So I had just recently introduced my friend to this site (over an argument over which was better selling, New Super Mario Bros. Wii or Halo: Reach), and he questioned the accuracy of the information on this website. I had always taken it for granted, and assumed the data was correct. But he brings up a good point.

So I did some research in the "About Us" and "Methodology" sections of the website. The previously known Videogame Sales Charts website "collects publicly available video game sales data in one place for users to view."

According to their Methodology:

All sales estimates on VGChartz are arrived at via a number of proprietrary and ever-developing methods:

• Passively polling end users to find out what games they are currently purchasing and playing
• Polling retail partners to find out what games and hardware they are selling
• Using statistical trend fitting and historical data for similar games
• Studying resell prices to determine consumer demand and inventory levels
• Consulting with publishers and manufacturers to find out how many units they are introducing into the channel

What kind of retail partners? Publishers? Like Nintendo? Did they ask Nintendo how many units of New Super Mario Bros. Wii they have sold? How do we know that the actual sales figures for NSMB Wii aren't 10 million less than what VGChartz says?

I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just trying to figure out more specifically their ways of obtaining the data.

I mean, I know some of the data is true, like the sales for the Wii hardwares, because during E3, Reggie Fils-Aime said that they have sold about 87 million units. I assume that the rest of the information on this site is at least somewhat accurate.

I looked for an FAQ section, but I couldn't find one. I think a detailed FAQ would be very helpful for people looking for numbers, questioning the data, or potential members.

Publishers say how many games they've sold during their quarterly earnings.

Retail partners would be stores. Not pubnlishers. Vgchartz compares its numbers to NPD when they release numbers and thats really all the checking that can be done. Pubs and devs generally do not release sales figures. Consol makers do release numbers but they are usually shipped not sold through. But as far as I know they obtain data from retail sources and extrapolate that out for data they are missing. Are the numbers 100% accurate? I doubt. Are they a good ball park figure? Yes