VG Chartz #'s are full of it?

[rocketpig]

marc said:

Uhm.. you guys are much too gullible if you believe that. Havent any of you worked for big business? They all twist the truth. Hell every commercial you see twists the truth. So lets say company A went to company B (NPD) and said "hey there brother, ill give your company free -insert trade here- if you take care of us when the numbers come out." Thats an oversimplification of course but you wouldnt believe the crap that floats out when people make "connections." Ive seen much worse in my time at Sony.

And NPD is pretty much a monopoly. If you dont buy from them, who will you buy from? (crickets)... Thats right. You have no choice if you must have the data and if no one is really competing who can verify if their numbers are true? Again no one.

The idea of "people would stop buying" only applies to an open market. This is not an open market. Did any of you stop buying windows when MS was found guilty of dozens of things? Nope because you really have no choice. But everyone knows they achieved their monopoly through illegal means... but no one cares except for those who of course lost their jobs and lives working hard for smaller companies that were blocked by MS's practices early on but hey thats not us right? Big company with a gazzilion employees means Jack and Diddly. Look at enron if you dont like what i said about MS.

But what do i know? Im just another "ignorant" fool right?

Yeah, okay. Everything is one giant conspiracy. And BTW, I've worked in advertising for the past six years so I am definitely not naive when it comes to back-scratching. Crap, I bet you don't know half the dirty tricks advertisers pull on each other to get a leg up.

Everybody buys from the NPD. They're whores. All they want is for companies to continue to buy from them. If that is compromised in any way (say MS goes to them and asks them to cut Sony sales figures), don't you think Sony would go ape**** and stop spending millions with them? Sony knows what their numbers should be; if they're not arguing with the NPD, there's likely nothing going on. It's not as if MS can just bully Sony out of a market here, Sony's pretty damned big themselves and carries a lot of clout with their power.

Oh, and I stopped buying Windows products five years ago. Obviously, there must be a choice in the matter because I own four computers.

In short, when dealing with monolithic companies (Sony, MS, etc.), the NPD is self-regulatory because they can't afford to anger (and lose the business of) one of these corporations. The minor rewards and back-scratching that they would receive for it are greatly outweighed by their public perception and future profits.