Does VGC report console sales figures too often?

[biglittlesps]

Aielyn said:

starcraft said:

Part of the original appeal of VGChartz was its ability to offer sales numbers guidance in the West at a greater rate than any other publication. Over the years a very strong community has built up through the sites forums, game database and publications which is fantastic.

In recent times, despite VGChartz consistently providing very accurate short and medium term sales estimates for most consoles, the degree of vitriol it attracts for 'guessing,' 'making the numbers up' or for being 'biased' (in favour of any number of consoles!!) has anecdotally increased dramatically. There is some suggestion that this might be a by-product of a new generation starting, which is in some way supported by the majority of vitriol being directed at Xbox One numbers over the last couple of months.

However, I would suggest that one solution would be to cut back numbers reporting to once every two weeks.  This would have multiple advantages, without sacrificing VGChartz unique selling point in consistent reporting. For starters, it would double the amount of data available for each iteration of numbers, allowing greater opportunity for anomalies to be detected.  Ultimately anyone with an understanding of the numbers knows that for the most part, VGC has a remarkable solid medium and long term strike rate for hardware reporting.  But having a two week reporting schedule would cut back (but of course not eliminate) some of the ill-informed knee-jerk responses week-in and week-out, arguments over the degree of impact 2 day versus 5 day price cuts should have had etc.

This is not an idea I am firm on, but a suggestion that has occured to me. I'd welcome other people's opinions.

Edit: Lets keep it to hardware, software is a whole other kettle of fish.

I should stress that though I am a forum moderator, I have no major links to the editorial team and all (vague) opinions expressed above are my own inane thoughts.

What is the benefit of going to bi-weekly? Just halving the number of times that the vitriol is pointed at the site?

I guess I just don't see the real benefit. Sure, collecting twice the information might mean a reduction of about 30% in error margins (depending on how you do it), if you report the total... but I'm getting the sense that this is more of a "hold off from reporting the information every second week, release two weeks simultaneously" approach that doesn't help with numbers at all.

If I were going to suggest something for the purposes of making what VGC does clearer to reduce the vitriol, it would be to calculate 95% confidence intervals for data (at least for hardware) and display it in hover text, so that people can see just how much certainty there is in the numbers. These intervals should be properly-calculated, rather than just an estimate of "about 5%" or whatever it happens to be based on a priori guesses.

@ioi

This sound like a very good idea, so everyone can use it as a reference for the accuracy then nobody will complain about weekly adjustments which happens all the time and VGC data can be very useful for many with this additional info of confidence from VGC. Also we should keep an * to explain the VGC tracking confidence info at main page beside sales data.