I'd wait until the 3.0 is launched before making any judgements. For some reason, people seem to think that paid data membership will overflow to the forums - it will be totally seperate. You won't know if anyone has paid for a standard or premium membership, it will just be them who will see more or less features on the charts section of the site. It won't affect anything else.

And to be honest, you are currently limited to top 200 games per week, top 50 per console and publisher, first 10 weeks of sales on games pages - it's not like you can freely view all the data now (as you will be able to do with a premium membership and to a lesser extent with a standard membership).

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I'd wait until the 3.0 is launched before making any judgements. For some reason, people seem to think that paid data membership will overflow to the forums - it will be totally seperate. You won't know if anyone has paid for a standard or premium membership, it will just be them who will see more or less features on the charts section of the site. It won't affect anything else.

And to be honest, you are currently limited to top 200 games per week, top 50 per console and publisher, first 10 weeks of sales on games pages - it's not like you can freely view all the data now (as you will be able to do with a premium membership and to a lesser extent with a standard membership).

You're not being charged to use to the site - rather you are paying a premium to view more data - most of which isn't available to you now anyway. I don't expect a huge number of people to pay for memberships - maybe 5% of all those who view data will go for a standard and less than 1% will go for a premium. It is only designed for those who want more than just a top-level look at the data, which is only a handful of people anyway.

I don't really see the issue here. If I had said that you all have to pay $20 per month to use VGChartz then I could understand where you are coming from. Numbers will still be available, game pages will be the same (albeit better), news will still be there (albeit better), forums will be largely unchanged, profiles the same - everything will be at least as it is now if not better aside from full access to the data, which you have to understand is a valuable commodity that is costly and time-consuming to assemble.

That's exactly the point - these memberships are aimed at either those who have a really keen interest in the numbers who are willing to pay a small amount to get more access to extra features or those in the industry who need full data and advanced tools to improve their business. It isn't aimed at the general VGChartz community or general readership - from your points of view nothing will really change.

If you're not someone who spends 5 hrs per week scrutinising the charts (and we have reader stats so we know exactly how many people read past the top 50 or use filters etc) and is just interested in the top sellers each week and how your favourite games are getting on, then everything will be exactly the same after these changes...

I'm a little confused by this. The community on VGChartz is the best on any website around but the community doesn't produce the sales charts each week. Again, nobody is asking you to pay to use the site or to be a part of the community - we are devising a new costing model to bring in enough revenue from the charts activity to make it profitable - at the moment it is being done at a loss and subsidised by other areas of the site such as news. So the people who are missing out here are the writers, site admins etc who are having to take less money so that we can support the chart activity rather than it standing on its own two feet.

A business model which involves collecting loads of specialised data and publishing it for free is never going to be that viable - at the end of the day you are dealing with information (especially when you go past the top level data - top 20 games and hardware) that only a tiny number of people will ever look at. How many people are seriously going to look at games 1750 - 1800 each week? Maybe 10-20 people compared to maybe 50,000 who look at the top 10. Therefore, the people who want (and need) to go down to this level of detail and the people who should contribute more directly to the work involved to track all 5000 games each week should be those in the industry or those who are interested enough to help support the operation. For those who are just looking at the top 20 each week, there are enough of you to support the activity via ads and general site revenue. It's a case of finding the best way to support the work that is being done with the array of different users we have.

Someone from an analyst firm will find the data far more valuable than someone just looking for fun and we need to find ways to reflect that in how we present the data and bring in revenue from it.

it's cool bossman. by the looks of the poll, about 5% would pay willingly so far.

i do think that a subscription model would be a good idea. i mean, if you get busted up financially by keeping this site open at a loss, no one can see any numbers. and i think we should all appreciate that you, the owner of the site, are taking the time to keep us in the loop on things before they happen.

it's cool bossman. by the looks of the poll, about 5% would pay willingly so far.

i do think that a subscription model would be a good idea. i mean, if you get busted up financially by keeping this site open at a loss, no one can see any numbers. and i think we should all appreciate that you, the owner of the site, are taking the time to keep us in the loop on things before they happen.

Interesting direction, I am personally withholding judgement until I see how the 3.0 site pans out - but in the meantime do have one question.

Will the paying members get an ad-free or ad-reduced site? One possibility might be to break up your advertising market into game, and non-game related. And at the least remove the non-game related advertisements for paying subscribers.

Speaking for myself here, I would not mind still seeing tasteful, game related ads or campaigns to a certain extent - but without going into unneeded detail, I do believe that certain ads and ad providers that have been used/displayed are a blight on the site.

If a paid membership eliminated the "trash ads", I personally would be more inclined to subscribe.

Also, as an aside, I think you could do better with a lot of your advertising. I am aware of several game and electronics industry related ads and partner programs that at least some other sites have been very successful with. While I understand that what works for some may not work for you, I am still surprised when I do come across some "trash ads" and wonder to myself if they could really be more profitable on this site than ads and ad partnerships that would actually target the sites primary demographic.

/$.02