| ioi said: We don't have (and probably won't have for the forseeable future) any direct coverage of markets like Latin America, Asia, Africa or Middle East. We know roughly how big they are but no idea on which games / hardware sells and which doesn't. This is obviously something we are working on long term but the immediate change is to provide better detail on the regions we do track well. This means individual charts for: - USA - Canada - UK - Germany - France - Spain - Italy - Japan And combined extrapolated charts for: - Europe (UK + France + Germany + Spain + Italy extrapolated) - Global (USA + Canada + Europe + Japan extrapolated) So there will be 10 charts in total - 8 direct regional charts and two extrapolated charts (that will clearly have greater margins of error). Those 8 regions represent 79% of total worldwide sales for 2010 so the other 21% will essentially be an (intelligent) extrapolation of the data we have. As we hopefully start to make some inroads with Latin America + Mexico (3.5%), Asia (3.2%), Australia (3%), Middle East and Africa (1.2%) and the rest of Europe (10%) we should be able to start doing weekly charts for them also and obviously including them in the global chart making it more and more accurate. Most of these regions will be heavily PS2 / PSP dominated which will explain why we may have always seemed low (and will continue to for the time being) on global hardware and software sales for those two platforms. |
I like this site and The Pack on one of his Pack Attack episodes mentioned VGChartz as a decent and pretty reliable source for sales information that is free to the general public.
I think it is a good decision to concentrate on specific markets where you are able to give good information within reason and I think it should be mentioned in every weekly sales report that your estimates are based on 80% give or take worldwide sales fact and the rest is "intelligent extrapolation" as you mentioned.
Just saying because I am not a great fan of the fact that people always find reason to complain or second guess the numbers you guys obviously work hard on to compile.
I visit this site at least once a day and the best thing is its free and that is greatly appreciated.
Good luck to you and your team and keep up the good work
