In general, people care about sales when they are invested in a company's future.

We are interested in the success of companies that provide us with art (like movies, TV, and games) because receiving new experiences in the future fundamentally depends on their products selling well.

If a product is driven by an individual creator (like books or music), or it's a generic commodity that's serves a function (like cars, power tools, snowmobiles), there isn't nearly the same level of interest, because new products (or functionally equivalent products) will release regardless of how the old ones perform. 

For example, authors will continue to write, regardless how one of their books may or may not sell. So, we don't have a vested interest in how books perform sales-wise because we know we'll always get new books from an author we like no matter what. In another example, people don't care nearly as much about car sales because people buy a single car and own it for 10 years. If Toyota goes out of business 2 years in that's a shame, but we still have 8 years left on our current car, and we can easily buy another car from Honda which is just as good (if not better).

But there isn't really an equivalent when Intelligent Systems goes out of business, because then we'll probably never see Advance Wars or Fire Emblem games ever again...and those products are unique IPs that we get very attached to.

I think there is more of an obligation for those type of companies to release their sales data as a courtesy to their fans.

So it's a courtesy?  I get that but again, it's more a personal principle.

And as an aspiring  author I just have to say that the bolded is so bafflingly untrue.  Not only will authors scale back or stop their writing if it makes them no money, but the overwhelming majority of quality books are published by publishing houses who will, yes, publish low sellers for a time but that will stop.  You can't perpetually underperform on the market and expect, say, Random House to continue to spend large ammounts of money to put your books on shelves.  And independent publishing isn't cheap if you want to have a shot in the market.  You definitely can't keep doing that if your sales are poor.  Authors aren't inhumans who live on creative fulfillment, we're human beings who also have to make a living. And writing takes time and effort that if it isn't making money can only be allowed to take up so much of our days.

I'll have you know that I'm an aspiring author as well, and I write fiction because I have a story burning inside of me that needs to get told. I really couldn't care less if nobody ever reads it. I write for my own personal fulfillment and nothing more. If I get any sort of financial success out of it, that's an added benefit, but I'm long past the point of expecting anything out of my writing.

Countless artists are like me...they hold a day job to pay the bills but their true passion is in their art and will always be in their art. They'll keep writing, drawing, or composing trying to chase their dream, even if it doesn't work out commercially. Just look at famous artists like Van Gogh or Monet who only achieved fame and fortune posthumously.

Companies don't work that way. If companies are financially unsuccessful it's guaranteed that they're going to go out of business and it's guaranteed we'll never see their art ever again. When Neverland went bankrupt we never saw any Rune Factory games ever again. When Lionhead Studios got shut down, the Fable IP got permanently cancelled. When the Dreamcast failed commercially, we never saw another console from Sega ever again and their IP output declined.

That's why we tend to care more about how games sold in the marketplace.

Auto sales are posted monthly in the US and in great detail.

You're now taking the perspective lf the artist.  Your original point was from the perspective of the consumer.  Yes, an artist will often continue on as a hobby if they make no money on their art.  But from the perspective of the customer, they have effectively stopped.  Because those works will never be seen.  Thats what I was getting at.  The whole idea that regardless of sales, we as consumers will always get books from authors we like is just plain wrong.  They may keep writing, but if no money comes of it they will not continue to be published.  And if their publishing house goes out of business, they can be thrown for a loop if they weren't a major success before.  

I feel like there are so many modern methods of dissemination that an author who was dropped by traditional publishing houses still has avenues to connect directly to their fanbase. Like CreateSpace / print-on-demand, Patreon / Kickstarter, and the whole gamut of social media.

Sure, they might not be able to reach a mass market again, they might write less frequently, and they might get demoralized for a while, but they're not completely destitute. They can survive and they can still get books out to people. It's happened to one of my friends in the past. And maybe, in time they might be able to sign on with a different publisher.

If a company's latest game bombs and they can't find additional funding / their parent company shuts them down, that's it. They disappear (or effectively disappear) every single time and all of the artists who made the dream happen disperse and work on other IPs. It's tragic how the video game industry destroys incredible teams of people on a whim, but that's the nature of such a fundamentally volatile industry so heavily reliant on sales.

Maybe a compromise could be reached with like a months delay in releasing  the monthly data for public consumption, that way they still have control over the latest data and by the time that data is  released to the public, NPD and their clients should have their focus on  the latest data, and if that's not enough to appease them even more, they could limit it to a select number of sites, that way it's available to those with a real interest in the sales data without being open to widespread public release.

Independent self publication has made it easier yes, but it's still a challenge.  Cause now instead of competing with the cream of the crop for the attention of a senior editor, now you're competing for attention in a mass of people ranging in skill from really good to bafflingly incompetent.  So to have a chance to be noticed, muchless successful, can cost a not insignificant ammount of money.

So it's easier, but still a challenge.  Bad sales can seriously limit any artist in any field in terms of distribution.  That's what I was trying to say.

But it is worse with any creative work that requires a team.

No numbers? Not interested in MicroSony but interested in seeing what Switch sold since it's still hard as fuck to find at retail.

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