Embarrassing sales tracking mistake

[Munkeh111]

ioi said:

Many rival websites and fans from those websites don't take VGChartz that seriously, but that is normally because they don't understand the difference between shipped or sold numbers or because they don't actually take the time to do any research themselves. For example, we've had a number of emails from people stating our 7 million day one figure for MW2 is way too high since Activision announced 4.7m - missing the fact that they were talking about NA+UK only. Similar issues with the recent NPD / ChartTrack / Media Create alliance figures that people assume are global when in fact they are only US+UK+Japan.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure what we can really do to prevent this? As you rightly say, it is mostly down to ignorance - almost every since claim made by forum users etc on other sites falls apart as soon as you look at what they are trying to say and realise they are comparing the wrong regions, or wrong time periods or comparing shipped to sold through or whatever.

In terms of the videogame industry (i.e professionals who actually know what they are talking about when it comes to data) we are taken very seriously.

So back to the point I made, I don't see how a basic administrative error would lead people to not take the site seriously and I thought that the general tone of the OP was unnecessary.

I must say, that does really annoy me too. I was reading an article in the newspaper which said MW 2 had sold 4.7m copies, not even stating where they were sold, and so when people see 7m here, they just assume that it is rubbish. {I had a 5 minute rant about this article, in fact, I rant about everything written in newspapers about games because they are so poorly informed and often just plain wrong, they claimed some said that MW 2 was the most violent game ever, certainly something none who are gamers who say, especially given that the amount of gore has decreased from WaW - see I am prone to ranting!} Same with NPD, people come here and see the numbers being off, and so for some reason there is an assumption that NPD are 100% right, and also forget about the rest fo Americas. It will just take a while for people to understand I guess... However, I must say I feel that the information about sales in the general press has been increasing, and some of that is due to VGC, so I certainly hope you keep on improving the site and get some people to understand. Ideally, the companies would all release shipment and estimated sales (they must have some information?) {and budgetting} data, but I doubt that will ever happen

On a side point, do you get the same amount of PC data as you do console data? Is there any reason not to have PC sales other than lack of downloads, or is there less info?