I come for the software sales, stay for the lulz.

@ioi

I dont really agree with what I think you mean by 2 other brands, I just dont get why other sites can have these 4 areas - features, news, forums, game db content all on the main page, and its all branded on that site. It should be just VGChartz Features, VGChartz News, VGChartz Forums, VGChartz game database.

I love that the news that I volunteer is under the VGChartz banner, and the news comes on VGChartz. I think using other names can diminish your brand power, at a time when you want to spread the brand more.

Unless you mean something totally different, but this is my opinion on what I think you mean by branching to gamedb.com or vgnewz.com.

i still havent given up on the site even after the launch of VGchart 2.0

i'm serious the new colour sheme is so straining and tiring for the eyes that i hardly read as much as before.

the japan game chartz are ridicilous small to read and the ds/wii ps2/ps3/psp in same colours is annoying too.

go back to the old colour sheme, that would be first step in the right direction

Noobie said: I feel the biggest strength of VGC is definitely the charts and sales data and analysis which are done time to time on these data, but i feel they r not given proper highlightness.

I noticed this, and couldn't help but agree. Yes, the main thing that has me here, and going by the poll, many others, is the sales charts. Short of a rebranding, though, this is in the name, and overcoming that notion of just being a sales numbers site will be a tough task. So I think it needs to be strengthened. Yes, there are the analysis pieces of news posted, but they get lost in the myriad of headlines. However, axeing the news entirely I think would be a bad idea. There is sales news, which is perfectly appropriate to be here, and it stands to reason that if you're getting some news, having the rest together at one place is convienent. But what I might say is a small section of headlines dedicated to VGC exclusive articles. I don't know how much muscle you have with the companies themselves, so this may not even be possible, but perhaps having someone interview people at a company would be a nice way to beef up this section?

Next would be the database. Since we are tracking sales, it's a nice way to look at what a game is that sells well (or what makes a game not sell). The only real issue I have with it is that there are several games which need multiple entries, because of each one having a different region's sales. I'm not sure how much of a nightmare that is to do in the system itself, but I'm guessing that the DBAdmins can't do it based on the sheer number of them. Finally, the DB has a nice little community statisics area, which I think is fun to watch. And this leads me to the next thing...

The community itself. I'd say the forums are vital to keeping people around, and having the ad revenue come in. It provides a place for people to discuss the numbers. However, in the community itself, is where I believe some of the weaknesses are, and where some of the focus has been lost. Both the reviews and the videos are something that just don't seem to be fleshing out well. For videos, there are sites like GameTrailers and YouTube, and regarding the reviews, well, sites that do that are a dime-a-dozen. Keeping them around and feasible means that you need to do something with them that's unique. As I do not use those features here, I can't really suggest anything; I'll leave that to the fans of them. But they need something to differenciate them from the established sites. A great example of the specialty stuff is the predictions league. This isn't something I've seen anywhere else, and it's things like this which should really be pushed more. I know how the site has occasional contests, perhaps tie winning to a good percentage prediction here every once in a while?

But yeah, it boils down to emphasizing the things that stand out. While I personally don't want to see a rebranding, if the stigma of the current name is too much to overcome for a branching out, I'd say to keep it to something that still is memorable to the core site. (A cheezy example would be vgdataz.com, completely ignoring that data is the plural of datum already...) I think the problem we have at present is that you tried to expand too much into too many areas too quickly. Thus, new people come in and see several weak areas, and will be more likely to ignore them. I'd say do it one at a time- do one new thing, and make sure it's done well before going to the next one. It may take several months, but it gives a stronger look to the additions, showing that there is focus in the additions, something that does still feel lacking as of now.

I want to forward on what i said earlier, just in case it really is a good idea.

"@ ioi
This may seem like a daft idea, but i thought id pitch it anyway.

How about, when you post up the numbers each week... dont post them each at a time, only post all of them at the same time.
Post them in a news article first, say... 10-15 minutes before they hit the usual spot on the site. And then get VGC users to digg the hell out of the article?"

@ioi

Charts, sales and features should always be number one on this site, and should be whats on your screen when you load right across the top. I agree it should not compete with the news so maybe have one list for sales/features, and one list for news already loaded, and big clickable pics for only these two sections. I think having the weekly HW and weekly SW by region on the front already loaded will be great.

For the forums / community, its fantastic the way it is, but maybe highlight more user content like the leagues, lists, and reader reviews. Plus, have more competitions and allowing betting with VG$.

The game database is great now with links to latest screens, vids.

Everything else can be moved from the front page as a link in my opinion. One good way to save space is maybe have things going horizontally? Not sure how hard this is, im not a coder.

I do hope its all in one main page and in my view, it just has to be reorganised to 4 dedicated sections. Anyway hope I helped, I love VGChartz and want it to grow and look forward to what you guys come up, ping me if you need some assistance as always.

To be honest, I've been here a while and I still don't know where most of the stuff is. I never liked having to search the top heading and look through the drop down features. Could you perhaps put a panel to the left with quick routes to all the features on VGC? IGN has it really nicely worked out and it would make it so much easier to navigate between everything.

And do take the mascot idea into consideration ;o

I am sure several people visit less due to the insane amount of pop up/over adds, spyware and the overly crowed layout.

Sounding cool boss. Looking forward to it. In fact we already have news.vgchartz.com. Then things will load faster as well.

ioi said: My thought for the homepage is exactly that - organised vertically as someone suggested earlier. A large section at the top of the page going right across dedicated to sales, below that some news (but smaller and neater than we have now), below that some game database links and at the bottom the community stuff. Each section will be clearly seperated with a nice big link to their dedicated pages which serve as a mini-homepage for just that section - these would be gamedb.vgchartz.com, news.vgchartz.com etc. By branding each seperately I was thinking something like "VGChartz GameDB" or whatever - so still obviously part of VGC but with a unique identity...

This was what I was getting right at the start, I just don't have a good eye for design.