| Deeds said: People quickly forgot that NPD started hiding data late into the Wii/PS3/360 era. During the PS2/GCN/Xbox era all the data was wide open. Coincidence? And again, sales data can be used for marketing purposes. For example, "Product X is the best selling thing, get it while its hot!!!!". You cant do that when your product is selling like shit, but you can shut people up and create narratives that are deceptive, like "the Playsation Family of sales". Also notice that they CANT shut up companies that are too strong like Kadokawa Dwango (who owns Famitsu) or Amazon (with their bestseller list). |
I want to add to this because one thing the NPD did change during that generation. In Gen 7, Software sales were reported individually by system. So Madden on the 360 and Madden on the PS3 would be on the charts and not included with each other. However, during that time Nintendo was dominating the charts and most of the top 10 was Nintendo. After a few years of Wii Fit and Wii Sports knocking out AAA, they changed it so that it combines sales across consoles which bumps down Nintendo's exclusive games.
So this wouldn't be the first time the NPD has done funny business with their data. Is NPD trying to stomp out leaks because of Nintendo? Who knows, but it's interesting the leaks were stomped out after Nintendo had been dominating the hardware numbers.
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