It have happened before... VGC algorithms have some issues.

PSVita had sold less than God Eater 2 (like 15%) even though at that week the only way to buy the game was buying the console together.

The Other thing was a game that released only for PS4 (X1 edition got delayed some days/weeks), but it still charted for X1.

Wii U is in a desperate need of a price cut. I bloody hope the projected loss next quarter is caused by a $80-100 cut.

The current catalogue of games is already decent, there are more great games coming - now get the price right and watch the baseline grow! I know I'm gonna pick it up the moment the price drops.

So they basically make the number up.....

Good to know. 

It'll happen as long as Wii U goes through drought periods 

thats a good amount of new PS3 buyers despite it being on the shelves for the while

software pushes sales for long periods. it's not as simple as black and white/if MK (non front loaded game) can't, nothing can. And Zelda does tend to sell comparable numbers to smash bros and mario kart. last gen had a bigger difference for MK and slightly for smash, but we haven't seen what will happen this gen.

Not exactly, but really close to it.

No, numbers can be derived from things other than tracking the physical sales for themselves.

For example, if had the number of ice cream cones sold in a particular region for a particular month, you can also derive from that a number relating to how much ice cream was sold. If you know that typically one gallon of ice cream is sold for every 100 cones, and you know that 500 cones have been sold, it would be reasonable to "post" the number that 5 gallons of ice cream was sold. It's an estimate.

We know, for example, that VGChartz uses this methodology for tracking hardware sales. VGChartz algorithms, over the years, have been tweaked so that they know that when the Xbox One sells X units in a particular area, odds are the PS4 has sold Y number.

VGChartz is a small company that tracks global data, it is ludicrous to assume that they get physical numbers in every region for every piece of software, many estimates, particularly of smaller titles that are strongly focused on a lesser-tracked region, will be numbers derived completely from other data sets. They know that if PS4 has X units in A region, and sold Y units more in a particular week, and game of genre P with marketing budget S is released, the odds of that game selling a number is I%.

I wish people understood more about how tracking, in general, works. Even Sony's official "sell through" numbers are complete estimates, as there's no way in hell that every retailer in the world reports back their numbers to Sony. Sony themsleves will derive that number from their shipment figures, the numbers from the retailers that do report, and other factors like the number of new PS4s connected to the Internet that week, etc.

That doesn't explain how you can "track" a game which is one month from release and rank it as the 45th best selling game in the USA for that week. Perhaps you missed the fact that THE GAME ISN'T OUT YET!

And don't give me that whole "an estimate from Sony is the same as an estimate from VGChartz". That's a load of bs. 

VGChartz quite literally make their numbers up as proved above. You even said yourself that they use no actual data to come to their numbers and just use complete guess work based on trends in order to come up with a definitve number. Companies like NPD and Gfk use 90-95% actual hard data with the rest being an estimate. NPD and Gfk are far more accurate than VGChartz and anyone who says otherwise is deluded. 

And please don't use that condescending attitude with myself. I work for a market research organisation within the telecommunications industry. I know how it works. 

he's got a legit excuse not to be here. Currently filming the remake of cinema paradiso!