Hi all

I work for a small game developer and since I don't usually see the sales number we get from our publisher, I love to track the sales numbers on VGchartz to see how our games are doing.

Recently one of our game sales numbers on VGchartz exceeded our expectations. So we were all happy about it and were eagerly awaiting the client official sales report.  When it arrived my boss showed it to me but there was a major difference compared to the VGchartz number...I mean more than 50% less sales according to the client report.

So I'm wondering, did anyone ever experienced a similar situation? And can anyone shed some light on this?

I mean I know that VGchartz is not 100% accurate but the difference is so huge that I don't know which numbers to believe now. Quite frankly I'd prefer to think that VGchartz is right but I'm not sure anymore.

Thanks

Sounds like the kind of thing you should PM ioi about. If he knows what the game is he can figure out if something went wrong.

The truth would lie somewhere in between NPD and VGChartz numbers. Remember they are sales estimates. What game exceeded your expectations?

ten bucks it's a DS game =P

What platform is the game on?

I think he's talking about puppy love.

It's a DS game called Puppy Luv Spa and Resort.

We're really proud of it, but we did not expect the sales shown on VGchartz.
I won't PM ioi about it...I mean, I'm sure he has more important things to do.
I was just wondering if someone ever had the same problem that's all.

Don't worry guys I'm not loosing sleep over this...and in my heart the VGchartz numbers are the right one...hehe :)

No. He really loves to hear feedback from developers, and your communication with him would be very important.

Where does the client official sales report come from? Where are those numbers pulled from? Just curious.

On one hand, congrats. VGC had exceeded your expectations and the publishers showed sales (rather shipments) were twice that.

On the other hand, a notion I referred to above is that publishers can only track their shipped figures which will obviously be higher than actual retail sales which is what VGC tracks.


It's very possible that retail bought twice as many units from the publisher as they sold to consumers especially if the game was small, an original IP with no sales history to trend with, etc...