A lot of people responding to this thread seem to be confusing “dishonest” with “inaccurate”. Perhaps I should make my original point – and the basis for it – clearer.
I am not for one moment suggesting that VGC’s Japan numbers are particularly inaccurate. My speculation (and those that say I have no real evidence [other than circumstantial] for it are right – that is often the nature of speculation) was that it may be dishonest for VGC to present such numbers as independently obtained, as it seems they could just be based on Famitsu and Media Create’s data. The reason for such speculation was that VGC’s Japan numbers always come out after Famitsu and MC publish without ever varying much from them. Many have said that this is because VGC’s independently obtained numbers must be accurate, and while that is a possibility, it strikes me as statistically unlikely: if different researchers use different sample sources of different sizes, we would expect to see quite different results at least some of the time. We see this in the discrepancies between NPD and VGC figures for the US. That we don’t ever see them with Japan’s figures is what makes me suspicious.
Now if VGC were to start publishing their Japan numbers before Famitsu and MC, I would of course have to eat humble pie. Though I doubt in such a scenario we would still see such closely matching figures.
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