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Kasz216 on 31 January 2010
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Xelloss said:
Kasz216 said:
Xelloss said:

He said sell-through in the interview, and said it very easily. Basically, occams razor says there are really only 2 possible scenarios. Either publishers have relationships with their customers ( aka retailers and 2ng tier distributors like Ingram etc) where they get provided with the sell through data ( like many industries, and after all markup and floor-space allocation negotiations are heavily dependent on this type of information) or , you choose to believe that he was making shit up.

Personally, I highly doubt he was lying, mistaken or being random.

Except... we know for a fact that publishes aren't provided with sellthrough data like this... I mean why else do they go to NPD?

You think that publishers use NPD for sell through data for their own product? Who knows maybe some do, but I really do not think that is the prime audience for NPD nor even necesarry. I am not trying to come across as snippy or anything, but I would really like to know why you are so certain that the prime audience for NPD is publishers looking to find out how their own product sold. Honestly that use had never really occured to me, because well... I am reasonably certain that it is not necesarry.

 

 I can think of lots of other markets for NPD data, though I wont take the time to list them unless speficically requested. Well maybe one or two examples- Traditionally,  investors, retail chains and marketing firms are top consumers of NPD data. Ex: Imagine for a second you are Gamestop. You know that in its first week of release you sold say 1 million copies of MW2.  (not a real figure, just using as example). Best Buy, Walmart etc.. probably arent going to tell you how many copies they sold. NPD probably does not even say specifically which stores, but using not only the cheap data for overall sales, but NPD's advanced services you can get an idea how your competition in general did in relation to yourself. Probably further broken down by region, and other varios categories I am sure. If you are Gamestop and your share of the overall was smaller than you thought it should be, maybe you want to figure out why. If your share was larger, then you know that your marketing worked...etc

 

 The thing a lot of people forget, is that video games, and specifically video game sales tracking is a tiny portion of what NPD does. It just happens to be that video game sales tracking is their most well known service amongst people like us who hang out on websites that revolve around video game sales. NPD's "primary" services actually revolve around deeper demographics and marketing information. And also about accuracy - NPD's prime services are more oriented towards showing "who" bought something and in what ratios, than being on the exact button as far as total sales.

 I could digress further, but its 3:30 am.

 

Why?  Because that's the numbers they tend to use in all their statements when such statements need to be made.

It's simple.

I have no doubt they esitmate like Stickball said.  However such estimations have more chance for error on Niche games then the method NPD uses.

Those companies you named, aren't any more likely to give sellthrough information to Sega then they are each other... because otherwise such information would leak.

 

I don't think videogame companies are NPDs primary users.  However I do think they use them for official numbers because they have no more accurate ways to track those numbers themselves.