It takes some time but you can already start playing with it before it's completely downloaded.

I guess I see it like this.

I've been on this site 6 years. The tracking is a HELL of a lot better than it was back then.

In those six years, I have no doubt spent dozens or perhaps hundreds of hours on the site. This has come from bursts of large amount of time and periods where I log in once every three months.

For all this entertainment, information and sales speculation, I have paid ioi precisely $0.00. Sure, I have likely generated some ad traffic, but I frankly dont think that entitles me to have a mad bitch about the sales figures, their inherent flaws and strengths, and whether or not obscure PS3 game &*$% from the year 2007 has been properly updated with the correct sales announced by the developer at the end of an investor teleconference 7 years on.

I think we've even less right to bitch since VGChartz started offering a paid service that no doubt full lists all the strengths and limitations of the data to an extent far greater than is required or can reasonably be expected by free users. And ultimately, in this glorious free economy, if you feel you can do better, you have every right to go and start your own sales tracking website - where most people will promptly end up with a reputation equivelant to Insiderp.

Anyway, thats directed at others in this thread more than you. I find the constant complaining boring at this point.

I'm not an expert on this site, but do you guys post your WW numbers by country?

I might be misreading it but he didn't link to any official numbers at all? But I agree the hashtag was unnecessary.

i'm totally being facetious

I am currently writing a paper about breastfeeding.

Your adult humour went straight over my head

So has chartz officially stopped pretending to be a professional market analyst firm?

I agree, this is by far the worst possible method of estimating anything.

Especially since every even remotely knowledgable user outside the US creates a US account to have access to cheaper games.

This can be the reason why ROW is undertracked, as, since you have US numbers, attribute a disproportionate percentage of consoles to the US accounts, thus underestimating EMEA primarily.

As an example, I live in Croatia, and on my console I have 1 Croatian and 13 US accounts which I used to buy games. Hundreds of others do the same, as well as numerous others across Europe and Asia. 

If this is the method you use to estimate sales data, no wonder you are missing 600k consoles...

The only chance this would happen is if their entire marketing department is run by a bunch of chimps with a bad case of diarrhea. This would have to be failure of embarassing proportions from the sales dept, to the legal dept. all the way to the marketing communication dept. Possible, but highly unlikely.

Man, if I was ioi I would be swinging the perma-ban hammer left and right. So much emotion over a mostly free service.

Also, having been here so long I had already guessed they did not know where the consoles had been sold. i thought it rather obvious.