The Official October NPD thread (data should be out momentarily)

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krik said:

ioi said:
krik, the problem is that the only reason NPD is official is because they have no competition. They are not an officially recognised government body or anything, just the best option we have had until now.

I hope you (and everyone else) sticks with the site. If shipment data and other indicators suggest we are too high or too low for a particular hardware then I will be sure to make adjustments.

Sony's numbers are quoted as being sell-through to consumers, so I think it is a fair comparison. I'm don't think Sony's numbers are right, but I am using it to illustrate that large discrepancies can occur (look at Famitsu vs Media Create Wii sales last 2 months).

NDP is official because they have lots of market data and make a business selling the data to businesses. They must be accurate or their business goes down the drain. Can you say the same thing about this site?

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Must be accurate? Says who? Who monitors NPD, or gives them any competition - to make sure that they don't get lazy with their figures?

(for all WE know, NPD talks to the platforms holders - and verifies that their numbers aren't WAY out before publishing them). 

I very much doubt that a company is going to purchase the NPD figures - have a read - then say "We want our  money back - we don't like your numbers!". Competition is much more likely to hurt NPD, than for them to release dodgy numbers.

In hindsight, I agree that if we start changing our figures to match NPD - we are meaningless. We need to position ourselves as an independent tracking body - basically competition to the NPD.

Just like Famitsu & MediaCreate in Japan end up with different numbers - so can our numbers vary from the NPD figures. 

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If NPD really doesn't track/count "bundled" software, then it does mess things up - and make it hard to directly compare. Add to that, that VG tracks all of NA (etc).