| Bodhesatva said: Thank you for apologizing, Marc. I appreciate it, and I'm not even Rocket Pig :p As to the second point: the reason why other companies cook their books is to make a profit. That is the motive. By fudging their numbers, these businesses give analysts a rosier picture of their business' fortunes, and stocks can rise as a consequence. This may be corrupt, but regardless of where it falls on the moral compass, it springs from a completely understandable motivation: greed. So for many businesses, I absolutely agree that number fudging can directly lead to profits. The problem is that this isn't true for NPD. They would make less money if they fudged someone's numbers. Therefore, the same reasoning does not stand for them as it would for Microsoft (As an example). This is the real issue most of us have with NPD suspicions.
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I suppose the minor division we have is that I think they would get away with it while you think they would get caught. The reason I think they would get away with it is because no one else tracks that data and even if they did, NPD can probably spew out a stastic to claim that it is within range. Also, corruption can occur for many other reasons. Someone at NPD has a friend at Nintendo. John at NPD who collects data might be a Sony fan boy or maybe a Sony hater. Bill as MS does us some kind of favor so we dont want to make him angry (why havent the 360 been adjusted properly if we all know they are incorrect?). Sometimes its just an exchange of favors (something MS is notorious for) so that we I can get something out of it later very much like how politics works. Maybe someone at NPD has a stake in one of the said companies.
Again, I am not saying this is actually happening. I just think the probability of it happening is much higher than what most people might think but hey ive been wrong about stuff before. IMO the numbers presented by NPD are no more accurate than those seen on this site.
