-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
NPD will no longer release monthly hardware/software unit sales
- Thread starter Kobun Heat
- Start date
It's possible that we just have different definitions for a 'ton of work', but I certainly wouldn't go to that extreme in describing what NPD does. I've seen the multipliers that NPD uses (admittedly, from a few years ago), and they were extremely simplistic and basic. There was absolutely nothing about the multipliers that suggested even the tiniest bit of geographical analysis, retailer-specific analysis, etc. They used a single multiplier across entire platforms, regardless of the genre of the game, the age-rating, retailer-specific promotions, geographical promotions, etc. It was the most basic 3rd-grade type of stuff, where they took the assumed total market figures, and simply divided it by their total raw retailer figures to arrive at a simple multiplier that was then used across the board regardless of any actual analysis as suggested above.charlequin said:
I don't know. They haven't tracked WalMart for a long time now. For the first year or two after losing WalMart they would have still maintained a pretty good idea of WalMart's place in the market. But with each year that passes, the error rate in their WalMart projections grows larger and larger, and the confidence level in those numbers grows smaller and smaller.charlequin said:
Not to mention that NPD is missing Toys 'r Us as well, along with a number of other smaller players. I would suspect that Toys 'r Us and WalMart together make up a rather large chunk of the more casual + children's + women's + budget gaming markets, and missing out on these two retailers completely no doubt skews their data, particularly in these specific areas.
I would be surprised if NPD covers much more than 60% of the overall retail market, and when the retailers that they miss skew towards different demographics than the retailers that they do cover, that undoubtedly causes some fairly serious uncertainty in their data projections. We've seen numerous examples in the fairly recent past where NPD has been off pretty seriously with their numbers for specific titles, as easily noticed when the publisher's own shipping numbers for North America come in noticeably below NPD's reported sales figures.
I guess the point of all this is that I don't feel that NPD really provides a service that couldn't be fairly well reproduced by another firm. I'm just not sure what the financial incentive would be for another firm to step into the market. But NPD surely hasn't wowed me with their own efforts.
Edit - after reading through your post again, along with your responses to donny, it seems that I might have misunderstood the point of your post with respect to this particular comment.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
For some reason or another the premiums he pays for me are sky high and I've only been banned once.TheSeks said:
Segata Sanshiro
Member
Trauma insurance. And just plain ol' property damage.Thunder Monkey said:For some reason or another the premiums he pays for me are sky high and I've only been banned once.
charlequin
Banned
jvm said:
For them to stop hurting America.
donny2112 said:
Nothing in particular, except the huge upfront costs, the dubious utility of getting into a market where 100% of your possible customers are already paying someone else, and the relative unimportance of the gaming market for basically all of the major media conglomerates.
Of course, this is totally unrelated to the topic at hand, which was why the publishers and platform-holders needed NPD when they could just call their retail partners and ask for sell-through numbers.
Arguably pretty high? NPD are just one sales research firm of many, run with what, from the position of many outsiders, seem to be fairly unproductive policies in this particular market segment. Wal-Mart play ball in terms of sales data for every other content medium, which makes me think NPD just sucked at getting them to stay on board.
No, you were responding to my post about something different with some totally unrelated points.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
I swear Kevin broke that Ming vase just so you'd beat me with curtain rods.Segata Sanshiro said:
EmCeeGramr
Member
wait why the hell were boney and gravijah allowed into any gang at all
why was i not informed of this so i could veto it
why was i not informed of this so i could veto it
Segata Sanshiro
Member
it was the night shift, they were helpful in my thread burning activities. the problem is when they decided to go maverick and start bum-fucking every single 3DS thread. even i'm not that cheeky.EmCeeGramr said:
Thunder Monkey
Banned
Besides I think they're cool... that has to mean something doesn't it?Segata Sanshiro said:
...
Thunder Monkey
Banned
Doesn't it?Thunder Monkey said:
...
Thunder Monkey
Banned
Dirty little Raichu.Gravijah said:
*tickles Gravi's chin*
bigtroyjon
Member
I'm getting the feeling that just about everyone thinks that NPD's entire business is tracking video game sales. They are tracking most retail sales, the video game sales are clearly the only thing relevant to this forum but their business is based on retail in general.
As has been said they have millions of American's shopping habbits tracked, to think they are blindly throwing darts against the wall to figure out Wallmarts sales is either ignorance or being a Chartz fanboy, which based on the numerous posts by them in this thread appears to be a sad number of people.
As has been said they have millions of American's shopping habbits tracked, to think they are blindly throwing darts against the wall to figure out Wallmarts sales is either ignorance or being a Chartz fanboy, which based on the numerous posts by them in this thread appears to be a sad number of people.
charlequin
Banned
Vagabundo said:
No.
TheThunder
Member
Andrex
Banned
(Today, 04:52 AM)
good riddance.
On topic: This is why nobody should get total monopoly in any business. Gonna miss GAF's monthly npd day.
Banned
(Today, 04:52 AM)
good riddance.
On topic: This is why nobody should get total monopoly in any business. Gonna miss GAF's monthly npd day.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
Gah!charlequin said:
It's like you guys don't want to get sued or something.
infinityBCRT
Member
It just sucks for because I thought hardware was starting to get interesting again with MS winning 3 months in a row and the Wii's market dwindling. Also would be interesting to see how kinect/move affected sales patterns. It would be a lot easier to see when the next generation is coming based on the numbers too. If Kinect bombs, or Wii/Xbox hardware sales fall off the map, its gonna be a lot sooner than later.
Grampa Simpson
Banned
How about numbers attributed to Carnac the Magnificent?charlequin said:
Andrex get banned because of this thread?
See, every dark cloud of bad news has a silver lining. Sometimes you just need to wait 20 pages for it to make itself evident.
---
Sales-age is what brought me to GAF 6 years ago. You need to respect it's place in making the forum what it is today.
See, every dark cloud of bad news has a silver lining. Sometimes you just need to wait 20 pages for it to make itself evident.
---
Sales-age is what brought me to GAF 6 years ago. You need to respect it's place in making the forum what it is today.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
It was before my time, but I thought GAF was getting cease and desist letters from the NPD Group about it.PSGames said:
perfectchaos007
Member
ToxicAdam said:
yep, it brought me here too. I always came here for the numbers, so I figured why not be a user here? I don't regret it
CadetMahoney
Member
:lolDeadTrees said:
"Jenna Jameson, the Gulf of Mexico, and this month's sales for the PSP Go."
BishopLamont
Banned
Media Create threads to be x10 bigger?
yea right
onken
Member
crazygambit said:
In theory yes, but you know that's never going to happen. John Q Public is going to lap it up and ask for seconds.
You've gotta be kidding, the 2 different camps were falling over themselves to offer incentives and deals that never would have happened otherwise.
Shrug, it's only an example but I don't think it's that far-fetched. There's a number of ways they could it. I guess the simplest would be that all models sold henceforth don't play the older games, then gradually stop putting out firmware updates to the older models, forcing you to get a new box if you want to play the latest games/movies etc.
Psychotext
Member
Not just that, but now I know a bunch of people with HUGE HD-DVD collections that they bought for next to nothing.onken said:
Psychotext
Member
They'll all gloat about what they can... that's going to be more difficult for some companies than others.allan-bh said:
crazygambit
Member
onken said:
I'm not kidding. I think the consumer is much better off now that there's only one format. Even with those "deals" investing in 2 players to be able to see all the movies was much more expensive. Having to choose one format meant you couldn't get the exclusives in the other. Now we get access to the whole library of HD movies available and prices aren't any more expensive.
There are many other industries when consolidation is better for the consumer than perfect competition (note I said consolidation, not necessarily a monopoly) I just gave an example you might be able to relate to and that was discussed extensively in this forum.
It's just that the idea that competition is ALWAYS better for the consumer is quite wrong, it usually is, not always. Pick up an econ book if you don't believe me.
Anyway this is getting too off topic so I'll leave it at that. Funny enough I think some competition in the gaming data gathering business would be nice, but won't happen because of steep barriers of entry.
CaseyTappy
Member
Andrex said:
No you won't :
Andrex
Banned
(Today, 01:28 AM)
Thunder Monkey
Banned
Just like the smell from the egg drop soup I found under my bed.dolemite said:
Pureauthor
Member
I believe the full impact of this needed to wait until I went and had a nice long sleep before it took hold.
*deep breath*
OH GOD MY LIFE IS WORTHLESS NOW WORTHLESS WHY CRUEL WORLD, WHY HAS THOU FORSAKEN MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
...
(NPD has been crap for a long while. None of the numbers I really cared about ever showed up anyway, so this news doesn't hit me that hard in practical terms. But the constant scaling back of information sucks.)
*deep breath*
OH GOD MY LIFE IS WORTHLESS NOW WORTHLESS WHY CRUEL WORLD, WHY HAS THOU FORSAKEN MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
...
(NPD has been crap for a long while. None of the numbers I really cared about ever showed up anyway, so this news doesn't hit me that hard in practical terms. But the constant scaling back of information sucks.)
Spiegel said:
Hmm. I thought this meant differently:
This is reported among the changes made in what will be reported to the press:
http://www.industrygamers.com/news/npd-alters-data-reporting-no-longer-providing-hardware-sales/
turnbuckle
Member
Ahh, that's really disappointing. First was introduced to GAF several years ago as a source for numbers. What we used to get was amazing, but even when it was just a top 10 it was appreciated. I pretty much only skim sales threads anymore because GAF has a lot more to offer, but it sucks to see them gone.