I was saying if it ever did happen. What if a major business/financial publication quoted the very inaccurate story that was on VGC a week ago, about MGS4 first-day sales? The "news" ended up being off...A lot, yet was considered a top-tier story.

It's kind of like a news channel constantly reporting news, facts, and figures, and then going back and changing them later on when someone else reports them. It's not a good model to live by. VGC is doing a lot of good, going for a community-based prediction system like TSE (and their owner has gone on to head up major software/entertainment analysis comapnies), but as long as the model isn't working, you lose credibility, and that's never, ever a good thing in the field of analysis - if you lose credibility, you'd lose your job.

Come on Ben, give the guy a break will ya. You know how hard he's working every day to get this site off the ground.
To be (personally nonetheless) critisized in public over something you're working so hard for is not fun. I'm sure you understand that.

 I am not arguing that what VGC is doing, for a free service, isn't great. They're doing a great job. But again, you shouldn't be surprised that you get ripped once in awhile by NPD, Gamasutra, or other publications that aren't quite...Free.

I've been a member of this site for almost 2 years now. It's a wonderful site, and I've always loved what Brett, and the others of the website have done over the past 2 years. But again, you can't kid yourself on what it is. My only hope is that VGC can get enough revenue, and cout to throw it's weight around, and get more retailers in on their extrapolations.

That's what I thought too, it's a good thing that no one reported on it, it wasn't dugg, and the only people that really read it were the people on the site.

Had it been dugg or anything like that, the backlash could have been monumental, seeing as that European data was at best, a weak estimate.  I'd hope the analysis team at VGC have learned the lesson of being absolutely positively sure of data before posting it, rather than being the first to post it, or "exclusive", as the News post proclaimed.  I'd take accuracy over being "first" anyday.

No, not a second. I understand that he does feel deceived. I understand he doesn't like it. But he decided to play with the big boys, he should learn the rules in this thin air. Quick rather than so bad ;)

He will learn, just give this thing some days to rest...

I'm not going to read through this at the moment but if ioi really just makes up data all the time and is as accurate as he is week in and week out he needs to start a thread guessing lottery numbers in every state and country.

Yeah, I feel you.

What I'm trying to say, and what I really miss in all the discussions of late, is that there is another side to the story. Sure VGC should strive to get a higher coverage. But all around everyone is glorifying a maximum coverage, while what I notice in my job is that quite often the time constraint is much higher then the quality constraint. Especially in investment decisions. That's why I thought Passarella's article was so good, because he's having the same kind of decisions to make. But despite that, the anti-boys were screaming that the data quality is too low. What's the problem? People who are actually in business, like Pachter and Passarella, have no problem with VGC data. They are professionals and know how to use low-coverage data.
If those guys don't have a problem with it, I don't see why so many gamers should.

Mmmmm.... Burgers.

OT:

Having free, less reliable data or costly, reliable data isn't the problem here. If people really wanted numbers, they would have to not get numbers weekly (for America), and not have any solid numbers for Europe, but they would be able to put together some semblence of how a game or system is selling based off of freely available data (NPD, for america, Famitsu/MC for Japan, and chart-track for gaming positions in Europe). Granted, it wouldn't be comprehensive say, as what VGC gives, but it would be "Gourmet"

So he hates us because we have less raw sales data than NPD and apparently it is wrong to extrapolate and guess when NPD does it as well to a lesser extent?

Oh why, oh why are we despised.