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Forums - Sales - Valve: Digital Sales Charts are bad

alfredofroylan on 21 April 2011

Because we have our own .... thing.

Speaking in an interview with MCV, Holtman said that he believes the “idea of a chart is old. It came from people trying to aggregate disaggregated information. What we provide to partners is much more rapid and perfected information.”

Steam’s metrics allow Valve to keep publishers and developers in-the-know, with hourly updates of download figures so that they can see just how people are responding to marketing efforts. Holtman believes that this is what’s important for the industry, not how a game is faring against other, unrelated titles.

“The point is, it’s not super important for a publisher or developer to know how well everyone is doing,” insisted Holtman. “What’s important to know is exactly how your game is doing – why it’s climbing and why it’s falling. Your daily sales, your daily swing, your rewards for online campaign number three. That’s what we provide.”

Valve’s stance will be a blow for US tracker NPD, which is currently trying modernise its methods by including America digital sales data in its reports.

http://www.vg247.com/2011/04/21/steam-data-for-digital-sales-charts-not-beneficial-insists-valve/



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Xenostar on 21 April 2011

Your pie chart is making me hungry



Conegamer on 21 April 2011

Good...point...

*runs to get pie*



 

Here lies the dearly departed Nintendomination Thread.

noname2200 on 21 April 2011

Theoretically, such an approach might lead to publishers learning lessons and resorting less to me-too games.

I don't like it.



Porcupine_I on 21 April 2011

the pie is a lie!



“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”

- George Orwell, ‘1984’

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whatever on 21 April 2011

Anything that f*cks over NPD is fine with me.



enditall727 on 21 April 2011

im off to go get some pie



kitler53 on 21 April 2011

while i agree that information is very valuable ... as a developer i would want access to other games sales as well to make a better decisions about what kinds of experiences the market is responding to.



Mendicate Bias on 21 April 2011

The idea that each game lives in its own little microcosm and is unaffected by anything else on the market is foolish.

Whether we like it or not games on the market have a direct impact on each others sales. Marketing is important but so is looking at the performances of other games to gage demand, genre saturation and release timing. It doesn't take a genious to tell you that releasing a new FPS title in the same month as a COD release is not a good idea.



                                           

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