| Robomado said: No numbers yet? |
Here is the thing.
The NPD threads posted here and on other forums, such as NeoGAF, have always relied on 'leaked' numbers since 2010 when NPD stopped reporting numbers themselves.
The NPD Group is a research firm that tracks point of sale transactions of Video Games in the US. They are able to account for around 95% of the market and use a propriatary algorithm to account for the remaining 5%. Only paid subscribers are able to access NPD's data release each month and any redistribution of that proprietary and confidential data is illegal without NPD's prior consent.
So in effect, all the 'leaks' posted here over the many years have technically been illegal (Unless NPD posted the data themselves or authorised companies/individuals to release certain bits of data). Right now no one is willing to risk their job, and rightly so, to leak NPD data to a forum so that a few (apologies for this phrase) fanboys can gloat that their preferred plastic box is selling more than another plastic box. The data that NPD distributes is of value to many in the industry and there is a reason they charge for it. That being said, I'm not going to pretend that I wouldn't want NPD to release more data publicly. High level discussion can happen and has happened in the past through these small 'leaks', which I believe are fairly immaterial to NPD's overall business anyway.
A more transparent games industry from platform holders, publishers, retailers and market researchers is a good thing in my opinion. There are of course reasons why many of the above wouldn't want that, and that's why NPD doesn't release much publicly, but at the same time we're seeing more relevant data being released given the huge change and growth going on in the industry right now.
For example, platform holders and publishers are talking more about about how live service games are performing by sharing engagement and spend metrics. Publishers are also talking about how the shift to digital has increased gross margin percentage. Sony has plenty of data out there about how Network is the driver for platform holders this gen and Microsoft's Xbox Live data agrees with that. There are free services such as SteamSpy and Sensor Tower which track the PC and Mobile market farily accurately. If you look for data on relevant topics of today then you'll find it.
The issue I see is that not many people actually care about discussing all of that. Any time there is a discussion around the above it usually devolves into console wars fairly soon. That's unfortunately why I'm no longer as active as I was in forums like these because any long post I write is ignored or any data I talk about is used for console wars. Do note that I'm not calling out anyone here. I'm just saying that in general it seems that there aren't many people left who geniuinely want to discuss the health and future of the industry anymore.
Anyway. I'm not entirely sure what I wanted to say in this post. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I hope more people who are geniuinely interested in the games industry can have and use data to drive high quality discussions and come to conclusions about the current state and future of the industry. I also hope that high quality discussion of said data doesn't devolve into console wars in every thread like I seem to be seeing these days. Unfortunately I completely understand why many people do 'care' about console wars. I almost went down that path myself once when I was younger.
