.

 

Looks like it won't be a problem for 2013, as they seem to have discontinued the PS2 already in Japan so the rest of the world might be this year... I smell a PS3 price cut coming up

 

NPD and I'm assuming MediaCreate get much of their sales data from retail outlets both large and small. They then use that to estimate how much was sold overall at retail.

So it isn't an absolutely precise number, but in general it's pretty close.

VGChartz may or may not have access to some retail outlets, but undoubtedly none as large or as numerous as the established market watchers. I'm going to guess that they have access to one or two maybe more small retail outlet's sales numbers. And then they use that to compare to NPD/MediaCreate/whatever to find some sort of corrolation and then use that factor to "guess" what sales in later months are.

As they likely only have a very small sampling of retail data (assuming they have any at all) then their numbers will vary quite wildly from month to month and hence need constant "correction."

That said, noone can reliably estimate how much DD sales do. So over time, NPD has gotten to be unreliable on PC due to the massive movement away from retail to online DD. But their console numbers are still fairly accurate as Retail remains the way most AAA titles are purchased.

Regards,
SB

 

I don't think VGChartz has access to any numbers. It started as a website collating internet info, and that's all it's remained AFAIK. They have no strength to attract numbers from any retail sources.