Toys R Us is only like 3-4% of the market, and they're going bankrupt.

Not such a big deal. 

If your numbers are right... which... your likely guessing unless you work for NPD or some other group that's bothered to break down the percentages...

3-4% is actually a HUGE deal.  That's a fairly large part of the market when you consider how much of the Market Wal-mart takes up... there isn't that much left to track from.

Not to mention, since they are going bankrupt Toys R Us is moving more software then normal.

yea i've seen the 4% number on gaf, not sure how much truth there is, but it's certianly not much more than 4%.  Actually losing Toysrus is not that big of a deal, they still have over 50% of retailers and recently added online sources.  They still have all the historical data on toysrus, there should be very little error.  The main problem is wal-mart.

50% of retailers. Not 50% market coverage. 

If Toys R Us is 4% Market Coverage, that's a pretty big deal.  Also historical info only matters when you think the pattern is going to stay the same... with them being bankrupt they are pulling all sorts of weird deals and stuff to try and stimulate buisness... their selling patterns are going to be way off historical data.

i wonder why they would stop tracking toys R us

 Probably because it's a poor representative of the market as a whole. Years ago TRU was the place to buy games, the selection was good and all major towns had a TRU, but now with Best Buy, Gamestop, Circuit City, WalMart it most regions the average gamer doesn't shop at TRU all that much anymore.

people are happy about even NPD having less sources and less reliable numbers ? ...

why the hell do I have the impression,that some of you guys aren't even interested in getting real numbers with that kind of mind set ?

If you think that i don't think you understand how this kind of things work.  Also as for poor indicators... see Amazon.

The reason they arn't tracking them anymore is either Toys R US didn't send them info this month for some reason, or Toys R US ended their relationship deciding that their numbers were useless or too expensive for it to be usefull them.

Once you know where a retailer plays in the market, there numbers are usefull.  Losing a long time piece of your puzzle hurts, because you have to now rechange your entire formula, not just the Toys R US portion.

Gaining and losing sources isn't something to be blown off... as it can take months before you get your numbers back to as accurate as they used to be.

Even if you just add sources in the short term it's going to lower your accuracy.

Given the number of people I saw at Toys R Us this morning, it is a big deal.

NPD without Wal-Mart and Toys R Us, two of the top if not the top two toy sellers in the USA, is virtually meaningless. (Both have their own line of special products ... do even TRU still has quite a powerful pull).

I always thought NPD undertracked Wii because of not including Wal-Mart. Without Toys R Us, that only gets worse. And now some others are beginning to question that data as well.

Maybe that is why NPD wanted to just go quarterly -- to disguise how bad its data is becomming.

Mike from Morgantown