This thread is meant as a guide to all the newbies out there, explaining common misconceptions and concepts that has been discussed thouroghly on the forums, but are not always apparent to beginners. To ease and speed up the transition from beginner to veteran.
Common misconceptions
"Only two days of sales for the first week" - Most games release on the weekend, or friday, and only get a couple of days of sales the first week. This is often called upon to justify a low first week of sales. The problem with such reasoning is that since almost all games get the same treatment first week sales are almost always comparable nontheless.
"Company X says X sales - VGChartz has undertracked" - VGChartz tracks sold to customer, companies tend to report sold to retail. Most discrepencies with VGChartz numbers can be mostly explained by the fact that sold to customer is always less than sold to retail.
Abbreviations
While I personally think that any abbreviations used should first be explained, this is not in common practice on the VGChartz forum. Therefore I will post a list of abbrevations that I have found confusing in the past.
AC - Can mean Assassins Creed (PS360), Animal Crossing (NDS, GC, Wii), Armored Core, Advent Children (Final Fantasy movie).
GOW - Usually Gears of War, or God of War. The abbreviation GeOW has been suggested for Gears, but is not in common use.
KH3 - Kingdom Hearts 3
LBP - Little Big Planet (PS3)
NPD - Tracking firm in the US (See the section about NPD)
ODST - Expansion/Sequel to Halo 3
SDF - Sony Defense Force
WKC - White Knight Chronicles
MP - Usually Metroid Prime, but with 4-9 after, can be assumed Mario Party. Also be short for Multiplayer, but is then most often apparent.
Adjustments
VGchartz operates by tracking to the best of their ability, and adjusting the figures as new data comes in. There are hundreds or even thousands of adjustments every week. Some are big, some are small. Adjustments are made on the weekly sales figures, so all charts are subject to change after they have been upped. Critique has been aimed at VGChartz for this, especially because no announcement or record of these adjustments are kept. VGchartz staff maintains that keeping such a record, and announcing adjustments, is impractical and would not add to the functionality of the site.
NPD
NPD is a tracking firm that releases sales to consumers numbers for the US each month, for a variety of products. This information is then sold to companies that wants to know how they and the competition are doing. NPD gets information from about 60% of the retailers in the videogame industry, and from that estimates the total sales, much like VGChartz. Since the sample size of NPD is much larger, its numbers are usually more accurate.
VG$
There are a couple of ways to make (and lose) VG$. Every post made in the forum nets you $0.50, and every post in a thread you have made gives you an undisclosed sum as well. In the Prediction league, you can bet your VG$ on how much certain games will sell. Updating the game database with games, screenshots, game summaries, reviews, and other information will earn you VG$. When banned, you will be fined an amount based on the lenght of your ban. The only real use you can have of your money so far is to buy the VGChartz Instant Messenger function.
Quotes
To quote something without pressing the quote button when posting, type: [*quote] TEXT [*/quote] without the stars. This will produce a box quite similar to the ones you get when you press quote. To delete layers of quotes within a quote, press the top frame of the undesired quote box and delete. More than two layers of quotes are never necessary. To make understanding easier you can delete unrelated materials from the quoted post(s).
Embedding
Embedding something can be difficult at times. If your embedded item only shows up as code, simply press the edit button and then post again. The Rich-text editor doesn't always read the code, but when you edit your post it's gone through again to find those pieces of code, and that can often solve the problem. For me anyway.
This thread is a work in construction. Feel free to add your own little nuggets of wisdom earned after spending time on these forums.
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