how reliably is vgcharts??

[Carl]

theonewhoisme said:

Viper1 said:

Data is collected from select retail sources and then extrapolated on a national (regional) level.

This is the same thing that NPD, Chart Track-GfK, Famitsu and Media Create do.  Because all tracking firms use sampling (extrapolations and algorithms) and cannot track sales on an individual per unit basis, a margin of error exists for all of them.  Because of this, none of them are "correct".

Also to keep in mind, Sony, MS and Nintendo report shipment figures every quarter.   These figures will always differ from the tracking firms (including VGC) because they track consumer sales and a gap will exist between product on store shelves, in wharehouses and in transit (games are usually shipped in container ships....and that takes a minimum of 2 weeks).

 

So how accurate is VGC?  Let's just say that it gets more accurate every day as the sample data grows and the algorithms are tweaked.

Thats funny since it seems to be getting less accurate for ps3 as time goes on, every quarter the difference between shipped and VGs sold ps3s is bigger and bigger, according to VG Sony has been over shipping for over a year now and thats just not possible, so it's obviously not tracking ps3 right for some reason

Afaik, there are markets that Sony ship the PS3 to that ioi doesn't yet have the ability to track. Rather than simply make numbers up for those said markets, they simply don't get tracked. Wii and 360 don't get distributed to as many places as PS3, thus... Those 2 consoles will probably have a more accurate dataset.

At least that's what I think. You'd have to ask ioi to clarify.

No other tracking agency tracks WW either by the way.

If you look atVGC figures for NPD, GFK, Famitsu, MediaCreate... VGC sales numbers are all pretty much in line with each tracker for every console. So I ask you... In which country is it undertracked by a Million or 2?