WW HW + SW week ending 31st Jan

[binary solo]

Jabbamk1 said:

binary solo said:

The fact is no one is under any illusion that game sales numbers are at all accurate. There are too many games and not a big enough sampling plan to yield highly reliable figures. But getting the launch date of a game wrong and thus creating an obvoliously incorrect sales number for it proves nothing about the accuracy of the system to estimate sales.

 

It kind of does though. 

It proves very easily that this site isn't to be trusted at all. 

The only time this site is ever correct is when publisher, manufacturers and market research companies release actual data, the admin here realises he' wrong, and changes everything to pretend he was right all along 

Trusted to do what though? This site has never claimed a high degree of accuracy on short term figures. If you bothered to read the methodology page you'd note that they are completely open about refining the figures when other, more accurate, sales data is published. And they say all figures are estimates right up front. Can you cite how many times VGC has got the launch date wrong and published sales for a game that hasn't released yet, out of thousands of games released over the last 8 years or so?

This error doesn't prove anything particularly important. It proves people can make a mistake, big deal. It doesn't prove anything about the estimation methodology of the site that we don't already know: the estimates for software are notoriously inaccurate; the estimates for hardware can't really be relied on week to week except as a rough guide. If you came here thinking any different then the problem is yours not this site.

VGChartz Methodology

Data-Collection Methodology

All sales estimates on VGChartz are arrived at via a number of proprietrary and ever-developing methods:

• Passively polling end users to find out what games they are currently purchasing and playing
• Polling retail partners to find out what games and hardware they are selling
• Using statistical trend fitting and historical data for similar games
• Studying resell prices to determine consumer demand and inventory levels
• Consulting with publishers and manufacturers to find out how many units they are introducing into the channel

All data is regularly checked against manufacturer shipments and data released publicly from other tracking firms to ensure accuracy. VGChartz holds no responsibility for the use of our data – any business decisions made are made at your own risk.