The credit agencies responsible for researching companies and debt were totally unreliable. These companies existed for decades and received billions of dollars just to be accurate. You can thank them for the financial meltdown. Just something to think about.

Does anyone know why there isn't a soundscan type system for video games?

August 2009
NPD
PS3 210,000
360 215,400
Wii 277,400
VGC
PS3 156,906
360 213,711
Wii 293,565

September 2009
NPD
PS3 491,800
360 352,600
Wii 462,800
VGC
PS3 429,628
360 352,107
Wii 395,715

October 2009
NPD
PS3 320,600
360 249,700
Wii 506,900
VGC
PS3 323,404
360 280,598
Wii 640,138

November 2009
NPD
PS3 710,400
360 819,500
Wii 1.26M
VGC
PS3 731,016
360 700,490
Wii 1,195,246

December 2009
NPD
PS3 1.36M
360 1.31M
Wii 3.81M
VGC
PS3 1,153,619
360 1,375,709
Wii 3,011,930

January 2010
NPD
PS3 276,900
360 332,800
Wii 465,800
VGC
PS3 317,205
360 310,640
Wii 614,420

February 10
NPD
PS3 360.1K
360 422K
Wii 397.9K
VGC
PS3 286K
360 352K
Wii 518K

sorry i dont have handhelds theres screens are to small for me to care and there missing some buttons from the consoles as well, august 09 is when vgc 1st started putting there USA figures

One thing I've noticed about our data for the Americas is that we seem to track in a "rounded" way while NPD tracks in a "spiked way".

To me, it seems like we're lower than NPD for most stuff in Nov-Dec, but higher in other months...but because we seem to be lower in Nov-Dec, sometimes we end up with stronger Jan-Feb data than NPD has. The Americas market is so huge, you can get like an 800k Wii discrepency and its still within 30% of what NPD has in December.

I see a similar pattern with Famitsu and Media Create in Japan actually. Famitsu has huge spikes for most stuff in Dec-January, but tends to be lower for sw/hw against Media Create outside of Dec-Jan. When the yearly totals come in though, Famitsu and Media Create are always pretty close to one another, and within the bounds of shipment data.

I've seen the good VGC name pop up on a few forums of some other sites. This place really doesn't have a good reputation at all from what I've heard. People claim that VGC flat out "makes up sales numbers", these accusations are not very pleasant to say the least.

Well at this according to ioi at this stage, its NPD who are wrong as he now believes that the quality of tracking is equal between the two.

One example is Forza 3, despite publicly available data regarding its sales in NA, he felt NPD were under tracking. Though it did get eventually adjusted but nonetheless.

Cheers for doing that. It highlights my point a lot better about the 360.

In those 7 months NPD have 360 at 3.75m units while VGC have it at 3.5m. Which is around 200k or so out as i mentioned before. 6 of those 7 months the 360 was under-tracked. That means undertracking of 85%, that is pretty big.

For the same period NPD have PS3 at 3.72m units. Which is a gap of 300k. That is over the time PS3 had the re-model and price cut. 3 of those 7 months have the PS3 over-tracked which means 42% of the months PS3 has been over-tracked.

Or 2 use just the first 2 months of this year PS3 sold 636k and 360 sold 754k. A difference of already 118k in just 8 weeks. Which as i said before if you incorperate that into the charts/figures it would mean 360 is a lot closer worldwide with PS3 and may have even beaten it 1 week this year.

So like i said in my orgional post i find it odd that for some reason 360 numbers don't seem to be as highly reflected here as they are at NPD. Undertracking the console for 6 of the last 7 months (in some cases by 120k a month) while PS3 has been over-tracked in those 7 months 3 times with Jan and Feb seeing VGC being 30k out on its numbers for the console.

If we use those numbers for FULL weeks data from the start of the year it would see WW sales for PS3 of 1.52m and 1.36m for 360. A gap of just 160k worldwide. Or an average of 20k a week from the start of the year. Currently the gap is about 50k a week on here.

So it really is a complicated one that makes you scratch your head and think are the numbers wrong here or are the numbers wrong at NPD.

The weird thing is if you look at that list of figures at around september and october the numbers are nearly spot on. Did something happen from then onwards like something was changed?

actually I would be more worried about the person who blindly follows either side. NPD can't be trusted as it is a closed system. We get some numbers but only because they were being leaked anyways. NPD has no credibility in the public as we get no corrections or they are hid in other numbers (we don't know which). In fact, they are the only video game tracker to have no competition, again something that means they don't even have to try.

If you are paying for numbers than I'd be much more likely to trust them, as I know that corrections would be coming my way if any need to be made. However, I would still be skeptical, as tracking large quantities of items sold is a very hard thing to do. 40 years of experience doesn't mean they didn't make a mistake or that they aren't getting lazy.

cant believe it ?

only 7-9% ? only 3% ? and then you make estimation ? but based on what ?

I m not saying the numbers are crap (I love VGC) but, come on, what a small sample you have !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tracking is not an exactr science, not from any company.

If you take a snapshot in time and say "Wow thats way off" you're being pretty short sighted, if an extended period is off then you can worry a bit.

Buut thankfully theres shipping data every quarter from the big three so you can be assure that the overall discrepancy shown here is really minimal!