PDF said:
To me there is a difference between the person who says "thats a lot of consoles on shelves" and the person who is confused and says "VGC OVERTRACKED by 3M ZOMG!!!" Will NPD vs VGC threads still be allowed? That argument i see even more and to me hold less water than official announced numbers. |
That's the problem. "That's a lot of consoles on shelves" is the crux of this behavior. The answer is YES, that is a lot, but there they are! 
ANother problem is that when people start saying that quote above, it just opens the door for the armchair speculators to come out and push that idea far beyond its value. "That's a lot of consoles on shelves" leads to "VGC undertrack OMG" etc etc.
I think the point of the matter is that our members who conscientiously make those threads are doing so to alert the staff about possible problems with the numbers in the rare case that something has been overlooked. The other members who haphazardly make similar threads are doing so as an accusation! Their is a big difference in tone and motive. When it comes down to it, Brett and TheSource know what they're doing. They know when there is a problem, they can see the discrepancies on their own. The only time a member should make a thread about numbers should be when that member has some deeper insight beyond "Sony/MS/Nintendo/NPD said..."
ALthough I assume the NPD threads are still a haven for debate, it's kind of insulting to suggest that we are the ones who are wrong, when NPD and others also extrapolate data. THere have been several times that NPD has altered its own numbers because they were wrong, and there have been several times when we had the most accurate data bar none.
