Sales Charts Sources??

[kirby007]

VG Chartz Methodology

Understanding Sales Figures

1. As obligated by law, videogame companies report shipment data in their financial reports
2. Sales figures categorized as ‘Shipment’ data has a number of definitions. In all cases, it is a term used to describe the number of units that were moved from a manufacturing plant. Whether or not these units made it past warehouses and onto store shelves is another question entirely. As such shipment can entail:
1. Product shipped from factories to warehouses.
2. Product shipped from factories to retail middlemen/warehouses.
3. Product shipped from factories to individual retail stores.
3. In definition B1, a poor selling product appears to be selling faster than it is, because the company produced more than necessary for warehouses.
4. In definition B2, stores overestimate demand, and end up with excess stock. In theory, this causes the product which is selling worse than expected, to be manufactured at a slower rate.
5. In definition B3, a product is selling well, and a company is failing to, or barely shipping enough units to keep the product on store shelves.
6. Under all three definitions, it is an absolute certainty that the product has sold not a single unit more to customers (individual gamers) than what was shipped. The faster the product sells, the closer the shipment figure is to the number of consumers (gamers) who have bought the product.
7. When a product is discontinued at the end of its life, then the number of consoles shipped equals roughly the number sold, as retailers will do everything in their power to rid themselves of the product for newer, better selling products.

How VG Chartz comes up with its figures

1. Sales figures are determined through two important methods
1. Data Sampling – VG Chartz gathers random data from a sample of the total number of retailers.
2. Shipment information – VG Chartz has contacts with publishers who give their best estimates on number of products shipped.
2. Because the number of retailers selling videogames is quite large, it is possible to attain statistically valid results from a small sample.
3. It then becomes a matter of working backwards by having:
1. The approximate number of retailers.
2. Historical sales figures.
3. Data from sales tracking agencies as reference points in accuracy.
4. There are obvious limiting factors as well – few games have above a 40% attach rate, a game will never sell more than the console user base, publishers do not ship significantly more or less than they expect to be sold

Explaining Data on VG Chartz

1. Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft define regions differently. Microsoft includes more than Japan in ‘Japan’ on financial reports for instance.
2. “American Weekly Data” is VG Chartz estimations for sales of the United States and Canada, plus slightly more for developing markets in Central & South America. Canadian data tends to account for 5-10% of USA hardware and software sales in any given week.
3. The million selling software section is shipment information from publishers – it is not sell through.
4. The LTD (lifetime to date) hardware section is shipment data from publishers about what has been shipped since the product launched. LTD hardware is directly from 6 month financial reports.


Thanks to TheSource for compiling this information.