I think this is one of those phrases that should just be banned from forum use.  It's childish and does little to help your argument.

Here goes a contradiction just for you (perhaps not the best example, but good enough):

1- And if a title spikes but is outside public data, VGChartz will never catch it

2- as is freely admitted in a recent interview, VGChartz had 2-3% of the North American market as a sample at the time, whereas by estimate, NPD might have 60-65%. If this 2-3% was clean and canonical, this might not matter - but how do you explain the big Iron Man discrepancy, if so? Wouldn't VGChartz' retail sources have picked it up too?

At some points, the writer admits that there might be some real non-public data behind vgchartz, at some other points it outright says that the numbers are just educated guessing combined with later adjustments. If you don't see the doublethink in this, I can't help you...

You're right.... I just edited it out.

You're definitely right about that. #1 should read "And if a title spikes but is outside public data and the 2-3% retail sample VGChartz will never catch it." You're right in that the article isn't of the highest quality. However, it still points out the flaws in the system, which is the main point.

Yep, but I wouldn't be pointing this out if I thought it was just an occasional mistake from the author. I could easily point you at more places where the same type of claims are repeated (actually I did point some out before).

I don't have a problem with some of the points made in the article, I even agree with some of them as I said in the first page of the thread. What I don't accept is the fact that the article attempts to disseminate some unfounded doubts about the site.

If he wanted to write it in a balanced manner, he could easily find some cases on which VGChartz accurately tracked non-obvious developments. Of course, someone could now tell me that that would be cherry picking, to which I would reply "not more so than the examples given in the text".

Instead, the writer wrote an article full of contradictions, unbalanced cherry-picking and frankly, a lot of FUD. That's why I felt the need to point out the glaring deficiencies of the article.

I've been a member on this site for a loong time now and in general I agree with this article. VGChartz is an educated guessimate of sales based on very little real data. Is right generally correct? Yes and no....

Yes: For gamer games and consoles sales I'd say VG Chartz numbers are (for people like myself with a general interest) close enough. Even for reporting, they are close enough to use ala "According to VGChartz.com..."

No: For movie games, girl games, and other games that of casual appeal or low selling but long selling titles, I do not put any stock into the VG Chartz numbers. While this article refers mainly to Iron Man, that is only the most recent case. Next-Gen did a list of 100 top sellers for last year based on a collection of concrete data which listed all kinds of movie based games and such that VGChartz basically claimed were flops. Since no one on these forums care about those game it's generally overlooked. But the fact remains - If it's a type of game that sells lousy at Best Buy/GameShack but great at Walmart you can bet VGChartz is basically just a guess and should not be taken as 'real'.

I have to admit I didn't realise the site used purely estimated data. I thought the sample size was just much smaller than for other trackers. To learn that some of the games have not been tracked at all and the figures have just been guessed is pretty disappointing to be honest.

You're relying too much on the unproven conclusions of the article. There are several problems in the author's reasoning which have already been discussed in the thread. There's no reason to believe VGChartz's data are guesses. A similar look at NPD's data would probably find some similar problems (although none like the MGS4 one, which ioi already discussed). The same thing about transparency, which is about zero as far as the general public is concerned.

To everyone else: See what I mean by spreading FUD? If this article can even affect some members, imagine what it does for other people.

ioi admitted to the author that some of it is just guesses. Read the whole article. The MGS4 Europe numbers were pure guesswork and the methodology contains lots of guesswork looking at past trends.

Sorry if I misunderstood you, but you did say "purely estimated data" which made me think you had concluded no retailer data was used.

My memory of ioi's quotes may be rusty, so remind me of what ioi admitted to be guesses? Do you mean MGS4 day 1 Europe sales? That figure isn't even in the site's numbers, it was just in a news article (which IMO was rushed).