IGN calls Vgchartz bull

[binary solo]

ethomaz said:

Grandia said:
IGN staff are really one of the last ones who should call some other popular gaming related things bull, they are among the worst, unreliable, biased, bought sources of gaming journalism ever.

VG chartz is always quite near the reality and they constantly update their estimations when official numbers appear. VG chartz is the best source for console sales figures available, there is simply nothing else similar, this is the reason why VG is still popular.

I disagree with the bold... VGC most times is far way from the reality but I agree with yout others points

Adjustments less than 100k after the trackers numbers is fine but we see more ~600k, ~400k, etc adjustments here that makes the numbers not even close to the reality.

Depends what that 600K represents as a % of total. If the total is 6 million and there's a 600K adjustment that's only a 10% error. Being within 90% of the actual figure is actually very good for an estimation, and one would say near the reality. Over the years I've looked at NPD vs VGC and my impression is that VGC is consistently within 10% of NPD, but occasionally it's off by up to 30%.

Typically with the LTDs when quarterly reports come out the VGC LTD is only a few % out. Sony announced 80 million PS3's shipped. VGC had them at 80.something  sold. That meant, factoring stock on shelves VGC's PS3 LTD was about 1.5 -2 million out. 2 million as a % of 80 million is 2.5%. That means VGC's LTD overestimate was still accurate to within 97.5%. Given for at least a year Sony hadn't provided specific PS3 shipment numbers I'd say VGC did a commendable job of estmating PS3's sold over that period.

Hardware MoE for VGC on a weekly numbers will be high, perhaps as much as 20% or  more if there is a particular bias in the data. MoE for yearly numbers will be much better, as long as the big 3 provide their quarterly shipments it will typically be within 10%. LTD, as long as shipments are reported, will be within 2-3% at least once a decent install baase has ben established.

Does it matter that for a given week VGC reports 100K sales but it was actually 80K? No. 80-120K in weekly sales is, depending on the time of year, good, or OK, or a bit low, or disasterously low. To judge a console's performance you only have to be confident that the reported number fits within a certain range. I reckon VGC will be within a 20K spread 90% of the time and it's be within a 40K spread 95% of the time on its weekly numbers. That is plenty accurate to give people a reliable steer on how hardware is doing.