Could NPD be Wrong?

[Gamerace]

Too much to read the whole thread but here's my 2 cents:

NPD is the most accurate source we have for American numbers but that's not saying they are accurate. In fact, they are not. They're just making educated guesses based on partial info.

We seen before where it appears NPD has over/under tracked something and then instead of acknowledging it, they alter the current months info to make the ytd more correct but that means you can't trust the month to month sales 100%.

If NPD hasn't altered their formulas to account for the fact that more people than ever are shopping at Walmart then their numbers will be low and just plain wrong. Which they are looking to be.

Problem is there's no transparency when it comes to NPD at all, they could literally just pull numbers from their ass for all we know. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if they occasionally do. I know my government office does all the time. When no one else is tracking who's going to argue?

The only other source is VGChartz, and while I love the site, it's not terribly reliable when it comes to software either. For hardware it is, and we've seen VGC's hardware numbers prevail over NPD's before once actuals are given.