January NPD 2021

[Agente42]

mk7sx said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:

These NPD reports are so messed up now, I feel like I'm reading tea leaves.  Where are the numbers?

The top 20 is a mess for so many reasons.  Some games include physical only.  Some include physical + digital.  Some games include PC sales and others don't.  Most third party games combine sales of all platforms, but Minecraft only lists the PS4 version.  You could randomly arrange the order of the 20 top games and it would be just as likely to be correct as what they are currently giving.

Then there are the random Piscatella lines like these:
"Unit sales of Nintendo Switch were the highest of any platform in a January month since the Nintendo Wii in January 2010."
"PlayStation 5 was the best-selling hardware platform in dollars sold in January, with the highest dollar sales total for a January month since the Nintendo Wii in January 2009."

One random fact is in unit sales and the other random fact is in dollars.  Why?  Does this actually tell us anything useful?  It's definitely not consistent.  Maybe Piscatella is trying to be a game designer himself?  He wants us to solve the mystery NPD report.  If you can figure out the actual hardware numbers, then you'll move on to stage 2 which is figuring out the software numbers.

Exclusion of Take-Two and Nintendo digital really makes the software chart useless.  

IE GTA V just had its 2nd best selling year ever and ACNH just sold 31M in 9 months but we don't really get that narrative with any of the charts for the past year.  It's a poor picture of the market.

agreed. three charts is a better way ( digital only, physical only, and combined)