You really believe big companies DO NOT ever pressure other smaller companies to do their bidding? Really? So naive of you. You must think the world is made of candy and unicorns.

Hiding sales numbers is exclusive to the gaming industry. Why? EDIT. The Automobile industry is far bigger than the gaming industry and yet sales numbers of cars are open to the public. Gaming is such a joke.

I want to add to this because one thing the NPD did change during that generation. In Gen 7, Software sales were reported individually by system. So Madden on the 360 and Madden on the PS3 would be on the charts and not included with each other. However, during that time Nintendo was dominating the charts and most of the top 10 was Nintendo. After a few years of Wii Fit and Wii Sports knocking out AAA, they changed it so that it combines sales across consoles which bumps down Nintendo's exclusive games.

So this wouldn't be the first time the NPD has done funny business with their data. Is NPD trying to stomp out leaks because of Nintendo? Who knows, but it's interesting the leaks were stomped out after Nintendo had been dominating the hardware numbers.

Yup. NPD is pretty shady, so if they want to hide their data totally, fuck them. I wouldn't be surprised if their "data" is actually inaccurate, especially of late. Also notice that Nintendo doesn't deal with them. NPD has been asking Nintendo to share their digital sales with them and Nintendo is like "FUCK YOU." Nintendo obviously sees them as untrustworthy.

NPD doesnt show how many played it via 1$ for a year, on gamepass.
However my thinking is, more than Xbox is probably comfortable with..... didnt buy the new Gears game, but played it via gamepass.

Xbox probably made huge losses on Gears (spending on production > sales + gamepass revenue generated).

Also apparently 5 weeks later on, its almost out of the top20 most played on xbox.
This is unusual for a Gears of War game, they usually have good legs, and staying power.... this one seems to have fizzled out quicker.

We still got leaks on a regular monthly basis though. First time I remember reading about NPD trying to stop leakers was in 2015 where Sony had zero reason to stop US numbers from leaking.

Mat Piscatella has started to communicate more with users through twitter revealing bits and pieces of information. It mostly come off as NPD promoting their services due to them discovering that they could charge money for something they used to reveal for free.

However, they do reveal the month's winner (which has been Nintendo a lot lately) and they don't hold back on praising impressive numbers and records (which has been about Nintendo a lot lately), so I'm not quite sold on the theory that NPD is paid to downplay Nintendo. If they are, Mat is doing a pretty bad job on twitter none the less.

Well, ok. I guess that explains a few things.

I stopped reading at $1/year GamePass. You’re either wildly ignorant about GamePass or exaggerating greatly, either way not worth a serious reply.

So, he mixed up month for year. Big deal. Doesn't change the fact that the rest of his reply was true. Nice way to try and ignore it, though.

I saw 49 new replies and thought we got hardware numbers but its just consipitacy theories.