| Fumanchu said: I just don't understand how any of the manufacturer's could possibly get 100% accurate sell-through data to put in a financial report. Does Sony rig every point of sale register with a trojan that uploads data transactions to a distributed database networked world-wide?? If so, why does NPD exist? If NPD exists for a reason, wouldn't they need a tracking firm in every country they ship to??? |
A few years ago Nintendo estalbished an independent tracking firm called SIRAS, which tracks many products (including video game consoles) by their serial numbers every time a sale is made at participating retailers, which include K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Toys R Us, Gamestop, Target, and several other stores I can't think of off the top of my head. Subscribers to SIRAS are able to know how many units are sold, which units are sold, where they are sold, and at the specific times that they are sold. THey can track trade-ins, warranty claims, warranty frauds, on and on and on. All of this, to the best of my knowledge, is done automatically and requires no further reporting on the part of the retailer.
Nintendo and one of the other hardware manufacturers (but not the third) are SIRAS customers in the US. They know exactly, down to the unit, how many units of hardware they've sold in the US at any given time. They use NPD numbers for press releases, and they also use NPD for sales tracking for software.
