That is one of the bigger disappointments of the year. It's a late port, but DQXIS has been given so much love by the developers with the added content. Sure, its not as clear or pretty as the PS4 version, but who expected that? Plus, Nintendo went above and beyond marketing the game, with Hero being in Smash Bros. Ultimate, DQXIS being in 3 Directs (and leading off in the E3 Direct), and even promoting a 10 hour demo.

Maybe the demo was too long that it satisfied some consumers? Who knows..It's just unfortunate that a high-profile AAA third party title on the Switch did not get much attention among consumers. Guess it didn't help that, once again, DQXI had to deal with a very busy month of games.

I struggle to see the point in silencing Media Create when Famitsu exists.

And why would Sony be fine with NPD last gen when PS3 got its ass kicked by 360 but silence it now when PS4 beats XB1?

But Wii and 360 both outsold PS3 for I don't know how many straight months and we got NPD numbers anyway. If I recall correctly NPD's ninjas started hunting down leakers long before Switch launched during a time where PS4 was the best selling console in the US. I struggle to see what Sony would gain from hiding those numbers.

Not that I agree with the silencing thing, as I don't know enough about it to have an opinion, but I suspect Sony views Nintendo, as another Japanese company, as their true rival. They are probably less offended by Xbox beating them than Nintendo. Again, not that I agree with this theory, but it could be the reason they are doing this? The Switch beating PS4 is probably more insulting than 360 beating ps3?

True. But I guess "mainstream" sites report on the numbers once a while and I can see why companies would like to control those news.

It'd have made more sense for Sony to be doing it last gen imo but if it's them, they're a bunch of assholes. I hate this secrecy.

Do I remember it wrong or did NPD's ninjas started to hunt down leakers all the way back in 2015?

Maybe it's me having a bad memory. No matter what, I hope that the reason is uncovered and that we get the numbers back.

People quickly forgot that NPD started hiding data late into the Wii/PS3/360 era. During the PS2/GCN/Xbox era all the data was wide open. Coincidence? And again, sales data can be used for marketing purposes. For example, "Product X is the best selling thing, get it while its hot!!!!". You cant do that when your product is selling like shit, but you can shut people up and create narratives that are deceptive, like "the Playsation Family of sales". Also notice that they CANT shut up companies that are too strong like Kadokawa Dwango (who owns Famitsu) or Amazon (with their bestseller list).

Bingo!!!! You bring up a very good point. Why would Media Create hide data behind a paywall (which is what they said they are doing), when Famitsu and Dengeki releases that data for FREE???? That sounds like self sabotage on Media Create's part to me. WHO is going to buy that data when it is free elsewhere? Sounds to me like there was some outside influence that made Media create do something stupid. As for you second point AGAIN, NPD STARTED to hide data during the PS3/Xbox 360/Wii generation.

dude you need more exclamation/question marks and all capital words if you want to convince anyone - but atleast you tried, D

I agree with this sentiment and I want to add that NPD has been doing shady crap for a long time.  Let me remind everyone what an NPD report looked like back in 2008.

https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/NPD_December_2008

Hardware sales

NPD December 2008
Nintendo DS - 3.04 million
Wii - 2.15 million
Xbox 360 - 1.44 million
PlayStation Portable - 1.02 million
PlayStation 3 - 726,000
PlayStation 2 - 410,000

Top 20 software sales

1.  Wii Play w/ remote (Wii) – 1.46 million
2.  Call of Duty: World at War (X360) – 1.33 million*
3.  Wii Fit w/ balance board (Wii) – 999K
4.  Mario Kart Wii w/ wheel (Wii) – 979K
5.  Guitar Hero: World Tour (Wii) – 850K*
6.  Gears of War 2 (X360) – 745K*
7.  Left 4 Dead (X360) – 629K
8.  Mario Kart (NDS) – 540K
9.  Call of Duty: World at War (PS3) – 533K
10.  Animal Crossing: City Folk (Wii) – 497K*
11.  Wii Music (Wii) - 487,000[2](LTD of 865k and then subtract Oct and Nov months)
12.  New Super Mario Bros. (NDS)
13.  Personal Trainer: Cooking (NDS)
14.  Fallout 3* (X360)
15.  Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force (NDS)
16.  Link's Crossbow Training (Wii)
17.  Guitar Hero World Tour* (PS2)
18.  Madden NFL 09* (X360)
19.  Call Of Duty: World At War (Wii)
20.  Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip (Wii)- 366k

Notice the differences?  Here are at least 3:

1) Hardware sales numbers.  (I.e. the thing we have talking about in this thread.)
2) Software sales numbers.  Yes, the NPD actually used to give us software sales number for the top 10 games of the month.
3) Games in top 20 separated by platform.  Call of Duty on XBox360 is at #2 and on PS3 it's at #9.  This was one of the first things to change though.  Notice this chart is full of Nintendo games.  At a certain point NPD started combining these numbers for XBox360 and PS3 games together, so that Call of Duty, for example, would move further up the chart.  Just this one change made it look like XBox360 and PS3 games were selling better than Nintendo games all of the sudden.  (However Pokemon titles are always separated into two entries.  Isn't that "weird"?)

My take on this is that there have been shenanigans going on for a while with USA reporting, but I put the blame on the NPD themselves.  They are a business and a lot of their customers are AAA Western developers.  They want to keep their customers happy, right?  So, whenever sales start to look favorable toward a Nintendo platform, then more information starts to disappear.  AAA Western devs want the Sony and Microsoft consoles to look good, because that is where their biggest games go.  NPD doesn't want to be the bearer of bad news to their customers, so they have to change how the data is reported whenever they have to be the "bearer of bad news".