ioi said:
mrstickball said:
We can always just take a calculator out and make up monthly charts...It's very easy to do. Here's the issue: VGChartz.com COULD become the new MC/Famitsu of the US. Why is the box office industry more accurate than the gaming industry in the US? Because the system(s) have been far more developed. The studios needed timely information, so they got it. The statistic companies can electronically obtain the information within hours of the theatre closings/openings due to the fact that these places actually carry the numbers themselves and transmit them to the gathering places. MC/Famitsu are the same, they are able to get information via the point-of-sale systems and extrapolate. For NPD, I am sure they *can* do the same thing, but don't. NPD is a huge multi-faceted business that is an evil entity. They charge their clients $10,000 a month for the information. The information isn't really THAT hard to get ahold of. All you need is to get enough stores/chains to spend about 5 minutes E-mailing the sales information. No biggie. You then extrapolate the rest of the information. NPD collects 60% of the information due to the fact they've been around for such a long time. How accurate could VGchartz's numbers be with the weekly info? Very accurate. Famitsu, in the olden days (early 90s) only had 6% of the total sales info, and extrapolated the rest of the data. That was when they were considered the king of information. We'll know the truth in about 6 hours when NPD for march comes out. And we'll know even better once April NPD comes out. The big question is if VGChartz is still tracking the 10% for Canada/Mexico/Ect or not. Either way, seeing that the 360 is doing 80k a week is VERY VERY fun to see, hehe :) |
I'm sure many retailers do collect point of sale information. I have been looking into how NPD collect their info and you are not a million miles away. I honestly don't think it would be difficult to provide a free weekly top 50/100 maybe 200 service + hardware by obtaining data from something like ~10% of retailers and scaling. It wouldn't be perfect but would be actually a lot more accurate than you would think. Again, if anybody has contacts / knows anybody we should speak to or who could help then get in touch. Let's make this happen. |
Maybe you should talk to the retailers themselves. Show them the website and the traffic details, exchange theestimated info for advertising deals, links from the chart themselves to take them directly to the company's online store etc. Basically, consider the site as a start up for-profit company and run it like one.
Gamefly is a good start, me thinks. Not exactly point of sale, but they should give you an idea, and they do sell used games. I think they sponsor GoNintendo. Don't bother talking with walmart. they keep thier stuff secret, and as you all know, even from NPD.
Oh yeah, one last thing. I don't like the idea of online polls. Too easy to manipulate and can heavilly skew the results. You're better off focusing your resources to something more productive.
