Personally I think that the fact that ioi is actively adjusting figures to ensure that the numbers stated on the front page are as close as possible to the real figures is impressive and makes this data worth much more than any other tracking service that I have access to because we get the corrects made in days rather than weeks or months.
And for those that question the need for the adjustments and claim that the bigger services don't do the exact same thing (just weeks and weeks later) lets take a look at the US Governments tracking history of the Labour markets new jobs. this is from the laest month so it is the most applicable to this discussion (even though if you watch services like CNBC you'd know that the adjustments they make are usually much larger)
first here's the source so that people don't think I'm talking out me ass.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/04/business/usecon.php
here's the interesting excerpts.
firstly the news of the latest figures caused more than a 1% fall in the stock market.. causing billions of dollars in market value to be lost. we are talking about many thousands of veteran business analysts basing millions of dollars on these figures.
now lets look at the "Adjustments" they made to their previous months figures and the experts analysts predictions.
"The addition of 18,000 jobs to the December non-farm payrolls marked an abrupt drop from the 115,000 created in November - a figure revised Friday from an initial estimate of 94,000. It was well below the 70,000 jobs anticipated by economists,"
woaahh.. hold on. that means that the previous figures were a massive 20% off. last month. and the analysts were 75% off this months initial figures... of course that becuase they incorrectly believed that they were working on a higher base due to the incorrect figures posted the month prior. but hey thats the tracking business for you. of coruse if they'd known the corrected value they all could have changed their investments and saved a bunch of dollars.. but they didn't.. becuase the revisions only are available the following month... puts ioi's adjustments just a few days later into perspective i reakon :)
and this is the government tracking employment where employers actually need to sign forms and notify the government of every person that they pay and very importantly those that are not working need to register so that they can get money from the government.. theres nothing like getting money to ensure that everyone register's and provides the government with they info they need to give the best trackingt hey can to the business crowd.
That's like saying that ioi would have personal data from every person that actually purchased a console and.. those that didn't.. yet despite this level of information that is available to the government, large adjustments are still required each month. and billions of dollars and tens of thousands of experts analyse this data each month.. but they don't get it right either and rely on the adjustments that are released each month to modify their own predictions for the current month.
I personally think that ioi's adjustments after just a few days and the fact that those adjustments are by comparatively small percentages are excellent and put the larger services to shame.
tracking worldwide sales is incredibly hard. and vgchartz gives a very accurate picture of the current sales based upon the data at hand. which in my opinion is more accurate than NPD / FC / MC and the rest because we get near instantaneous adjustments when compared to those other services.
cheers :)
