RAZurrection said:
Yes and the fact that both seperate entities usually come within similar results of each other consisitantly, weekly and over a number of years gives us an "acceptable" margin of error for their estimates is why they're both considered the best source if averaged out. Compare that to VGC who basically just guesses for the month, then either leaves it as it is if correct. or alters it drastically depending on how innaccurate it is, which just invalidates their methods.
Who's going to trust a company that says: "Ok this is our method and it's very accurate" *adjusts 2 million* "Ok, we were wrong before, but we're 100% correct now." How can you take that on a basis of faith when if they didn't know they were wrong before, how do they know they are not wrong now. If VGC really wanted to earn credibility, there's a couple of ways: 1) Predict Japans figures before MC/Famitsu provide them, rather than wait until they're out, copy them and fudge 3% up or down to make them seem different. 2) Take an item - say, Kinect (which is good because MS is all about sold to consumer data for this) track it for the rest of the holiday on a weekly basis. MAKE NO ADJUSTMENTS WHATSOEVER. When the next press release comes out if you're within 100,000 for the total at the period the PR covers, you're ok.
Have they ever made adjustments to fall in line with "shipment" data? I can't ever recall NPD issuing a press release saying they needed to alter past data to corrolate with a companys quarterly reports. |
That's because they don't issue releases when they do it. Note that their totals never match up with their montly totals.
