My theory is that their main analyst is on vacation and their backup got sick  

Tell us your theories

So they are adding seven retailers? Ah I see. They probably need the extra time since this would be the first time they would be including those retailers in their sales estimates.

my theory is...

"Jasmine" spent too much time in VGC.

Kinda disappointing. Half of them are just the online part of major chains I assume NPD already covers the major brick and mortar side of. Example: Best Buy.com, Target.com. The percent of .com videogame sales in those chains is also probably pretty low. As I think people, I know I dont, dont like to order games online, as instant gratification is key when it comes to games.

NPD presumably already covers the brick and mortar side of those chains, so one would have assumed they automatically had access to the .com side. Kind of weird that they didn't.

Newegg and Amazon and BJ's clubs, etc are nice gains though, especially BJ's and virgin as they are brick and mortar. I doubt Newegg, Buy.com, and even Amazon sell that many games. Should help make NPD more accurate. Wonder what their percent coverage is now?

Having amazon and others built in now is awesome though. I get the feeling numbers will be higher from now on. I know before now they have estimated the online retailers, but I think they were estimating low. Now we will get concrete numbers and I cant wait to see them.