The future of VG Chartz, what does the site mean to you?

[RenegadePhantasm]

The site does not NEED a lot of expansion at the moment. Mostly you should of course focus on what the site does best. But in the interest of expanding the site here is what seems most important.

The profiles for individual games are very important. It looks like you've been paying attention to these lately, since the profile for Super Mario Galaxy looks pretty good. Many good features have been added since I last checked. Little Things: The comparing games feature is good, but allow a little more interaction with the graphs (Add the option to align or un-align launch dates on essentially every graph on the site). Also put a check box on the game profile page to switch between weekly and total sales. What might be interesting to add is a similar profile feature for publishers. Game publishers (or developers) could each get their own dedicated page with sales data and other info. Actually, vgchartz could add a fairly comprehensive section of information on game developers, since there isn't a major gaming website which has clearly filled this niche. Vgchartz could become THE site for information on various publishers and developers.
The game ranking system could use some work due to its vulnerability to fanboy attack. I think forcing members to add the game to the "games I own section" to rank a game is a good idea. Although people do rent games. Alternatively you could only use the scores from actual user reviews in calculating the game ranking. I think adding official vgchartz reviews to the site is a very bad idea, but user reviews are fine. For user reviews, a "Kudos" or ranking system is important, but probably shouldn't be tied to to a users ranking in the forums or the predictions league. What I think would work best is a system similar to Amazon.com's review system in which you can give a review a thumbs up or thumbs down. Reviews which are determined most helpful or which are written by the most consistently helpful users are displayed at the top, while poor reviews are at the bottom or ultimately deleted.
News doesn't seem like a very important feature. People will always go to Joystiq, Kotaku or other news sites for news. VGchartz should focus on posting only the biggest most important news, (or news specifically related to sales) not posting large amounts of it.
Mantaining a good community as vgchartz continues to grow will be quite difficult. I strongly suggest that you weild the banhammer quite liberally, and delegate many mods. Don't put up with any nonsense, but ban at the first signs of trouble. It seems to have worked well for Kotaku and is probably the only way to maintain anything resembling intelligent conversation with the site traffic you are looking to obtain.

The site still needs to earn itself some more credibility and recognition (which will come partly with time). The site will eventually need a visual makeover, but I don't think you should worry about this until you are mostly finished adding in your new planned features. You need to somehow balance a more professional look (to gain credibility) and a format which is dynamic enough for interactivity of the community you are trying to build.

Mostly you're on the right track. Generally speaking, stick with database driven features. Work to make the databases as dynamic as possible. Implement some sort of Kudos reputation system which is not reliant on post count (to avoid spam). Reintroduce and improve the predictions league. You have some very ambitious plans. Don't worry too much about trying to make this the gaming facebook or a nebulous gaming site like IGN but stick mostly with what this site does best: Data.