Bayonetta 2 has hit 1 million sales

[ZhugeEX]

fleischr said:

Aquamarine said:

This is fundamentally ridiculous. NPD is never "wrong." 95% of their numbers are sourced directly from point-of-sale feeds from all of the major brick-and-mortar and online retailers. You can't be "wrong" when your data is comprised of actual sales receipts from the market.

Amazon is the go-to place for niche sales. Titles that proliferate on Amazon often flounder at more established retail venues like Walmart and Best Buy.

It is not a reliable indicator of NPD software sales rankings for that reason. Not to mention, there are many reasons why a random legacy title could have jumped up in the rankings. It's certainly not indicative of any trend or NPD inaccuracy.

You totally misunderstand NPD's methodology. They don't aggregate every single transaction from POS data. They build statistical models to provide estimates. They sample, and extrapolate - but there are characteristics of Bayo 2 to which NPD can very easily over-normalize inputs in providing an accurate estimate (e.g. being a mature WiiU title, the low install base, poor Japan sales, the publisher's previous release: TW101).

Add the noise of the NPD data being handed down not by NPD itself, but by a forum with only a little more credibility than VGC and you can see why I remain skeptical.

The top 10 - 20 retail titles for Amazon monthly do tend to fall in a pretty similar order as NPD and largely made up of mainstream titles. While niche titles do top the the hourly, the monthly/yearly figures do end up closely resembling  NPD.

The truth is that Bayo 2 was and still is yet a a leading piece of the gaming mindshare. It's now a highly valued IP to the dedicated army of Nintendo fans that show up for 1st party releases. To say it's sold less than 200k is far out of step with the game's prominence and vibrant community. 700k+ WW is way more believable.

You're wrong. 

I would go into depth but it seems Aqua has already done so. 

It's a shame that you seem to be acting in defense of a game, rather than actually looking at the different methodologies in depth. It reminds me of how people say Call of Duty doesn't sell anymore when Black Ops III is the best selling title this generation. Projecting your own thoughts and beliefs is never a good idea when it comes to trying to understand actual market trends. 

If you did look into this in a bit more detail you'd realise that Amazon only accounts for around 8% market share in the US Video Games retail market and the rankings they provide are nothing more of a guide for their own internal sales. Whereas the NPD Group directly track each unit at point of sale for more than 90% of the retail market. Assuming that VGChartz, or Amazon, or yourself is in a better position to tell how the game sold at all retail is a fallacy.