Beginning with the October sales data, which is due later this month, NPD is going to cut way back on what they share on a monthly basis with their non-paying customers, i.e. media.

What does this mean?

For starters, no more hardware sales data. (Can you taste the bitter tears streaming from various forums and message boards?) Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will of course be free to release their own sales info—and presumably leak that of their competitors, if it'll make them look good—but we will no longer receive that data from NPD. Software sales figures will only be given for the Top Five SKUs, not the Top Ten as we normally receive. We'll eventually receive hardware numbers and Top Ten software numbers, but only on a quarterly and annual basis. There are signs that this may only be a temporary pullback, but for now, this is where things stand.

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/11/06/monday-morning-quarterback-for-september-2007.aspx 

The hoard is coming.

Vgchartz members, lock your doors, bolt down your windows...

They are coming.

Wow this is huge for this website. This is like best case scenario.

I hope this wasn't their way of combating VGC because it is going to cause a community explosion as people come here looking for numbers.

The result is that new outlets wishing to run stories are going to have limited options in where they look for sales data and once they realize that this website is a one-stop shop for hardware and software sales information with charts and graphs to go with it I think the choice will be clear.

I look forward to the influx, but I hope ioi has time to get the site fully ready for the onslaught.

Wow, you posted.

It's what, oh say, 7:30 in the land of the queen?

Jolly good day!

Damn, I need to go to sleep...

Hopefully the US numbers don't start becoming like Others and have to be altered significantly each quarterly report. The US numbers would end up having to be adjusted by 300-500k on each system too without the NPD monthly guidance.

Thankfully the arrogant nature of the companies will result in them releasing the numbers most likely.

Oh gee, did you go to sleep, or is this site not give you time for such silly ideas?

Honestly I think its fair to say NPD was instructive in the early stages of the site for helping ioi refine his process but my take on what has been going on with the numbers as of late is that ioi has refined it down to a point where I don't think you can really say one is more accurate than the other. They are both estimates and within a fairly small margin and at that point its anyone's guess as to who is closer to 100% accurate.

But the good thing is that its also close enough for folks like us not to worry about it and quarterly reports will always be around and are considered hard numbers which are far more important than just another set of soft numbers.

edit: PS - woohoo I crossed 2k posts! 

NPD sucks!

Long live VGChartz!!

John Lucas 

Besides, NPD doesn't have sexy mods like Vgchartz does

Quite interesting.

For starters - there can be no more "public" comparisons between NPD and VGChartz figures. In fact, I suspect anyone posting the "paid" NPD figures will be sued out of existence.

It also means NPD can issue general statement like "VGChartz is a joke - the figures differ from our official figures by more than 30% - but we aren't telling you what the real figures are - unless you want to pay lots of money".

But its great for VG - if this keeps up for a few months, sites will have no option other than to quote VGChartz figures instead of NPD. VGChartz will become the defacto "Internet" standard.

(it also does mean that our figures may become less accurate - especially with software, and especially in the US).