As we all know, VG Chartz is somewhat new site and it' been growing in popularity ever since it launched. Some of us forum members even describe VG Chartz as a disruptive product, a crummy product for non-consumers. And who can disagree. It may not provide the same accuracy as the so called professional trackers, when taking the trackers as reference, but what VG Chartz does, is provide worldwide software and hardware sales data, as the only tracker in the world, for everyone who's interested. And what's best, VG Chartz does it for free. Nintendos "comeback" with Wii and DS has really caught gaming worlds attention, even more when the two gaming devices have so different approach than the "traditional" way what we're used to and how the competition built their own gaming machines. Even the software of Nintendos consoles differers from competition, which makes sales numbers even more interesting, as we've seen from the sales charts, competitions big hitters come and go - Nintendos big hitters stay. Now we have three things: Change in power in terms of HW/SW sales numbers. Public interest in the numbers because of the above. VG Chartz, instance that provides us the numbers. For everyone, for free. Did VG Chartz just happen to be in a right place at a right time, or was ioi just a genius, who foresaw this all in advance? How much room does VG Chartz has still to grow? If VG Chartz would have born five years earlier, had it become popular in similar scale, where every gaming related internet forum quotes VGC numbers? Is the current "change in power" the reason for VG Chartz success? Discuss.

This generation has been pretty evenly matched and has five main consoles with unique trends, responses to certain genres of games and purchasing patterns. The software has been more interesting due to only certain platforms being deemed suitable for a release, rather than the all-or-nothing of previous generations.

There is also a sense that anyone could win, since the core audiences sometimes ignore Wii and publishers don't put serious effort into good games on it. This leads to an unnatural focus on these second and third place consoles.

Finally, different regions are showing different buying trends - worldwide data has never been so important.

All of these factors make video game sales tracking more interesting and popular than previous generations.

VGChartz' efforts to diversify (active forum, game database, prediction league, industry news, limited social networking) have made it more than just useful for one thing: five years ago, it would have been much more difficult to come up with and maintain these additional features.

So, I agree.

Well then tell us who you guys are so we can ban you.

And yes, Brett is a prophet. But mostly it was just a hobby of his. He came at a time when fanboyism was at its highest level in years, and people wanted software numbers no matter how.

@Montana: LOL. If we look at the previous sales data users, they are companies who are willing to pay big money for sales data and because the companies plan some of their financials based on this data, they require extremely high standards from their data provider.
VGC may not have as high standards as the companies require, but VGC doesn't target the people in question, but everyone who wants to see sales data.
So, VGC isn't up to the required standards nor target the previous audience.

@Soleron: Good point. There definately is more variation that i presented in the OP (due various reasons), but since the trend seems to be heading Wii vs. PS360, i thought a simple split would do.

@People: Sorry about the missing chapter split in the OP, apparently a software problem.