New Poll - why do you visit VGChartz?

[dunno001]

Noobie said:
I feel the biggest strength of VGC is definitely the charts and sales data and analysis which are done time to time on these data, but i feel they r not given proper highlightness.

I noticed this, and couldn't help but agree. Yes, the main thing that has me here, and going by the poll, many others, is the sales charts. Short of a rebranding, though, this is in the name, and overcoming that notion of just being a sales numbers site will be a tough task. So I think it needs to be strengthened. Yes, there are the analysis pieces of news posted, but they get lost in the myriad of headlines. However, axeing the news entirely I think would be a bad idea. There is sales news, which is perfectly appropriate to be here, and it stands to reason that if you're getting some news, having the rest together at one place is convienent. But what I might say is a small section of headlines dedicated to VGC exclusive articles. I don't know how much muscle you have with the companies themselves, so this may not even be possible, but perhaps having someone interview people at a company would be a nice way to beef up this section?

Next would be the database. Since we are tracking sales, it's a nice way to look at what a game is that sells well (or what makes a game not sell). The only real issue I have with it is that there are several games which need multiple entries, because of each one having a different region's sales. I'm not sure how much of a nightmare that is to do in the system itself, but I'm guessing that the DBAdmins can't do it based on the sheer number of them. Finally, the DB has a nice little community statisics area, which I think is fun to watch. And this leads me to the next thing...

The community itself. I'd say the forums are vital to keeping people around, and having the ad revenue come in. It provides a place for people to discuss the numbers. However, in the community itself, is where I believe some of the weaknesses are, and where some of the focus has been lost. Both the reviews and the videos are something that just don't seem to be fleshing out well. For videos, there are sites like GameTrailers and YouTube, and regarding the reviews, well, sites that do that are a dime-a-dozen. Keeping them around and feasible means that you need to do something with them that's unique. As I do not use those features here, I can't really suggest anything; I'll leave that to the fans of them. But they need something to differenciate them from the established sites. A great example of the specialty stuff is the predictions league. This isn't something I've seen anywhere else, and it's things like this which should really be pushed more. I know how the site has occasional contests, perhaps tie winning to a good percentage prediction here every once in a while?

But yeah, it boils down to emphasizing the things that stand out. While I personally don't want to see a rebranding, if the stigma of the current name is too much to overcome for a branching out, I'd say to keep it to something that still is memorable to the core site. (A cheezy example would be vgdataz.com, completely ignoring that data is the plural of datum already...) I think the problem we have at present is that you tried to expand too much into too many areas too quickly. Thus, new people come in and see several weak areas, and will be more likely to ignore them. I'd say do it one at a time- do one new thing, and make sure it's done well before going to the next one. It may take several months, but it gives a stronger look to the additions, showing that there is focus in the additions, something that does still feel lacking as of now.