| ultraslick said: I am confused by these adjustments, yes. Everyone says, shut up and get out if you want to complain about the sales adjustments. But here is some news people, this is a sales site where we talk about numbers!! Shocker I know, just register that one for a moment and breathe. These adjustments, and how they were initiated without any explanation was bound to get some people upset, but it is warranted, where does it end? The gap between what is now the only interesting race left in this gen (between the hd twins) had decreased sharply since the Slim launch, but now.... wait that gap has been "adjusted" upwards by 500k. This would be fine if there was more than a 1 sentence explanation given. Seriously, talk about some of your sales sources which contributed to the massive, massive change in hardware figures going back to the beginning of this Gen, explain the discrepancy and how it was "fixed" and say that those regions will never experience such a dramatic swing (at least not all at once) ever again, or at least not in the near future. Where is the explanation, the mods are just throwing fuel on the fire on this thread, the only true voice of reason needs to say something... Have I missed some fundamental logic here? Others say put up (contribute to the site) or shut up. Where do I sign up, what game store in Indonesia do i need to contact to find out some numbers for, because when something like this goes down, I realize that the Free-ness of this site is becoming increasingly apparant, and I would love to change that. I personally come to this site and watch the gap (between PS3 and 360) go up or down on a weekly basis. Lately the gap has been going down in the PS3's favor, which is fine. This is my first thing to look at when the new sales come in. Why? -Because it is the most interesting thing happening imo. as it was stated it will take ~10 weeks for these adjustments to be neutralized back to a 5.3 million gap, going by current trends. But who's to say once that happens , the gap won't just be bumped right back to ~6 million again. I mean what the hell are we doing here people? I love this site, I appreciate the work that goes into it, but after a time of over 3 years looking at sales on this site, I have no idea what specifics go into the tracking, I know its hard, and apparently a lot of time goes into it. I was sleeping in a realm where the VGC numbers were somewhat close to accurate, (what with the numbers being exact down to the single unit each week) but now I know, as the rest of you rationally minded individuals, that the numbers are an illusion, there is no reason to ever have them be more specific than the 1,000 increment and any further specificity is just to fuck with us. I always have enjoyed VGC, but now I simply love it for what it is, instead of what it never was. |
They are down to the last number because that's how formulas work. They could round by the thousands... but why? That's just more incaccurate with your formula.
Tracking is a very tough thing to do, but to understand how it's done is really easy. You take your sources, you figure out what percentage your sources are for various products, demographics and such... and then put that into a number of formulas to get the overall number.
Stuff like this is actually VERY COMMON.
NPD for example I believe has entire groups of people that do nothing but constantly reform their formula... which no doubt leads to corrections and often big corrections. Corrections you don't see simply because you don't pay for NPD numbers.
If you don't think NPD has had an error of this magnititude changed before... I'd say your kidding yourself.
The main differences are
A) You don't see adjustments.
B) They have multiple formulas running and can keep the "standby" one for months while people pay for it, while making sure their are no systematic errors in the new formulas.
