They're as reliable as any market research firm that doesn't track the entire market. Think of infoscout as the same as your preliminary election poll where they sample a number of people and then extrapolate up to represent the whole of the country.

In this case, Infoscout have analysed purchases from 250,000 shopping receipts and found that of that sample the number one console SKU was the XB1 500GB Gears of War bundle across retail. 

It's worth noting that this is just a single SKU that infoscout are reporting on and they are not saying which console actually sold more. (Could be that all PS4 SKU's sold more than all XB1 SKU's or vice versa).

In their previous report which looked at 150,000 receipts they noted that PS4 Uncharted bundle was the top selling SKU at Best Buy. 

In regards to reliability it's a large sample size so the data can be trusted. But it's better to wait for NPD who track POS data across the US. They will have the most accurate data. 

They're as reliable as any market research firm that doesn't track the entire market. Think of infoscout as the same as your preliminary election poll where they sample a number of people and then extrapolate up to represent the whole of the country.

In this case, Infoscout have analysed purchases from 250,000 shopping receipts and found that of that sample the number one console SKU was the XB1 500GB Gears of War bundle across retail. 

It's worth noting that this is just a single SKU that infoscout are reporting on and they are not saying which console actually sold more. (Could be that all PS4 SKU's sold more than all XB1 SKU's or vice versa).

In their previous report which looked at 150,000 receipts they noted that PS4 Uncharted bundle was the top selling SKU at Best Buy. 

In regards to reliability it's a large sample size so the data can be trusted. But it's better to wait for NPD who track POS data across the US. They will have the most accurate data. 

With there way of getting there data... I always take this with a huge grain of salt.... Really hard to get a feeling of the market by looking at receipts from only a select few willing to send them in. But 250K is an very impressive number.... but how many bought a console is not so much is my bet.

comon. just say it
more reliabale than chartz
less reliable than npd

the question is always how representative is theire sample size of the overall market
the last 2 years they were quite good. and theire sample size is at least not that homogenous like amazon bestseller lists, who just contain online shopper...

Do bear in mind that 250k is the total number of receipts they have. The number of receipts with gaming related purchases are much lower. For example, last year only 1.1% of their total sample made a gaming related purchase.

We dont know the number this year but if we apply that same percentage then it would mean that less than 3,000 of the 250,000 made a gaming purchase and were counted above.