Not a bad idea. There have been certainly worse ideas on kickstarter that got massive funding. Problem I see is that you would have to get an insider. Like someone that worked for NPD for a long time or something to get ball rolling. It is all about connections.

I would also imagine NPD has deals with companies to collect their data.  I'm sure they'll probably try to prevent someone else taking their spot.  Then, you have the companies that might not want their sales numbers out their to prevent a PR disaster. A lot of hurdles to overcome.

What about Patreon. I think it is geared more towards artists and content creators but this would be content of a sort.

edit- baa I had the tab open since last night so hadn't seen bofferbrauer2's post suggesting the same thing. Also been a long time since I'd been here looks like a few things have changed when it comes to posting.

VGChartz was the right concept. Gather the data and post them on your own website which is the money generator.
Things were going very well and the accuracy was increasing year over year from 2007-2010 and then I don't know what happened and everything fell apart. Either ioi was trying too many things with the website back then, data base, Pro site, another website, paid writers and other things, and it backfired or he got too busy with other work.

If someone can replicate that concept and improve on the accuracy it would be great and could help you get investors. You can get people like ioi to advise you on how to gather data, what worked and what didn't and what were the things that prevent him from being a credible source of data. You can promise people like him advisory shares.

Thanks for the ideas.

Speaking of investors, Famitsu is a gaming magazine and they've been publishing sales data for a long time. Maybe if I can get something up and running one of these days, I could look into getting sponsored by Game Informer or a major gaming website like IGN for right of first publication of sales figures in exchange for assisting with the funding. I'd still insist on it remaining a non-profit venture where the sales data remain public forever.

P.S.: My post from the other day where I said I was going to post this elsewhere ran into a snag as apparently I'm about 30 posts short of the 100-post threshold needed to create new threads on ResetEra, so that will take me a while. Maybe another week or two, depending on how busy I am.

NPD is $10,000 per report per month. If they find out you'd ever transmit the data elsewhere, you'd probably be in breach of their NDA or other licensing agreements.

Brett left VGC and with it, any hope of adding proper methodology.

The Patreon idea isn't a bad idea. If you need help on how to calculate sales for games/DLC, just give me a PM and I can tell you how to do it. I worked with Brett and a few others professionally for a few years on digital game tracking (FADE). I don't think the concept has changed much since I stopped doing it professionally. But you WILL need someone that's very, VERY fluent with data scrapers and at least one high-end ($200+/mo) server, for starters.

I don't know if you know this Shadow, but this guy used to publish XBLA sales numbers and they were trusted more than the site he used to publish them on. I'd recommend speaking with him if you're serious about this. 

Summer of Arcade used to be more fun with his data.

Well, I dropped this idea over at Era, and it seems that the general consensus so far is that there is no point. Apparently, the only ones who will ever have the privilege of obtaining any sales data is the NPD. They have a legal monopoly on it, and they and the game industry and retailers simply don't want this information going public. And some even insinuated that it was for the better, that sales data ought to be verboten to the unwashed masses.

If there really is no point, if the NPD really does have a permanent lock on U.S. sales data, I guess I might as well just drop my interest in cataloguing, discussing, and analyzing sales data. I guess it's my lot in life to have everything that interests me taken away from me.

With what justification do they think that data should be hidden from the people? Do they really prefer being lied upon/spinned around like a spintop?

It's quite possible that NPD has a permanent lock on that data... but who the heck are those idiots that do such pointless exclusivity deals in the first place?

And no, Shadow, the data we have might not be perfect and increasingly hard to get, but that certainly doesn't mean we should stop trying.

They didnt say that, they said there is no incentive for companies to give out data like that to the general public so they dont.