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albionus on 19 April 2007

I don't mind the inaccuracy inherint in weekly numbers (the loss of a top 200 is more annoying, but I'm patient).  Even if the sales are within 20% (or say +- 200k overall) it still gives you a fairly accurate read of how games and systems are doing.  Zelda:TP sold between 1.4 and 2 million units (or 1.5 and 1.9 million), that still tells you that it's way more successful than Rayman's 400-600k (300-700k).  Even though over time the error theoretically grows, so long as overall numbers are corrected when more reliable info is released it's not a major problem.  Whatever the error it sure beats having to rely on Microsoft claims that the 360 "sold" 10.4 million by jan 1, 07.  Regardless if monthly numbers are much more accurate it still doesn't beat having reasonable guesstimates every week.                                        



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Avinash_Tyagi on 19 April 2007
albionus said:
I don't mind the inaccuracy inherint in weekly numbers.  Even if the sales are within 20% (or say +- 200k) it still gives you a fairly accurate read of how games and systems are doing.  Zelda:TP sold between 1.4 and 2 million units (or 1.5 and 1.9 million), that still tells you that it's way more than Rayman's 400-600k (300-700k).  Even though over time the error theoretically grows, so long as overall numbers are corrected when more reliable info is released it's not a major problem.  Whatever the error it sure beats having to rely on Microsoft claims that the 360 "sold" 10.4 million by jan 1, 07.  Even if monthly numbers are much more accurate it still doesn't beat having guesstimates every week.                                        

 20% is much too large of a disparity, anything above 10% is probably too large to give any reliable picture of the industry



 

Predictions:Sales of Wii Fit will surpass the combined sales of the Grand Theft Auto franchiseLifetime sales of Wii will surpass the combined sales of the entire Playstation family of consoles by 12/31/2015 Wii hardware sales will surpass the total hardware sales of the PS2 by 12/31/2010 Wii will have 50% marketshare or more by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  It was a little over 48% only)Wii will surpass 45 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  Nintendo Financials showed it fell slightly short of 45 million shipped by end of 2008)Wii will surpass 80 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2009 (I was wrong!! Wii didn't even get to 70 Million)

albionus on 19 April 2007
Avinash_Tyagi said:
albionus said:
I don't mind the inaccuracy inherint in weekly numbers.  Even if the sales are within 20% (or say +- 200k) it still gives you a fairly accurate read of how games and systems are doing.  Zelda:TP sold between 1.4 and 2 million units (or 1.5 and 1.9 million), that still tells you that it's way more than Rayman's 400-600k (300-700k).  Even though over time the error theoretically grows, so long as overall numbers are corrected when more reliable info is released it's not a major problem.  Whatever the error it sure beats having to rely on Microsoft claims that the 360 "sold" 10.4 million by jan 1, 07.  Even if monthly numbers are much more accurate it still doesn't beat having guesstimates every week.                                        

 20% is much too large of a disparity, anything above 10% is probably too large to give any reliable picture of the industry


Of course it's not reliable, hence my inclusion of "so long as overall numbers are corrected when more reliable info is released".   I doubt the real error is outside of 10% but even 20% is close enough to the ballpark to be useful pending eventual correction.  "Even though over time the error theoretically grows" would of course eventually render the figures useless but again reliable info comes out now and then (which as I understand it is how this site operates anyways).  My point was that even at a much greater inaccuracy the benefits of more frequent guestimates still outweighs the cost. 

I forgot to agree with what ioi keeps saying, they are accurate and frequent enough for a free service. Whether or not they are a little off from the exact Wii attach rate or Motorstorm April 1-8th sales can be forgiven.



shams on 19 April 2007

Hi ioi,

I understand what you have done, why you have done it - and fully support it - esp. if the NPD have been breathing down your neck. Still - once some sites post NPD figures, there shouldn't be any issue with lots of sites linking to/posting these figures.

The main reason I can see for monthly figures is this:

Weekly figures are quite transitory, and show more the position of a game in the charts (top 10), rather than its overall sales. Because monthly figures run for 4 weeks, they give a good representation of titles that have actually sold well - for a longer period of time.

An example is God of War II. It was (I believe) the top selling title for US March (800k?), yet it isn't even in the top 10 at the moment. So instead of being a title everyone focuses on, it got a blur of glory - and is now sort of forgotten (people may completely disagree with me on this anyway).

Anyway - if we can have filters that show "next 4 weeks", and things like that - I'll be more than happy.

...

The NPD should be happy you are doing this BTW. This gives people a "source", and then some people can purchase "more accurate" data, without having to spill the real figures all over the web. Its a bit of a catch-22 though. 



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Avinash_Tyagi on 19 April 2007
ioi said:
Avinash_Tyagi said:
fooflexible said:

I can't believe there is people that actually prefer monthly figures. Weekly is way better, don't you want to know figures more often? Hello? I'm thrilled by this change. Granted there is the concern of accuracy, I'm sure like most people on this site I don't own the company selling these games, so exact figures are not nessecary to anything I do, ballpark figures are just fine. For example in Japan the number for last week was around 60,000 for the Wii. If it was anywhere between 50-70,000 I would have been content, refering to its accuracy. Anywhere in that range gives me about the same impression of the system sales there, and that's alot of leeway. I'm sure the percentages that these sales are off by are smaller. Now I know these numbers add up and can change a picture drastically if a consistent mistake is made in the same direction for a long duration. But I'm sure the numbers will be corrected as they have time to analyze more data from more sources over time. So really folks whats the big deal?

 My only problem is there is no option to search for a particular titles' sales in America, as there is in Japan's data. it's fustrating to look up the release month and then track every months of it's sales to get a total, I'd much rather have a search option. And I hope there is soon more then 50 titles addressed for American sales, Japan has like what...200? So it would be nice to at least get 100. And I'd love to get any chart at all for Europe. Alright I'll stop now, I love the site and consider this a positive development in the long run.


 Well as long as VGchartz is within 3-5% accuracy for its data then I would consider it authoritative


You're being pretty unrealistic there. I'd say that NPD figures aren't even that accurate. I think being within 10% of the actual amount is pretty good really. It is not uncommon to see something like a game selling 41k according to Media Create and 28k according to Famitsu - this level of discrepancy occurs between two large tracking services who each charge around $5000-$10000 per year for their services and poll around 40-50% of retailers in Japan. I think a long term goal of being within 10% is realistic, and short term I'd say we probably are only within around 20-25%. So if we have a figure of 85k it could really be anything from 65k - 105k. But then even if NPD report 85k it could be anywhere from say 75k to 95k in reality.

I think a lot of people are naive about the accuracy of all these industry figures. Chart Track who cover over 80% of the UK market (best coverage of any country) had PS3 sales first week at 165k while Sony claimed over 170k. So even there we have a few % difference - we don't know exactly what figures sony track but it is likely to be a very high coverage as well.

At the risk of repeating myself, if you want and expect to see worldwide figures that are 95%+ accurate you can expect to pay something like $250,000+ per year to do so - so you'd better be a large company who needs figures to that accuracy. I can't honestly see why anyone not a professional in the industry would want this and if you're happy with 85%-90% accuracy figures (actually likely to be better over time when publisher figures are taken into account and so on) then you are in the right place and we are trying to give you that for nothing. I think it is unrealistic to expect any more than this and I just want to make that clear to everyone now before we get posts saying "NPD said Wii sales were 418,921 and you said 438,123" and so on - to me that would be an amazing correlation and a lot better than I imagine we will actually see. When you take into account the fact that NPD figures also contain a level of estimation and say Nintendo claim to have shipped 431,000 Wiis in March or whatever then I think it would be a great correlation all round. Don't expect correlation to the nearest unit, or even nearest thousand or tens of thousands (for larger figures) and please be patient as we develop our system, coverage and scaling processes.

So please just bear all this in mind.


 You make a good point, and we will be able to see just how close it is in a few hours to the "official" NPD data



 

Predictions:Sales of Wii Fit will surpass the combined sales of the Grand Theft Auto franchiseLifetime sales of Wii will surpass the combined sales of the entire Playstation family of consoles by 12/31/2015 Wii hardware sales will surpass the total hardware sales of the PS2 by 12/31/2010 Wii will have 50% marketshare or more by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  It was a little over 48% only)Wii will surpass 45 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  Nintendo Financials showed it fell slightly short of 45 million shipped by end of 2008)Wii will surpass 80 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2009 (I was wrong!! Wii didn't even get to 70 Million)

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albionus on 19 April 2007
ioi said:

About this error thing, weekly errors are unlikely to accumulate. In my experience of this data over many years then if you are 20% too high one week you are unlikely to be 20% too high the next and so on unless you are consistently under / over tracking. The errors will even out over time and as we slightly adjust in light of new figures they will gain accuracy further. I think that at any one time our LTDs will be accurate to the nearest 5-10% as we get shipment updates and so on and have reference points from which to compare, but the weekly / monthly breakdowns may be less accurate but then does that really matter too much?


Bleh, I should have just let you say it.



MadsG on 19 April 2007

i think i speak for anyone when i say we want (NPD'S?) monthly numbers back, those weekly charts are just retarded, also, were did the numbers from >january U.S go?



Avinash_Tyagi on 19 April 2007
albionus said:
ioi said:

About this error thing, weekly errors are unlikely to accumulate. In my experience of this data over many years then if you are 20% too high one week you are unlikely to be 20% too high the next and so on unless you are consistently under / over tracking. The errors will even out over time and as we slightly adjust in light of new figures they will gain accuracy further. I think that at any one time our LTDs will be accurate to the nearest 5-10% as we get shipment updates and so on and have reference points from which to compare, but the weekly / monthly breakdowns may be less accurate but then does that really matter too much?


Bleh, I should have just let you say it.


 Yeah that did put my concerns about the accuracy more or less to rest



 

Predictions:Sales of Wii Fit will surpass the combined sales of the Grand Theft Auto franchiseLifetime sales of Wii will surpass the combined sales of the entire Playstation family of consoles by 12/31/2015 Wii hardware sales will surpass the total hardware sales of the PS2 by 12/31/2010 Wii will have 50% marketshare or more by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  It was a little over 48% only)Wii will surpass 45 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  Nintendo Financials showed it fell slightly short of 45 million shipped by end of 2008)Wii will surpass 80 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2009 (I was wrong!! Wii didn't even get to 70 Million)

Avinash_Tyagi on 19 April 2007
MadsG said:
were did the numbers from >january U.S go?

 That is something to note, will we be getting the older data for prior to 2007 back?



 

Predictions:Sales of Wii Fit will surpass the combined sales of the Grand Theft Auto franchiseLifetime sales of Wii will surpass the combined sales of the entire Playstation family of consoles by 12/31/2015 Wii hardware sales will surpass the total hardware sales of the PS2 by 12/31/2010 Wii will have 50% marketshare or more by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  It was a little over 48% only)Wii will surpass 45 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  Nintendo Financials showed it fell slightly short of 45 million shipped by end of 2008)Wii will surpass 80 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2009 (I was wrong!! Wii didn't even get to 70 Million)

benoit on 19 April 2007

well MadsG doesn't speak for everyone... i am so in for the weekly charts! it's great! i love it. and everyone will do soon. ioi will even please all by creating a monthly data range! what do you want more from him???

and as for the inprecision, come on! trust the man. has vgchartz ever disappointed us in that regard? have faith damn it!