By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Website Topics - Discuss the state of the forums and find solutions

Renamed on 26 August 2024
trunkswd said:
Renamed said:

It's best to leave it is now with minor tweaks. Site refreshes rarely invigorate long term activity and eventually lead to less overall engagement.

Dedicated forums are a dying medium. We all just need to come to terms with that. They are going the way of the old BBS, IRC, newgroups, etc... Do not waste money and massive efforts to revamp the whole site.

If any energy is increased, apply it toward sales tracking. Since VGC doesn't have corporate backing like IGN or GameSpot, it is the uniqueness of sales tracking that allows VGC to keep going long after thousands of others have died. Play to your strengths.

We will continue to do hardware estimates and report on shipment figures and player totals from official sources. It would be a long way off as it requires a lot of work to do, but we have some ideas on making it easier to find the latest shipment figures and player totals.

If retail polling is not an option (Circana, distributor or retail partnerships perhaps?) then any shipment or official data will need to be very accessible (as you noted) and usable.  More tools to make those numbers calculable in various scenarios.  These numbers are the heart of VGC.  More effort should be put into how users can work with the numbers than should be put into a site/forum overhaul.  

Basically do things that aren't or can't be done elsewhere. 
A place to discuss games and stuff - All over the place.
The Excel of video game sales data - Unique.



To the privileged, equality feels like oppression. 

Around the Network
trunkswd on 26 August 2024
Renamed said:
trunkswd said:

We will continue to do hardware estimates and report on shipment figures and player totals from official sources. It would be a long way off as it requires a lot of work to do, but we have some ideas on making it easier to find the latest shipment figures and player totals.

If retail polling is not an option (Circana, distributor or retail partnerships perhaps?) then any shipment or official data will need to be very accessible (as you noted) and usable.  More tools to make those numbers calculable in various scenarios.  These numbers are the heart of VGC.  More effort should be put into how users can work with the numbers than should be put into a site/forum overhaul.  

Basically do things that aren't or can't be done elsewhere. 
A place to discuss games and stuff - All over the place.
The Excel of video game sales data - Unique.

Retail polling isn't really an option anymore as we have no way to get digital figures, which at this point is 80%+ of sales for PlayStation, Xbox and PC, and I think is 50%+ for even the Switch. That is one of the reasons we switched to reporting official figures from publishers and developers.

Right now, the only place you can see the latest software numbers is on the front page, otherwise you need to search in the GameDB for individual figures. The biggest issue with that is it only shows the 8 latest games updated and Capcom updates 100+ games every quarter. 

GameDB is currently ordered by number of units shipped/sold. We've added player totals to individual game pages (Example: https://www.vgchartz.com/game/232972/palworld/?region=All ), but want it added to the "Latest Software Updates" on the front page and the main GameDB page.

One idea that I am guessing would take a while for our coder to implement is to create a new chart that is similar to the old software charts (https://www.vgchartz.com/weekly/43464/Global/ ). It would be a monthly chart that has all the shipment and player totals in 2 separate sections for a given month. So, all games that have new figures for August 2024 (Ie. Black Myth Wukong at 10 million) would go in the August 2024 chart. And people could order them by biggest to smallest or by latest update at the top. It would mean March, June, September, and December would have the most figures as that is when Capcom, Nintendo, Take-Two, and others update their figures in their earnings reports. 



VGChartz Sales Analyst and Writer - William D'Angelo - I stream on Twitch and have my own YouTube. Follow me on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Writer of the Sales Comparison | Weekly Hardware Breakdown | Top 10 | Weekly Sales Analysis | Marketshare Features, as well as daily news on the Video Game Industry.