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Forums - Sales - Is VG Chartz credible without downloadable game sales?

hanafuda on 22 August 2008
mrstickball said:

And again, the issue is that the ways you can track DD sales is very difficult.

You have to have a reliable system that is built-in by the manufacturer that can some way, allow you to see, on a high level, how many people have played game X in some way or fashion.

Again, for XBLA, I use gamercards that show actual # of purchasing users (via my own methods), then extrapolate to what the market should be at.

For WiiWare/VC, the amount of time that's spent on various game(s), and that is calculated into sales figures.

May I ask you: How do YOU expect VGC to track DD sales? You can pine on about how they need to, but what systems are in place that it can be tracked? My XBLA charts have literally revolutionized the tracking of XBLA titles, and my methods, and results are a YEAR ahead of the biggest tracking firm in America - NPD, or any other tracking firm. Yet despite my genius with XBLA, I can tell you rather quickly: There isn't an easy way to do it for PSN, and I'm surprised that DKII even has a method for VC/WW.

Even then, the only way to track PSN data will be through PSN trophies, and home *if* there's a way to obtain high level, aggregate data using websites and building crawlers vs. any other method, because leaderboards do not always work. That's a big if for PSN data, and even then, it'll take a while to get a comprehensive list for such data.

And the final way you can do it is simply build a huge consumer sampling base, and poll them each month to find out what new products they've bought. This is the ONLY way NPD is doing the data, and their sample size is so abysmally low (somewhere in the low 10,000's) that they won't be very reliable.

Remember: You can argue that VGC should track DD sales, but no one else is doing it. VGC is the FIRST website EVER to have any sort of comprehensive list for ANY DD market...And that was thanks to my methodology, and work I put in...

Mind you, I'm not trying to go on and on about my virtues - the point is that I'm some random VGC schmoe that developed the holy grail of DD information gathering, by finding Microsoft's back door into exploiting their gamercards. That little slice of data has got me a job in the video games industry, more and more job offers, and multiple Emails and interviews with Microsoft going as high as trying to get me to become the next XBLA general manager ---- All over some simple DD charts I made! Why is all of that info important? It shows how difficult DD sales are to come by, and how difficult it is to find any information on sales.


Thanks. An ineresting read. I'll respond when I'm not limited to a PS3 pad.

PSN - hanafuda

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DKII on 22 August 2008

Let me paraphrase an email I received from someone at Nintendo on the subject of obtaining sales data directly:

"Unfortunately download data for WiiWare and Virtual Console titles is strictly confidential and generally kept under lock and key at NCL, in fact we at Nintendo UK rarely get to see or analyse it, which can be frustrating!"

So if Nintendo Japan keeps sales for all regions locked up so tight that the UK Nintendo heads can't even get at the data for their own region, how would you expect us to be able to do it except by the indirect methods already described?

Sony/Microsoft situations are no doubt very similar. The developers of these games themselves are contractually prohibited from talking about sales of their own games. When I say "virtually impossible", I mean it.

Right now, by indirect methods, we have good numbers for XBLA, decent numbers for WW/VC, and nothing for PSN. Rest assured that if some way becomes available to get any kind of PSN tracking going, we'll pursue it. But there is absolutely nothing on the subject as it stands currently.

We put a lot of work into what we do have, and saying things like we're not credible for not doing something that's just not possible to do (never mind how you say we're not doing something (tracking WW/VC) which we *are* doing) is just insulting.



XanderZane on 22 August 2008
hanafuda said:
smbu2000 said:
I'm pretty sure that none of the major tracking firms include dl games in their charts. NPD, GFK, Famitsu, MC, etc...(somebody correct me if I'm wrong)

Correct.

A point that I made in the first line of my original post.

 

 

They have an XBLA sales report shown every week. It's usually a story on the front page of the site. I think there should be a seperate sales tracking for downloaded games only. I'm not sure why VGChartz doesn't do PSN game sales, like they do with XBLA. Maybe we'll get that in the future.



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Jackson50 on 22 August 2008

"by whomever runs the service..."
You cannot use the correct pronoun and you expect us to take your numbers seriously!? =Þ I am kidding. I anticipate reading the XBLA numbers you post, MrStickball.



outlawauron on 23 August 2008

Mods. Why so angry at hanafuda? He didn't single out VGC, so why the defense of our numbers?



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FaRmLaNd on 23 August 2008

Yeah they are over-reacting a bit. All I'll say is, I can't wait for the day when xbla data is in the games database. It'll just be another point in favor for this site.



toastboy44562 on 23 August 2008

I talked to ioi and he said that vc and xbla games are in the works but not psn.



mrstickball on 23 August 2008

PSN is in the works. I'm trying to develop a system to capture the numbers. It's just a matter of how long.



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

NintendoMan on 23 August 2008

Its accurate enough. Especially as its free and provides data weekly. Besides, downloads are probably a small proportion atm. I doubt they would make a huge difference. In 3-4yrs maybe. At the moment I would wager everyones house that downloads account for less than 10% of a games sales.



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hanafuda on 24 August 2008
NintendoMan said:
Its accurate enough. Especially as its free and provides data weekly. Besides, downloads are probably a small proportion atm. I doubt they would make a huge difference. In 3-4yrs maybe. At the moment I would wager everyones house that downloads account for less than 10% of a games sales.

If, as mrstickball says, Bionic Commando Rearmed has sold what he says it has sold, then that makes it 71,500 dowloads for the 360, which puts it inside the weekly global top 20.  That's pretty significant if you ask me.

 

 



PSN - hanafuda