ItsaMii said:
The first comment make puke a little:
meister [06.17.08 03:25 AM]
Interesting article but you really should do more homework before you author stories like these.
vgchartz.com is all about smoke and mirrors. He continually lies to his visitors. I can explain his real history in great detail if you're interested but Brett Walton, the site's founder, is nothing more than a petty manipulator and illusionist. The problem is, he sees nothing wrong with what he's doing. It really does boil down to the fact that his visitors believe what he's posted in his "Methodology" section. For the record, he's lying to his visitors. He doesn't collect data from retailers. All of vgchartz's figures are guesstimates. He TAKES charted information and best sellers lists from online stores like Amazon (this is how he's able to get a ballpark Top 10 list each week/month), and from stores like Wal-mart, Target and Gamecrazy, then fits that data to chart positions, using publicly available historical information from NPD, Famitsu and other reputable firms for reference. In reality, he uses public chart positions, press releases and shipment figures to come up with sales figures. Don't believe any of this? Ask him!
This is NOT Brett Walton's (vgchartz) proprietary information, nor is this information something that a real analyst couldn't compile with a little hard work and common sense but at the end of the day it's all about making it easy. Ahhh, that's why we have to love the Internet. There's no longer a need for integrity. Just point and shoot ... I mean, click.
vgchartz's information belongs to the market research firms and retailers he's lifting it from. He should give credit where credit is due. He's making a name for himself off the hard work of others. Wal-Mart, Target, GameCrazy, NPD, Famitsu, Chart Track, Amazon ... the list is large but not nearly as large as Brett Walton's ego.
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I actually agree mostly with this. I think Walton only has access to a tiny fraction of the North-american market's figures compared to NPD (NPD tracks almost 60% of the entire NA), and estimates often from shipments and information available to the public. Ofcourse, VGChartz is less accurate than NPD, but what the hell, I bet it's fun doing it.
I don't think there's much wrong in that, except that he should give credit to who he takes the info from.
(mostly)
