By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Aquamarine on 26 July 2016
Edit Thread
ZhugeEX said:
Aquamarine said:

Please note that a lot of NPD sales "adjustments" over the years have actually come from people who were NOT part of The NPD Group, but instead were just regular people who thought that NPD was inaccurate so they have to "fix" their numbers.

That's why I think presenting the original data as-is will always be relevant. Old sales data is a relic and it's important to have a window into how people back in the day experienced it.

The problem with sales data on the Internet is that it gets passed through so many hands such that when the original source is a bit questionable, misinformation can spread for decades and nobody is really there to correct it.

I seem to remember NPD adjusting data themselves in the past as well? 

Even in the last generation as well? 

Am I mis-remembering here?

I know that some people adjust NPD data themselves but that wasn't what I was talking about in the last post. Some old NPD data is quite unreliable (From the early 90's) as they didn't have the capibility to track the entire market. (Again, please correct me if I'm wrong).

 

But I agree, always good to see original sell through data from the time it was released. 

Thanks again for all you do and your knowledge on the subject, Aqua. 

Let me explain the history of NPD data.

The NPD Group has tracked video game sell-through since 1984. Back then, video games were considered toys, and were tracked as a subset of the toy market as part of NPD's Toy Retail Sales Tracking Service.

Originally, 10 chains participated in the service which corresponded to 1,300 stores across the USA. These 10 major chains provided SKU-level data to NPD every month, where NPD would then consolidate them and sell the data to toy manufacturers.

By 1993, NPD's Toy Retail Tracking Service had grew to track 20 firms which corresponded to approximately 65% of the market. 1993 is also when NPD added Toys R Us POS data, which was the largest video game retailer in the USA at the time. That's when NPD felt confident enough in their numbers to start being more authoritative.

Obviously back then, NPD would project up the % of the market they wouldn't track using algorithms...which was significant back in the early days (note: in 2016, NPD directly tracks 95% of the market).

You are correct that NPD doesn't put much faith in its super-old toy sales data because initially they only had 10 chains participating in it. Back then, they simply just didn't have the accuracy to be authoritative on video game sales...that's why NPD would prefer to let its old sales archives fade away.

But NPD has been historically very hesistant to permanently "adjust" its old data because they already "adjusted" it at the time of release. A lot of adjustments or claims of adjustments on the Internet....weren't actually adjusted by NPD at all.

Square2005 / Square2015 and sonycowboy are two examples of people who took raw NPD data and then adjusted it up "to fix inaccuracies." Those two sources are now used as some of the basis for historical sales archives everywhere. VG Chartz's own ioi was also famous back in the day for adjusting old sales data.

So when you look at old figures from the Internet you have to always question their authenticity.