So does this mean we have to wait for quaterly reports now for pkaystation and nintendo? And nothing from xbox?

Consistent data right now is Japan and Spain weekly numbers, UK monthly numbers (well kinda as we get a decent enough of an idea to figure it out), and US all we get are total hardware revenue and the order of the platforms. Nintendo does usually provide exact figures during the holidays if sales are good enough. 

I do look at retail availability and historical figures to help with our numbers after I run the algorithm. PS5 and Series X can sometimes have next to no stock for well over a week in some countries, then a retailer has a big drop. 

This has become the hardest time to track hardware sales for us. I try to be as accurate as possible with the numbers we do get. But we can be off sometimes. If we were to wait for all available data our hardware numbers would be 3 months or more delayed. 

It used to be at one point. For most of the 00s, we'd get full hardware and at least Top 20 software from the NPD Group. Gen 6 and the first half or so of Gen 7 was the most well-documented period for video game sales in the U.S. Then around 2010 they gradually started to reduce what they'd share. First they cut software sales down to just the Top 10, then by around the mid 2010s they just stopped sharing any numbers. Leakers kept giving us numbers, and for a very brief time last an NPD rep started giving numbers again, but that ended after several months and the leaks kept getting plugged. Now there are no leaks.

This is why I suggested several years ago that there should be some sort of crowdsourced sales tracker to serve as an alternative to the NPD Group. Hardly anybody thought it was worthwhile, and some thought it was a ridiculous thing to even suggest. But since there are no alternatives, there's a very good chance we'll never see how much any console or game sells in the U.S. ever again.

The video games industry has a serious transparency issue, and this certainly doesn't help that perception.

The thing is, Japan never had this problem. While Media Create did the same thing as NPD and put all of their data behind an exorbitant paywall, we still have a competitor in Famitsu, which has been publishing sales figures since the late 90s, for free. Of course, what sets Famitsu apart from MC and NPD is that it's a video game magazine, not a market research firm. I think that's why we've long needed someone out there doing sales tracking that didn't have data from said tracking being their main source of income.