Thank big 3rd-party publishers and certain "exclusively-video-game" retailers for basically forcing NPD to play the bad guy by incessantly purging all of the  leakers.

I mean I don't like it either, but NPD is a research group that formulates these estimates so no, we don't strictly speaking generate this data.  They aren't counting every single sale individually. 

Well It won handily in Europe and Splatoon won handily in Japan.  US will be close actually.  Splatoon finished July at #3 on Amazon and Crash came in at #11.  That gives Splatoon the edge, but because Amazon is not as reliable with software sales, it's close enough to go either way.

You can take the "estimate" part with a grain of salt. It's pretty much just straight sales data.

This is how it works:

1) Every month, NPD gets direct, point-of-sale transaction data from all of the major retailers and all of their online websites. That's 95% of the market.

2) Then, NPD gets direct data from another 2% of smaller retailers.

3) The remaining 3% NPD estimates with algorithms.

We as consumers collectively generate 97% of NPD's data, so I do feel like it's something we should have access to.

A long long time ago, we used to get some direct data....before a retailer / a few third-parties started complaining, that is.

True enough.

But might I ask, why should this information be available?  On what are you basing this perceived right?  Because we bought the products?  The purchase is an exchange of money for a product or service.  It only gives the right to use or own that product or service.  In what way are consumers harmed in any capacity by sales data of this nature not being public?  I mean, publicly traded companies have to divulge their sales anyway quarterly.  Beyond our own ammusement or hobby of tracking sales, what does this information give us? 

They really don't. Legally, all they have to establish is materiality by sector.

In other words, corporations only need to divulge revenue from the major divisional segments. They don't need to delineate any further than that. It's fine for shareholders, but it can often obfuscate the performance of products (e.g. Microsoft using MAUs instead of unit shipments for Xbox performance).

I just think that, because DVD/Blu-Ray sales (in some areas), album sales, Japanese video game sales, and box office movie sales are commonly divulged, so too should western video games. It's a matter of principle more than anything.

Kadokawa isn't losing any business because they share the Top 30 + hardware sales every week. NPD wouldn't lose any clients if they went that route, either. They're just bowing to the whims of petty corporations.

Tagging. Hope we get some good leaks again this month.

Seeing how much the NS sold should be quite telling.

Man, how I wish it was like Billboard. It'd be awesome if we had a weekly sales chart that went back to say, the 4th gen. I'd love to see the weekly #1 titles. Of course, it's way too late for that now.

A better question is why the companies should have the right to hide it because that is what is happening.  Hardly no other industry does this.

What other industry posts exact sales numbers though? Car or phone maunfacurers only do when they hit big milestones or generally sell extremly well, but for most you won't get to hear any sales numbers at all. Outside of video games posting specific sales numbers are mostly just bragging rights, nothing else.