I ask because I didnt see a thread for it.

If there is one apoligies.

As a noob ive heard of NPD but what is it exactly? and why is it worth anticipating?

It's the north American sales.

to further expand on reask's response.

The NPD is really called the NPD Group Inc, and was once known as National Purchase Diary.

NPD is a Market Research company consisting of a thousand employees who estimate sales of all sorts of products sold in the United States and Canada. They cover products such as electronics, automobiles, sports, food services, beauty products entertainment, and other such products. Not only do they estimate sales, they provide analysis of the sales and consumer habits to paying customers.

For the purposes of video game sales, they provide a monthly total of US hardware and software sales.

@reask
NPD will report on USA hardware and software totals for the four weeks ending November 1 on November 13 at 6:30 PM EST

Dont we get them here anyway? or are they more accurate?

So 6.30 PM EST today?

What time is it now.

@ nordlead

Thank you for both answers very well explained unlike me. :)

They are a big business all about estimating and gathering data. Weather they are more accurate or not, NPD should be taken into consideration when talking about sale numbers and I think vgchartz should be looked at as well.

I take both of them as estimates and no real solid figures but compare the two to find a median between the sales to get a sense of the market.

@scabab

NPD is a professional company with years of experience vs VGChartz is a fan site with not quite as many years of experience.

Now, which is more accurate is a tough answer, as no one really knows since they are estimates. I'm sure NPD is off every once in a while (not saying often, but I'm sure it happens), but they do not publish corrections to the general public.

VGChartz on the other hand may be off more often at first, but publicly displays all corrections. VGChartz is very accurate when it comes to LTD sales. VGChartz also provides a weekly chart where NPD only provides monthly charts. As a final note, VGChartz is far more accurate in hardware estimates than it is in software estimates.

Having a second source of numbers is always a good thing though, so no reason not to want to see them also.

@time question
Right now it is 1:55PM EST, so 4.5 hours to go.

How accurate is either nordlead.

Especially on the weekly hardware.