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Forums - Sales Discussion - July 2017 NPD Thread! Switch #1

DonFerrari on 15 August 2017
Hiku said:
DonFerrari said:

And how would NeoGAF benefit from he not leaking there? Or do you limit everyone interested in sales as the people that are on this site that doesn't even have weekly charts anymore?

Do you limit the internet browsing capabilities of Neogaf members to just Neo Gaf? They can read the numbers elsewhere, and discuss sales without posting the specific numbers Librarian posted. If that's the one courtesy Librarian asked for, and it increases the chances of any of us still getting numbers, which includes GAF members who are capable of reading posts on other sites, then it seems like a small price to pay for any decent person.

It's one thing to look out for yourself, but another to do so when it's only a matter of a slight inconvenience, if the end result is putting all future sales discussions at risk.

errrrr you know that if other NeoGaf users can come here or know about the numbers being hosted here NPD would also know and that would basically be just the same as ethomaz having copy pasted there? So your claim is still baseless.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

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CosmicSex on 15 August 2017

I wish we had Xbox One numbers so we could do a better analysis prediction sales in November with the X model. I will attempt a calculation anyway.



SWORDF1SH on 15 August 2017
Hiku said:
SWORDF1SH said:

Depends how you view the situation really. But yeah it's more acceptable to say it's a "dick move" than resort to calling somebody a "dumb cunt". 

What other ways to view it are you refering to? He is aware that if he reposts the numbers, the chance of any of us getting numnbers in the future decreases.
And he gladly takes that risk to either avoid the slight inconvenience of GAF members having to visit other sites to view the numbers, or because he really wants Librarian to get caught.

I'm not following you on some parts. How would gaf members know these numbers exist. How would you tell the gaf members without making NPD aware? 

Anyway, I'm not saying he's right or wrong but he obviously views the situation differently. Maybe he wants to discuss the numbers. Maybe he believes that posting numbers on a very popular forum and simply asking not to post on gaf and think the NPD won't find out is naive. Maybe he finds it silly for people to ask not to post it on other forums when it's so freely and openly posteo on a public forum. 

How you see the situation is clearly how ethomaz doesn't see it. Saying it was a "dick move" is fair but to call him a "dumb cunt" is going to far in my opinion. 



DonFerrari on 15 August 2017
CosmicSex said:
I wish we had Xbox One numbers so we could do a better analysis prediction sales in November with the X model. I will attempt a calculation anyway.

They will be "know" when the prediction league of some user gets finished and with the total numbers for PS4 and Switch is already know. But seems like it's quite small.

Hiku said:
DonFerrari said:

errrrr you know that if other NeoGaf users can come here or know about the numbers being hosted here NPD would also know and that would basically be just the same as ethomaz having copy pasted there? So your claim is still baseless.

Do you understand the term risk mitigation? Not "ellimination", which is what you are talking about.
It's been explained to you already in this thread.

Yes, we know that there's still a good chance that NPD cops can find him. It's about lowering the chance of that happening. Or delaying it.

Yes I do know the concept, in fact I work with it.

And the notion of mitigation you and librarian is using is laughing stock, there is zero mitigation in it. As you said yourself members of NPD lurk on Neogaf, do you think regular users of NeoGaf come here but NPD investigative group wouldn't? What librarian done is a very farcry from risk mitigation. on a scale of 125 on risk detection, catastrophic and probability of occurence this is like reducing the risk from 125 to 100 with luck.

I gave a method that would give much better distance from leaker to number.

Are you aware of how Brazilian Police got a very big group of botleggers on the "Tropa de Elite" movie? Each movie theather/chain would receive a copy with some special frames to identify it. So when the botlegged DVD come to market (even before movie theather release) they adquired a copy and by looking at the frames they were able to track who could be and investigation became quite easy.

So giving exact number is ALWAYS a big risk, even more because they could at some point give some form of slightly different information to some group and if that would be leaked they would know from where it came from.

So please don't try to be condescending on "Do you know what mitigation is?"



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

librarian13579 on 15 August 2017
DonFerrari said:
CosmicSex said:
I wish we had Xbox One numbers so we could do a better analysis prediction sales in November with the X model. I will attempt a calculation anyway.

They will be "know" when the prediction league of some user gets finished and with the total numbers for PS4 and Switch is already know. But seems like it's quite small.

Hiku said:

Do you understand the term risk mitigation? Not "ellimination", which is what you are talking about.
It's been explained to you already in this thread.

Yes, we know that there's still a good chance that NPD cops can find him. It's about lowering the chance of that happening. Or delaying it.

Yes I do know the concept, in fact I work with it.

And the notion of mitigation you and librarian is using is laughing stock, there is zero mitigation in it. As you said yourself members of NPD lurk on Neogaf, do you think regular users of NeoGaf come here but NPD investigative group wouldn't? What librarian done is a very farcry from risk mitigation. on a scale of 125 on risk detection, catastrophic and probability of occurence this is like reducing the risk from 125 to 100 with luck.

I gave a method that would give much better distance from leaker to number.

Are you aware of how Brazilian Police got a very big group of botleggers on the "Tropa de Elite" movie? Each movie theather/chain would receive a copy with some special frames to identify it. So when the botlegged DVD come to market (even before movie theather release) they adquired a copy and by looking at the frames they were able to track who could be and investigation became quite easy.

So giving exact number is ALWAYS a big risk, even more because they could at some point give some form of slightly different information to some group and if that would be leaked they would know from where it came from.

So please don't try to be condescending on "Do you know what mitigation is?"

This is where you are wrong. NPD Group is very busy and their enforcement team doesn't work full-time. They tend to only start investigating things when it gets brought to their attention. They really don't go actively looking for leaks in small forums all that often. The 2chan leaks lasted for literally months before that was suppressed.

So yes, there actually was a good chance that NPD may have taken months to discover me if the numbers weren't blatantly and immediately leaked on NeoGAF, which is LITERALLY THE ONE PLACE NPD regularly visits. That's why that was my one request.



April 30th, 2011 - July 12th, 2018

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SWORDF1SH on 15 August 2017
Hiku said:
SWORDF1SH said:

I'm not following you on some parts. How would gaf members know these numbers exist. How would you tell the gaf members without making NPD aware? 

Anyway, I'm not saying he's right or wrong but he obviously views the situation differently. Maybe he wants to discuss the numbers. Maybe he believes that posting numbers on a very popular forum and simply asking not to post on gaf and think the NPD won't find out is naive. Maybe he finds it silly for people to ask not to post it on other forums when it's so freely and openly post on a public forum. 

How you see the situation is clearly how ethomaz doesn't see it. Saying it was a "dick move" is fair but to call him a "dumb cunt" is going to far in my opinion. 

Well GAF has members who frequent this site, so some would be aware of the numbers. Librarian didn't ask them not to discuss the sales at all, just to not repost the specific digits. So the people who know where they can find the numbers can start talking about "Oh, NS beat PS4." and those who don't know where they got the numbers would ask, and could get replies through PM.
If NPD members lurking GAF don't see specific numbers, they won't know if those are accurate estimates based on leaked numbers, or just lucky guesses based on someone leaking fake/fales numbers, without digging further.

As Librarian said, it's not about elliminating the risk, but mitigating it as much as possible.
If it were me, I'd take the slight inconvenience of having to read numbers elsewhere and not repost the exact digits if it could increase the chance of us getting new numbers next month by even 1%.

Firstly let's be honest, that is never to work and openly posting numbers and hoping NPD doesn't find out isn't going to happen. If Librarian wants to cover his/her tracks then they need to do it at the source. Like pm mods the figures and they post them. If anybody thought that this was going to work and the figures weren't going to find their way to gaf are just kidding themselves. With all due respect to Librarian, that was never going to happen.

But we are going off at a tangent, my point is that ethomaz obviously thinks of the whole situation differently. 

Again though people can say it's a silly move by ethomaz. It's their opinion. I don't have issue with that.



librarian13579 on 15 August 2017
SWORDF1SH said:
Hiku said:

Well GAF has members who frequent this site, so some would be aware of the numbers. Librarian didn't ask them not to discuss the sales at all, just to not repost the specific digits. So the people who know where they can find the numbers can start talking about "Oh, NS beat PS4." and those who don't know where they got the numbers would ask, and could get replies through PM.
If NPD members lurking GAF don't see specific numbers, they won't know if those are accurate estimates based on leaked numbers, or just lucky guesses based on someone leaking fake/fales numbers, without digging further.

As Librarian said, it's not about elliminating the risk, but mitigating it as much as possible.
If it were me, I'd take the slight inconvenience of having to read numbers elsewhere and not repost the exact digits if it could increase the chance of us getting new numbers next month by even 1%.

Firstly let's be honest, that is never to work and openly posting numbers and hoping NPD doesn't find out isn't going to happen. If Librarian wants to cover his/her tracks then they need to do it at the source. Like pm mods the figures and they post them. If anybody thought that this was going to work and the figures weren't going to find their way to gaf are just kidding themselves. With all due respect to Librarian, that was never going to happen.

But we are going off at a tangent, my point is that ethomaz obviously thinks of the whole situation differently. 

Again though people can say it's a silly move by ethomaz. It's their opinion. I don't have issue with that.

The way that NeoGAF handled the 2chan leaks is they never posted anything blatantly...they just casually discussed figures in offhand posts.

Like: "PS3 didn't sell very well this month, which I think is due to XYZ."

And they would have a discussion around that. It wasn't this culture of "NUMBERS ARE RELEASED, MUST COPY AND PASTE AND DUMP IMMEDIATELY," which is never a smart way to handle sensitive data.



April 30th, 2011 - July 12th, 2018

SWORDF1SH on 15 August 2017
librarian13579 said:
SWORDF1SH said:

Firstly let's be honest, that is never to work and openly posting numbers and hoping NPD doesn't find out isn't going to happen. If Librarian wants to cover his/her tracks then they need to do it at the source. Like pm mods the figures and they post them. If anybody thought that this was going to work and the figures weren't going to find their way to gaf are just kidding themselves. With all due respect to Librarian, that was never going to happen.

But we are going off at a tangent, my point is that ethomaz obviously thinks of the whole situation differently. 

Again though people can say it's a silly move by ethomaz. It's their opinion. I don't have issue with that.

The way that NeoGAF handled the 2chan leaks is they never posted anything blatantly...they just casually discussed figures in offhand posts.

Like: "PS3 didn't sell very well this month, which I think is due to XYZ."

And they would have a discussion around that. It wasn't this culture of "NUMBERS ARE RELEASED, MUST COPY AND PASTE AND DUMP IMMEDIATELY," which is never a smart way to handle sensitive data.

I understand but you need to be a bit more discrete  on how you release the numbers. This was never going to work... ever. 

I know this wouldn't give you any recognition if you passed the data to somebody else but that's the only way it can be done if you truly want to keep heat off yourself. 



DonFerrari on 15 August 2017
librarian13579 said:
DonFerrari said:

They will be "know" when the prediction league of some user gets finished and with the total numbers for PS4 and Switch is already know. But seems like it's quite small.

Yes I do know the concept, in fact I work with it.

And the notion of mitigation you and librarian is using is laughing stock, there is zero mitigation in it. As you said yourself members of NPD lurk on Neogaf, do you think regular users of NeoGaf come here but NPD investigative group wouldn't? What librarian done is a very farcry from risk mitigation. on a scale of 125 on risk detection, catastrophic and probability of occurence this is like reducing the risk from 125 to 100 with luck.

I gave a method that would give much better distance from leaker to number.

Are you aware of how Brazilian Police got a very big group of botleggers on the "Tropa de Elite" movie? Each movie theather/chain would receive a copy with some special frames to identify it. So when the botlegged DVD come to market (even before movie theather release) they adquired a copy and by looking at the frames they were able to track who could be and investigation became quite easy.

So giving exact number is ALWAYS a big risk, even more because they could at some point give some form of slightly different information to some group and if that would be leaked they would know from where it came from.

So please don't try to be condescending on "Do you know what mitigation is?"

This is where you are wrong. NPD Group is very busy and their enforcement team doesn't work full-time. They tend to only start investigating things when it gets brought to their attention. They really don't go actively looking for leaks in small forums all that often. The 2chan leaks lasted for literally months before that was suppressed.

So yes, there actually was a good chance that NPD may have taken months to discover me if the numbers weren't blatantly and immediately leaked on NeoGAF, which is LITERALLY THE ONE PLACE NPD regularly visits. That's why that was my one request.

Yes they are busy, but sorry to inform you that this site isn't that small or slow traffic as you think... even more when the owner and the guy who posted numbers was banned from NeoGaf because of his sales predictions/tracking. And still to this day I hear that using VGC as source in NeoGaf is banworthy. So not remembering any other significant site that have debates revolving around numbers (perhaps vizionEck)  I would say VGC is quite relevant for them to police.

It wouldn't ever take months, because there was certain that the numbers would leak.

Hiku said:
DonFerrari said:

They will be "know" when the prediction league of some user gets finished and with the total numbers for PS4 and Switch is already know. But seems like it's quite small.

Yes I do know the concept, in fact I work with it.

And the notion of mitigation you and librarian is using is laughing stock, there is zero mitigation in it. As you said yourself members of NPD lurk on Neogaf, do you think regular users of NeoGaf come here but NPD investigative group wouldn't? What librarian done is a very farcry from risk mitigation. on a scale of 125 on risk detection, catastrophic and probability of occurence this is like reducing the risk from 125 to 100 with luck.

I gave a method that would give much better distance from leaker to number.

Are you aware of how Brazilian Police got a very big group of botleggers on the "Tropa de Elite" movie? Each movie theather/chain would receive a copy with some special frames to identify it. So when the botlegged DVD come to market (even before movie theather release) they adquired a copy and by looking at the frames they were able to track who could be and investigation became quite easy.

So giving exact number is ALWAYS a big risk, even more because they could at some point give some form of slightly different information to some group and if that would be leaked they would know from where it came from.

So please don't try to be condescending on "Do you know what mitigation is?"

I'll refer to Librarian's answer to you above, but I'd also like to add to his post that there's a reason why NPD members don't have public accounts here on VGC. I believe Aqua also previously said that NPD are more concerned about what shows up on GAF because it has much higher trafic than this site.

And when your reply presented a "possibility" and not a certainty, I have to ask if you understand the concept of mitigation.
Usually it's just that the person in question hasn't thought of enough scenarios, and it doesn't look like you have.

Hiku. Tell me how much mitigation happened on it releasing to NeoGaf in less than a day later. That just shows you what was done wasn't mitigation at all.

Praying for a disaster not to hapening isn't mitigating to the upmost as librarian herself said she was doing. Mitigation should at least bring you to the "unlikely to occur and/or no severe damage if occuring" not bringing it to "catastrophic failure of large probability".

So I ask you, do you really understand the concept of mitigation or just heard the word and it's meaning in a dictionary?

librarian13579 said:
SWORDF1SH said:

Firstly let's be honest, that is never to work and openly posting numbers and hoping NPD doesn't find out isn't going to happen. If Librarian wants to cover his/her tracks then they need to do it at the source. Like pm mods the figures and they post them. If anybody thought that this was going to work and the figures weren't going to find their way to gaf are just kidding themselves. With all due respect to Librarian, that was never going to happen.

But we are going off at a tangent, my point is that ethomaz obviously thinks of the whole situation differently. 

Again though people can say it's a silly move by ethomaz. It's their opinion. I don't have issue with that.

The way that NeoGAF handled the 2chan leaks is they never posted anything blatantly...they just casually discussed figures in offhand posts.

Like: "PS3 didn't sell very well this month, which I think is due to XYZ."

And they would have a discussion around that. It wasn't this culture of "NUMBERS ARE RELEASED, MUST COPY AND PASTE AND DUMP IMMEDIATELY," which is never a smart way to handle sensitive data.

And them what have you done? Gave the exact numbers and hoped that every single user would be senstive enough not to leak... Guess what people are dumb and do whatever they want.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

librarian13579 on 15 August 2017
SWORDF1SH said:
librarian13579 said:

The way that NeoGAF handled the 2chan leaks is they never posted anything blatantly...they just casually discussed figures in offhand posts.

Like: "PS3 didn't sell very well this month, which I think is due to XYZ."

And they would have a discussion around that. It wasn't this culture of "NUMBERS ARE RELEASED, MUST COPY AND PASTE AND DUMP IMMEDIATELY," which is never a smart way to handle sensitive data.

I understand but you need to be a bit more discrete  on how you release the numbers. This was never going to work... ever. 

I know this wouldn't give you any recognition if you passed the data to somebody else but that's the only way it can be done if you truly want to keep heat off yourself. 

I guess I'm just too much of an old-timer, when clearly the modern community over on NeoGAF has changed pretty dramatically for the worse from back in the day.

Back in the day when the community was smaller nobody would have been as stupid as Ethomaz. Now it's "an inevitability" someone will be a dumbass. I guess I'll have to keep that in mind when I don't leak anything directly ever again.



April 30th, 2011 - July 12th, 2018