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first off, congratulations.

but before i make suggestions... i'm curious, how much time are you already putting into this? i mean, if it's already taking you like 30 hours a week, we can't possibly ask for much more... unless you are planning to actually hire people to work on it. which really changes things.

I wouldn't change to much. Having reviews and stuff about games means that you have to do a serious effort to be taken serious, and I don't think that would suit the site.
I would try to improve the news and maybe have two news sections, one with sales news like the ones from theSource and one with the typical gaming news, but that's about it I think.
The main reason why I don't want to have too much of the "usual content" is that at the moment, you can actually discuss sales in the forums, although this has been better some months ago because the serious arguments often get lost because of too much fanboyism.
A network would be a great idea though, I'm pretty sure that it would help the site's traffic if we would be mentioned on big gaming sites, and we on the other hand could improve our games section if we could get content from somewhere else.

I would like this site to keep focusing on sales data. Try to improve the accuracy and add more/better software data for Others.

I don't want this site to become another Gamespot/IGN, i don't think it really needs that. The goal for this site should be to become the standard in terms of Videogame sales information (over NPD and the others)

source of procrastination

I think it might be a good idea to create a "reviews" section in the forums. a lot of people give reviews on their own, and while the rating system is hardly consistent, they are often far more comprehensive than what you get on other generic gaming sites.
It'd be nice to have a space where you can get a link to all the various reviews people give. I'm not sure i'd want to see much more done to the site.

As far as I am concerned, I was at Gamefaqs back in 1997 (using AOL rofl) and I watched it grow from a site I visited almost hourly to a site I can hardly take visiting once a day. I like the site to be more about the gamer than about the media. Gamefaqs slowly became more about the media.

Now that is not to discourage any action, just please keep in mind that we love this site for what it is, primitive, ambitious, and user friendly. To take away the primitive aspect is to hurt thee integrity of the product (im my humble opinion) and this site inspires me to work hard and start my own ideas.

I also agree very deeply with Nintedo_Fanboy. To add all these other aspects will definitely take away from what this site first seems to set out to be.

Add video gaming autcions (hahahaha).

I believe most people come ion for the sales chart. I do the same i dont believe we need another ign or gamespot and its good to see it unbiased from big companies that share interest from the gaming community. But its your call so if you want to make money on this its your choice but if you dive this deep in gaming industry you must do it with extra careful steps.My advice if you call it stay focused on fanfare and the charts that is keeping this site to have so many hits and people on.

Instead of forming partnerships with existing sites to share information, why not start a VGChartz hub-like network, where other startups, like VGChartz form together, preferably with people that are already with VGChartz. You could oversee that it sticks with how YOU want the VGChartz image to be, they'll maintain and do everything that needs to be done to keep the new sites active, and then it'll all be accessed through one central site, which could be here, with links to corresponding hub sites. One site could be a blog just about news, like kotaku pretty much is, another can be previews, reviews, like gamespot/ign/whatever. Keep it simple, but offer what people want. Pure content with minimal ads, a simplistic, yet sharp looking site, like VGC, and that's about it.

So basically, all you're doing is assisting people with the determination to further VGChartz, have like a centralized community forum for all of them, but keep each site directly relating to what it is. Sales here, reviews there, blogging news over der!

Might take a little time to find people with the ability to update the sites with the functionality and what not, but it'd give you complete creative control and no need for reliances on other sites that have their own agendas, Just my thoughts.

the current layout of this site wont/cant accomodate any expansion, in my opinion. a great way to improve the site is probably a new look? maybe add pages for each console with sales data, weekly sales graph for that console, recent games and probably top 10 games (according to vgc sales data) for each format on that page. i think that would be a great way to pass on more information. just a suggestion though.

and i also agree with carlos. keep it strictly sales info in my opinion. although i also like the vgc network idea. maybe show all the ratings for each game according to the major review sites?

there really is alot you could do in your position.