We should start GAF Tracking Inc.

Mr David Riley (NPD)! It has been a while - good to see you are still as inventive as ever when it comes to fake usernames (an anagram of David.M.Riley) and supporting NPD without actually letting on that you work for them! You've lost none of your talent. Shame we didn't get to meet up at Pachter's E3 party, would have been good to personally shake your hand.

It must be galling to Google your own name, click through to a site like this and see your organisation being ripped apart despite all the hard work you do but know that you can't really defend yourself without giving it away (although I know you too well). Bravo!



Right, on to the issue at hand - FADE is NOT VG Chartz, let me make that totally clear. VG Chartz bought a small stake in FADE two months ago, realising the potential of the company and helped to get it set up and promote it. FADE is a totally seperate entity in terms of data collection, staff and methodology and a totally seperate business.

Now, I'm as interested as everyone else to see exactly how NPD intend to collect this digital download data. Fact is, that the only way to get hard data is from either the publishers / developers or from the vendors - i.e Steam, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo. Now, the contracts between the vendors and publishers is such that the vendors are not allowed to release any data to an outside source. So this leaves NPD in the situation where they can't really do any more than FADE is - collecting data directly from publishers who wish to participate (a great start but lots of gaps), partnering with large websites who specialise in supporting the various dd services and using user review data (assuming that a certain proportion of buyers will submit a user review), leaderboard monitoring, gamercard / psnid / nintendo channel monitoring, a large consumer panel and other in-development methods to produce the monthly charts and fill the gaps where data isn't directly shared by developers. FADE has been doing this since June and is already being adpoted by many in the industry as the official agency to cover these markets. It is pretty clear that this has forced NPD to come forward with this "noble" announcement


Moving on to the wider subject of VG Chartz - it still amuses me that so many on here believe that a site that is now bigger than GAF is run by some guy in his bedroom making up random numbers! I mean really, how pathetic?! Go check the VG Chartz US retail preview for the last 3 months (posted about a week before NPD) and the final NPD data - aside from a few differences (some of which I'll come onto) then the data is generally very close. For two totally independent data collection agencies (one mainly using retail data, one mainly consumer data) to post figures that are consistently within 10% month on month is impressive to me - but evidently not to most of you. I'm sure many of the GAF sheep can't even remember why vgc was banned in the first place! It might be hard to believe that anyone other than an organisation that has been going for 30 years could produce accurate weekly videogame charts but everyone has to start somewhere. VG Chartz has come a long way in 3 years.


Not entirely true - from my understanding they use one factor per platform. So all Xbox360 games will be scaled by the same factor, Harry Potter (50% of sales in reality at Walmart) and Resident Evil 5 (20% of sales in reality from Walmart) alike. Some may call their "effective Walmart figures" nothing more than educated guesstimation (and not even that educated) - although using that kind of data gets you banned on this site doesn't it?


Haha - go ahead and stop releasing data to the public then! It would have nothing but a positive effect on VGC, public NPD data is nothing but a thorn in the side. Publically releasing the top ten games for the month and the hardware sales in the US must really help VGC produce worldwide weekly charts of around 4000 games - I don't think. I guess the recent preorder data that VGC has started posting is "stolen" from NPD as well? Oh and FYI - VGC does provide dollar sales info but not publically.

Also, David, do you really want to go on record saying that the investor community is made up of dumb, gullible idiots? Not the best way to do business and make friends - but then that is why so many are starting to see VGC as a viable alternative to NPD - I think a lot of it is personal. Stunts like this won't help your reputation.