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Forums - Sales Discussion - December 2015 NPD Thread! PS4 and XBO exclusives LTD up!

Aquamarine said:

Thank fucking NeoGAF moderation for permabanning my friend NPD George / NDP Mulcair.

George / Mulcair is from The NPD Group. He's my contact at the agency in Port Washington. I helped him set up an account and actually was able to convince NPD that it was a good idea to help out GAF / other sites with some official information starting with October 2015 NPD.

But apparently that piece of shit admin Stumpokapow decided to ruin a perfectly good thing and permaban my friend because they got into their stupid little heads that he was "my alt account" which doesn't make any sense. I set up his profile on my computer and then told him the login and password because he's not very good with forums, and apparently that's "proof of an alt account" despite him clearly being a very different poster than I was.

I tried to get back on NeoGAF in the past...I reached out to the mods to be unbanned at multiple points...but they have completely ignored me. So I thought bringing George to GAF could act as a good replacement for data so everyone didn't always have to rely on leaks.

But apparently the arrogance and elitism of the NeoGAF moderators knows no bounds, and they'd rather stick to their draconian ways instead of getting more of a good thing. So you know what? Fuck them. We're done.

We all think it's utterly ridiculous that they're acting like children. This incident has really soured our opinion of the forum. But hey, what can you do? NeoGAF is really going downhill. I'm finally starting to understand why there is so much hatred against them on the Internet.

I have nothing against Chartz forums or any of you guys. NPD used to be really draconian last year so I was pressured pretty hardcore into trying to stop leaks but they've got new management lately that has been more open towards sharing tidbits of data (like hardware), hence the existence of NPD George / NDP Mulcair. This incident will probably close everything down again, which sucks.

If I can leak something here in the future with the permission of NPD I will, but it's probably unlikely.

Welcome to the Chartz. We are all (or mostly) total data addicts so we will happily take confirmed sales data from anyone. 





“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Jimi Hendrix

 

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RolStoppable said:

You really got permabanned on NeoGAF? How did you manage that?

ZhugeEX ban had nothing to do with his logic, contribution, or estimates.

I actually messaged some of the mods regarding this issue with no feedback. I even took a break from Neogaf over this issue, which is why I was on vgchartz in the first place. Here is some info, but it doesn't paint the whole picture.  

Rumor has it that his "potential to self promote" his site was the cause for the permaban. The whole things was ridiculous.



Protendo said:
RolStoppable said:

You really got permabanned on NeoGAF? How did you manage that?

ZhugeEX ban had nothing to do with his logic, contribution, or estimates.

I actually messaged some of the mods regarding this issue with no feedback. I even took a break from Neogaf over this issue, which is why I was on vgchartz in the first place. Here is some info, but it doesn't paint the whole picture.  

Rumor has it that his "potential to self promote" his site was the cause for the permaban. The whole things was ridiculous.

 

Except I didn't have a website before my ban. 

 

I still to this day do not know why I was banned. The mods refuse to respond to me about it. 



ZhugeEX said:
Protendo said:
RolStoppable said:

You really got permabanned on NeoGAF? How did you manage that?

ZhugeEX ban had nothing to do with his logic, contribution, or estimates.

I actually messaged some of the mods regarding this issue with no feedback. I even took a break from Neogaf over this issue, which is why I was on vgchartz in the first place. Here is some info, but it doesn't paint the whole picture.  

Rumor has it that his "potential to self promote" his site was the cause for the permaban. The whole things was ridiculous.

 

Except I didn't have a website before my ban. 

 

I still to this day do not know why I was banned. The mods refuse to respond to me about it. 

If I remember correctly.... You added your site after your temporary ban, and that was the rumor to why the permanant ban was issued.

I'm just going off of hearsay, and find the whole thing to be immature at best. Regardless, I'm glad you didn't give up your hobby, and still post from time to time.





ZhugeEX said:
Shadow1980 said:


Anywho, try getting in touch with NPD_Mulcair and see if you can't convince him to start sharing the data here in our NPD threads. 



 

You realise that 'VGChartz' is in direct competition with a service that The NPD Group provide right? 

 

Unless they enter some sort of partnership (which I don't see happening) there is no way they would post anything here. 



Not even close. No one who actually has a business need for US sales data is going to drop paying for NPD information in favour of VGC sales estimates. If anything there is actually synergy between NPD and VGC. VGC provides the only weekly global estimate of hardware and software sales. It has low accuracy, but gives a decent ballpark over time and thus provides reasonable analytical data for historical reference.

NPD provides highly reliable data for the US market, which remains the single biggest video game market, in sufficient frequency that business can use the information to inform short and medium term decision-making.

The fact that VGC and NPD have coexisted for more than a console generation without one materially affecting the business of the other clearly indicates a synergistic connection not a competitve one.

What NPD does not want is for VGC to become a direct competitor for high accuracy US sales data. So it would be worried if VGC get a formal relationship going with Amazon, Gamestop, Walmart, Target and Best Buy. If VGC started reporting US sales based on 100% of national sales from those companies that would put them in direct competition and shit would start to happen. We're in a safe situation right now while VGC remains an ostensibly amateur operation that remains at arms length from corporate retailers.

If VGC made a strategic decision to get more serious and professional with US sales I would support them in that so long as they continued to publish the data as they do now, but I don't think they should. I like that NPD and VGC are in a happy coexistance right now.





“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Jimi Hendrix

 

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Protendo said:
ZhugeEX said:

 

Except I didn't have a website before my ban. 

 

I still to this day do not know why I was banned. The mods refuse to respond to me about it. 

If I remember correctly.... You added your site after your temporary ban, and that was the rumor to why the permanant ban was issued.

I'm just going off of hearsay, and find the whole thing to be immature at best. Regardless, I'm glad you didn't give up your hobby, and still post from time to time.



 

Nope, my permanent ban took place before my site even went live. 

 

I cross checked the dates and everything. 



Aquamarine said:
Shadow1980 said:

That actually would be a great idea as well. VGC has always had a significant margin of error that always needed to get adjusted once the "official" trackers published their figures, though it's still better than nothing and post-adjustment numbers seem to be more like a Famitsu vs. MC thing. I can understand why some people have been critical of the site's week-to-week tracking. If VGC would step up its game and tried to become an "official" tracker with the same tools and methodology and access to more accurate data, that would be amazing. Despite the initial margins of error, I've always appreciated that VGC at least tries to have publicly-available sales data. They're really the only place that does that, and I've always hated how NPD has gotten so damn secretive about everything until NPD_Muclair started posting at GAF. I mean, it's just sales data, not some super-duper trade secret.

I know, right? And NPD used to even give GAF numbers from like 2006-2008. That was the hook I was able to use. "Hey NPD George / NDP_Mulcair, you guys gave GAF numbers before, just do what you used to do back in the day." And eventually it worked, but only thanks to the new guys. A year ago when they were harassing me it would have been impossible.

I've made posts on GAF about the issues of VGC accuracy before and that still rings true today. Sometimes VGC is pretty accurate...other times it's far off the mark. I personally can't trust it because I can see the discrepancies are significant at times but hey, gotta give them credit for at least trying.

But that's really easy to solve. If VG Chartz could establish a relationship with Walmart, Target, GameStop, Best Buy, and Amazon, they would effectively become as relevant as NPD.  They would have 90% of the sales in the market. Now of course, 90% accuracy isn't as accurate as NPD, mind you, but it's still pretty damn close (NPD is 95% accurate). Close enough that lots of institutions would start paying for them. Hell, we'd buy a subscription to them.

It's all about expectation. If people have some expectation that VGC will have high accuracy week to week or month to month then they don't understand how VGC works and their expectations are unreasonable. The way VGC works in real time is giving us an indication of how things are going. Thanks to VGC we had adequate data to be able to say that the 8th gen belongs to PS4 and that PS4 was likely to even be #1 in the USA before anyone else. That's because the data was sufficiently in the ballpark to be able to draw some reasonably reliable broad conclusions of how the industry is playing out. 

The question is whehter VGC can change and improve its real time accuracy. It's trying to provide global sell through estimates. It basically gets the NPD data on a monthly basis in order to validate / adjust its US sales. It already simply reports the mean Japanese weekly sales reported by MC, Famitsu and Dengeki. Those are the only regularly reported sell through numbers out there. And they serve VGC's needs. 





“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Jimi Hendrix

 

A very late observation but how valid is 580k for 3DS? If it's true then it looks like the Vita did ~73k if we factor the 32% drop in handheld sales.



PSN: extremeM

PlayStation Vita Japanese Software Sales (Media Create Physical/ Famitsu Digital)

BlowoverKing said:

A very late observation but how valid is 580k for 3DS? If it's true then it looks like the Vita did ~73k if we factor the 32% drop in handheld sales.

That percentage was about revenue though.