Uh, first of all, I wasn't really sure where to post this. This was a lot easier when there were fewer forums. This really belongs in the website section, but not in Website Issues, Website feedback nor announcements. As such, the only forum that remotely fit was the sales forum, which is the topic of the thread. If it's in the wrong place, apologies.

Edit: Well, I intended to make this in the sales section, but I somehow made it in the announcement section instead. I suppose that's fine.

Anyway, I figured it would be interesting to see just how much smaller the sales forum on VGChartz has become with time.  Or if the drop was just a figment of our minds. To measure that, I'll check how many threads were made in the sales section each half-year, starting September 2006. There's a slight margin of error here in that I'm going by the "last post" date, meaning that necroed threads will count for later periods, so this way slightly disfavours the older periods. There's also around 2000 locked threads, which further causes some issues with the numbers. Still, they should be fair enough overall.

Here's the results of that. Note that there's a bit of an inaccuracy, so each half year could be off by as much as 50 threads. The total is off by just 10, though, so it's probably not 50 for any of the months.

If you prefer it in graph form, it looks like this.

 That's a rather grim outlook. There used to be made over 10 threads made a day in the sales forum, while there today are made just around 3. What do you make of that?

Sales forum is doomed.

Thats what you get for reducing videogame sales content on your videogame sales website.

For one thing, we have less charts now, so there's less to talk about. It's hard to discuss a single game's sales nowadays. For another, the hottest battles of this generation are over, so that's something less to talk about. By the end of 2008, we knew the Wii would be #1 this gen despite poor 3rd party support and that the DS would beat the PSP. Furthermore, I've heard from oldtimers that the forums are simply not as active as they used to be.

In order for that to show a better perspective.
You'd have to compare it to the other forums in general.

I'd guess there's quite a drop off in all the forums. You'd have to compare the drop in other forums, to the drop in sales forums.

That might be  a waste of time however.

Have you thought that it could possibly have something to do with the sales of a console? 2008 is when the new consoles (Wii, PS3, X360) started to finally take ground in the industry. The out look isn't grim if you ask me, it comes and goes just as the sales. I don't think worrying is needed, we should wait and see what next gen has to bring.

Will see a spike again next gen when competition is at its greatest. That said charts aren't a priority on the site, as they were when I first started coming here.

Good point! And It's not that hard to do. Shouldn't be much of a problem at all, actually. I'll have to use posts instead of threads, so it's not a perfect comparison, but this way it's really simple.

 Let's start with your post. It's #4,485,530 on VGChartz as a whole. That's on the 26th on March.

Number 4 million was on the 11th of April 2011. That means going from 4 million to 4.5 million will have taken pretty much exactly a year.

Number 3.5 million was on the 23rd of June 2010. Meaning that it took 9 and a half month from 3.5 to 4 million.

Number 3 million was on the 28th December 2009. Thus, it took half a year from 3 to 4 million.

Number 2.5 million 18th of August 2009. Meaning that it took 5 and a half month from 2.5 to 4 million.

Number 2 million was on the 8th of April 2009, meaning it took 4 and a half month from 2 million to 2.5 million.

Number 1.5 million was on the 1st of December 2009. So a bit over 5 months from 1.5 to 2 million.

Number 1 million was on the 16th July 2008. So 6 and a half month from 1 to 1.5.

Number 0.5 million was on the 11th February 2008, meaning it took 5 months from 0.5 to 1 million.

In other words, there's been quite a drop just lately in the VGChartz popularity, but not a drop that coincides with the sales forum popularity. Most of the sales forum drop happens before 2010, while virtually all of the overall popularity happens after. 

You definitely had a point though. Personally, I didn't at all expect VGChartz forum popularity to be as low as half of what it was during its peak.  

 Edit: To put that a bit better, here's a table form. Note that it's very rough, and the point is to give an indication, not for the number to be exact.

You always visit here. Watchu talkin about?