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Forums - Sales Discussion - The Official NPD April 2008 Thread

smbu2000 said:
TWRoO said:
makingmusic476 said:
The ps3/360 numbers make no sense whatsoever. I wasn't expecting hardware numbers to rise much with GTAIV, but for them to go DOWN? Wtf? And in GTA's biggest territory? European numbers spiked considerably with GTAIV, according to VGChartz and more "official" sources (ChartTrack), so why would the opposite happen in the US?

ioi's numbers seem much more accurate than NPD's in this instance, and I can't help but think that NPD screwed something up here.

My thought's exactly.

Is it possible NPD has not included GTA bundles? so people buying the hardware bundle with GTA were not counted at all (usually NPD would not count it as a software sale but it should still be hardware)

I saw something about the Canadian numbers somewhere which had the soaftware seperated into 4 parts for GTAIV, with the normal version (for each console) and the special edition (for each console)


What bundle are you talking about? The non-existant GTA bundles that were never sold in the USA? GTA bundles were sold in Europe and Australia, but not the US. NPD only covers the USA (and Canada which is released separately), in other words North America. Bundles sold abroad have no relevance to NPD numbers.

 Oh, so were special editions not bundles then? (they were on the Canadian info in a thread I can't find)

I assumed they were, but now I remember Halo 3 had some silly special editions that included a hat or something.



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cctaximan said:
Wow! Both the 360 and the PS3 HW sales went down. I guess we must be in a recession here in America. All the casual gamers chose the cheapest console the wii and everyone who was interested in buying GTAIV must of already owned a 360/PS3. I wonder if microsoft did that 100 dollar price cut in the NA market that everybody was predicting that they would one month before the GTAIV release would it had made any difference?

I hate to risk puncturing your misconception but:

1) The whole casual thing is crap (opinion)

2) Pricing is NOT a factor (fact). Taking two of the largest retail souces it is apparent that platform price has essentially reached parity.

Gamestop

Wii                   $399.99 NEW (with required bundle)   Used: Not Available
Xbox 360         $349.99 NEW                                       Used: $199.99
PS3                  $399.99 NEW                                       Used: $349.99

Or Amazon.com

Wii                    $340.50 NEW (with required bundle)  Used: $309.50
Xbox 360         $349.99 NEW                                       Used: $265.95
PS3                  $399.99 NEW                                       Used: $330.99
 



Is 714K the largest 4week month aside from Nov/Dec? I think last month's 721K was the largest month for a console besides Nov/Dec, but that was 5 weeks. Anyone know?



Hi there.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_Game_Sales - A wiki for video game sales figures

w3stfa11 said:
Is 714K the largest 4week month aside from Nov/Dec? I think last month's 721K was the largest month for a console besides Nov/Dec, but that was 5 weeks. Anyone know?

 I would imagine so.

It might even be broken again next (this) month with Wii Fit.



Pfft only 9 pages? GAF is already up to 48 pages of meltdown. :P



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DKII said:
Pfft only 9 pages? GAF is already up to 48 pages of meltdown. :P

Perhaps someone would like to "express" their anger/cockiness..........that could add a few pages in a hurry :)



Suprised no one used this one yet (from Foxix on the GAF):

 



As much as I enjoy the thought of the Wii winning the past month so clearly, and how I usually accept the supremacy of NPD, I'm going to have to side with ioi on this one. NPD may have the larger market coverage, but every single analyst and preliminary bit of data was in favour of VGC. On top of that there's all the weird inconsistencies like Brawl selling way more than even Nintendo reported at first and then droping like a rock.

There's also no way to get around how HD console sales dropping despite the launch of GTA4 is utterly preposterous. It goes against everything we know of how the industry works, and every single source on the planet was reporting an increase in sales.

NPD do this stuff for a living, and they have a reputation to uphold. One of the biggest reasons I like this site is how ioi never hesitates to change his numbers, despite how some think that makes him less credible.

I doubt they consider VGC so important that they'd fudge their own numbers just to discredit us, but maybe they've realised how some of their other numbers were wrong, and are now fixing it by changing their later data? That's the only reasonably likely explanation that seems even remotely feasible to mef, other than sheer incompetence on one or both sides.

Btw, I remember we had a similar controversy last December, and didn't VGC numbers turn out to be more accurate then when compared to shipment data straight from Nintendo and the rest?



Kenology said:

Suprised no one used this one yet (from Foxix on the GAF):

 


I saw that earlier........I can't remember if that was in this particular thread though. Maybe in a related thread.



ioi said:
Bitmap Frogs said:

Dude, are you aware they have direct data from around 60% of the market? Their margin of error is max. 5% - if it somehow their whole staff stimated the remaining 40% (which btw, is mostly from wal-mart and they have historical data on walmart) while drunk driving at 150mph on the wrong side of the road, they might be at a 7-10% margin of error.

They didn't "get anything wrong" - that's the state of things in the USA, and that's it.

@the source: your estimations are off as much as 50% on hardware and 84% on software - while the average might be lower, the data is unreliable as we can't predict on which titles/consoles you'll be way off. I'm very happy for the existence of vgchartz but it's clear you guys *need* to increase your direct data. The 2% you have now is clearly not enough.


Explain this then:

http://vgchartz.com/news/news.php?id=1170

Famitsu and Media Create both have ~60% direct market coverage in Japan and have error margins well over 5 or even 10% and from what I understand the situation of one huge retailer not being involved (as with Walmart in the US) is not the case in Japan so you'd have thought each would be better equiped to track the remainder of the market they do not directly cover.

 

Personally, and this is just an opinion and in an off-the-record kind of way, looking at month to month trends it definitely seems evident to me that maybe NPD do not get all of their data in by when they have to release it. They always seem to go higher or lower on a title then adjust it back / forward the following month. 2.7m for Brawl last month seemed a little too high - especially with Nintendo saying 1.4m week one but then to drop to ~300k this month is way out of line with everything we have been getting as well as common sense in general. Vegas 2 did 750k last month, 100k this month on NPD. That is an enormous dropoff - down to ~15k a week if you assume a dropoff throughout April. Seems too extreme but then I thought they seemed very high last month. Our COD4 figures have been a lot bigger recently (Game of the Year edition gave a good boost) but they show sales dropping after being huge Jan-Feb and much higher than us.

I dunno, all just seems too random to me. Every other country in the world seems to have regular, fairly predictable sales patterns but NPD just jumps up and down fairly inexplicably. Across all our data, 360 and PS3 had their biggest weeks of the year at GTA launch and saw good increases the week before - this is true across the board. All the big analysts followed our lead in saying 300k+ months for 360 / PS3 (many much higher - we got slated for being so low if anything) and yet NPD data comes in over 100k below. I am well aware they have ~60% direct coverage and I am not accusing them of foul play but something just doesn't add up.

I'd bet a fortune that they will have huge figures for May - despite all indications to me showing that sales have dropped back to pre-GTA IV levels in just one week. Maybe we are missing a trick and for some reason all of our stores follow totally different buying trends, but I'd find that hard to believe.


 You know I was thinking something similar, I mean this is pretty early for NPD this month... usually we have to wait till about 2/3rds into the month even when the reporting period ended within the stated month (rather than 3 days being in the month after like this time)


Perhaps this is just because we only see the free figures, maybe those paying for it get a much better representation (without odd dips and spikes)