Legend11 on 11 April 2008
| mike_intellivision said: All of this goes to show how bad many of the sources are for data. I have been saying for quite a while that without tracking Wal-Mart and Toys R Us that NPD data can easily be called into question. In my opinion leads to an under-tracking of Wii games, PS2 games, and less hardcore fare in general (Toys R Us barely has space for PS3 and Wal-Mart has less space for PS3 than X360 or Wii). Now you have a Next Gen Biz making an attempt at trying to derive a computation from tracking services and PR data. Interesting, but just as futile. If the truth be known, we don't know how much many of these games ever truly sell. Though I guess it makes for good conversation. To figure out what is the right number, you would have to take many of these on a case-by-cases basis. The potential overtracking of Wii RE4 has been discussed elsewhere (the EOY shipped number posted on the Capcom website was 200K less than the VGC sold number). Meanwhile, given that Toys R Us was basically selling Wii SMG for $25, I am sure that its non-inclusion in the NPD data (and NPD possibly using older estimation algorithms from last generation) has meant it is under-reported by the for-profit tracking services. We should get a better idea as financial report information comes in. Mike from Morgantown |
NPD gets sales data from between 60-65% of all retailers in the U.S. so it's hard to believe they would be too inaccurate. As for Toys R' Us, NPD has their sales data up to the end of September 2007 so it's likely they have a good idea what percentage of sales a Wii or PS2 game would get from there.
As for the numbers in the list we'll probably never know who's more accurate as they also had to rely on different sources to try to piece together and estimate how many copies were sold.
