I came here for the numbers, but stayed for the games discussion and community. I think it makes the place more inviting and we should encourage it, actually.

I mean, if we're interpreting this site absolutely strictly, then any discussion beyond that of videogame sales should be off limits. And there's just not enough content to qualify that at the moment.

We still have plenty of threads about numbers every week, which I participate in. The global up thread; the weekly pre-order thread; the Famitsu/Media.Create thread. Sure, not every single person here posts in them, but a lot of people do.

A big problem with the site at the moment however (and sorry for hijacking your thread to say say this) is lack of accuracy with everything. I've seen various people theorising how far off every single console is from shipment numbers from the variety of sources we've had over the past couple of months (NPD/GFK/Nintendo's figures), yet nothing has been changed about it yet. Millenium made a thread; I've posted on ioi's wall about errors to do with 3DS figures but nothing has been changed about it yet.

I appreciate that running & maintaining this kind of site is hard. It takes effort and time which most people don't have. But I don't think it's unreasonable to expect adjustments within a month of NPD.

Anyway, ranting aside, I feel that reason may cause people to be a bit apprehensive about commenting too much on the figures represented here. We're tracking Ni No Kuni very nicely in US & EU, but there's been a lot of discussion about whether this is likely to be adjusted way down because VGChartz's method of sampling skews heavily for JRPG's. Which, I suppose in itself is discussion about game sales :P but kind of beside the point. Anyway...

 You must of missed my thread about second hand games.. http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=154753&page=1#

The only thing that would worry me is when people put discussion about games above discussion about business and sales. That's what worries me the most.

When I had my thread on Nintendo's prices for its games compared to steam games, I was bashed for bias against the games. I think that's an issue with the people and content of this site.

This community is fundamentally limited in what it can do, because the tools needed for deep meaningful discussions are simply no longer available on this site. On occasion someone will take the time to gather up the disparate date all on their own, but it is actually a fairly exhausting effort. That can take hours or days, and seeing as someone who will respond probably will not have time themselves to go data diving the discussion goes flat pretty fast.

I can about guarantee you that if we had the tools we had four or five years ago on this site. There would be a hell of a lot more detailed discussions, and frankly I think it does hurt this site that we cannot have those discussions anymore. It brought a lot of attention to the site, and those discussions had a lot of impact outside of this site. At one point in time threads from here were being copy pasted on other forums on other sites, because they were just that insightful.

I honestly don't see why we cannot have them at all. This site is driven by advertising revenue from what I can tell, and those tools would bring a lot more people to the site. So it should be a win/win situation. Rather then a terrible burden on the sites management.

Sales discussion will pick back up this year. The last few years sales discussion has died down primarily because 360 fans are avoiding any talk of ps3 overtaking 360 (JK). It's just gotten stale.
Business discussion will resume when there is more 'betting' to be done. Right now, we can't really do predictions, we can't do analysis...we really can't do much because we know jack about the new consoles.
Trust me, sales discussion will pick up as sales pick up.

A lot of the talk we have about games are about business and sales. It all relates to each other in someone. Good games sell well while bad games dont. Niche games go about both ways for the most part. This all isnt 100% accurate but it is a trend that most games go in. We have plenty of prediction threads and sales threads. Remember why we are looking at a games sold website though. We are gamers so it is logical that we talk about games that we like. If it wasnt for the great community that vgchartz i wouldnt be on here other than to look at how many games has sold each week and where hardware stands.

I want less sales talk, it's mainly just people mud slinging at other companies and selectively posting negative news. I would leave, but the community and site design is keeping me here.

I always wondered why people can't just talk sales without using it as a means of bashing, but just as a way of understanding the trends in the industry, just because it's a hobby, or a passion.

Is business really that boring?

It's nice to know how well certain games, consoles and the industry as a whole are doing, but for the most part I find it pretty uninteresting.

Agreed. People don't approach the gaming industry on this site from the right angle. They tend to approach it with a biased view and will not hear of any faults in what they say. It's very dissappointing to see. Why this it the case I do not know. Is it due to education, age or something else?