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NPD will no longer release monthly hardware/software unit sales

C

Corto

Member
GarthVaderUK said:
I believe these are accurate - I have determined this via a complex system that takes into account sales data rumours, percentages released via PR, Amazon bestseller lists, what's sellin' down at my local game store, and which hardware all my mates are buying.
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Hey! I think we have a business opportunity here... :D
 
P

Painraze

Unconfirmed Member
beelzebozo said:
the good news is that this means the end of arguments over what system is better or more popular.
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:lol :lol

joke post detected :p

This will enable platform holders to incite system wars like we've never seen before. If anything, things will get worse because of this.
 
U

ultron87

Member
As someone who always enjoyed reading the numbers, this is sad. As someone who stayed the hell away from every Sales Age thread, I at least feel sad for those who enjoyed arguing about such things.
 
S

Sho_Nuff82

Member
Reginald P. Linux said:
People in the industry will still have access to those numbers so they'll get the information they need. NPD numbers have nothing to do with anyone on this forum.
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What about casual investors?

Numbers every 3 months with shipping data only?
 
B

B-Rad Lascelle

Banned
jkanownik said:
You're assuming that Kinect and Move would be classified as software. This issue could just as easily been solved by classifying them as accessories, so they wouldn't be in the normal software reporting anyway.
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This is true. But then, one could easily connect the dots by how well the individual Move/Kinect titles are selling. Those would be classified as games.

If titles like Sports Champions and Kinect Sports are nowhere to be found on the NPD Top 20 while Wii Sports Resort continues to surface despite being A) over a year old and B) bundled with Wii hardware, there would be questions.

Then again, we'll have our own answers once the PRs come out with "sold through to retail" unit sales and vague "% increase over last quarter" jargon.

Jeels said:
It's funny people actually think this will lessen the console war discussions somehow. If anything, the NPD provided some grounded truth to the console wars and thus limited the stupidity that tends to spread from fans of a specific console literally making stuff up to further their gains. If anything, things are going to become a lot more chaotic now.
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Until a day where someone emerges as a direct competitor for NPD brokering deals with retailers that either undercut or coexist with the NPD agreements, we are now entering into a new era of FANBOY ANARCHY! A land where sales data does not exist and a game's popularity is based solely on its bought and paid for MetaCritic score.
 
S

SlipperySlope

Banned
kswiston said:
Well they are handy in letting us know if we should get our hopes up for seeing sequels to a game we really enjoyed. Also, I can easily say the same thing about sports. That no one other than the athletes themselves and the people who own/manage professional teams should care about sports stats. Doesn't stop millions of people from caring.
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This is even worse than not knowing sports stats. We won't even know the scores of the games. Or who wins the championship game.



The kicker kicked a 55 yard field goal attempt with 3 seconds remaining to potentially win the game. Did it go in? According to some posters here, who cares! The only people who should care are the players. If you're not a player, you shouldn't care.

I don't get that line of thinking. Those people really should just gtfo of this thread.
 
J

Jeels

Member
It's funny people actually think this will lessen the console war discussions somehow. If anything, the NPD provided some grounded truth to the console wars and thus limited the stupidity that tends to spread from fans of a specific console literally making stuff up to further their gains. If anything, things are going to become a lot more chaotic now.
 
A

Aeana

Member
Jeels said:
It's funny people actually think this will lessen the console war discussions somehow. If anything, the NPD provided some grounded truth to the console wars and thus limited the stupidity that tends to spread from fans of a specific console literally making stuff up to further their gains. If anything, things are going to become a lot more chaotic now.
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Nobody actually thinks that.
 
C

CadetMahoney

Member
Gaf's new source, take your pick:

- Pachters predictions.
- corp PR
- VG------
- Amazon Chartz
- "I work in Best Buy. . . still on shelves" douchebag
 
G

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
Jeels said:
It's funny people actually think this will lessen the console war discussions somehow. If anything, the NPD provided some grounded truth to the console wars and thus limited the stupidity that tends to spread from fans of a specific console literally making stuff up to further their gains. If anything, things are going to become a lot more chaotic now.
Click to expand...

If a site can be banned for making up numbers I'm sure a poster can...

It's not like people are going to throw around numbers pulled from their ass as facts without people calling them out on it.
 
J

Jeels

Member
gofreak said:
If a site can be banned for making up numbers I'm sure a poster can...

It's not like people are going to throw around numbers pulled from their ass as facts without people calling them out on it.
Click to expand...

It's not that, its that now there will always be sort of an air of mystery, it'll make discussions all the less fact based.
 
S

Segata Sanshiro

Member
gofreak said:
If a site can be banned for making up numbers I'm sure a poster can...

It's not like people are going to throw around numbers pulled from their ass as facts without people calling them out on it.
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No, they'll disguise them as charming little nuggets of anecdotal data.
 
G

Gravijah

Member
TouchMyBox said:
Good riddance, you armchair analysts and jellybean counters have taken much of the fun out of gaming.
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Good riddance, you armchair analysts and jellybean counters have taken much of the fun out of baseball.
 
R

Reginald P. Linux

Banned
SlipperySlope said:
The kicker kicked a 55 yard field goal attempt with 3 seconds remaining to potentially win the game. Did it go in? According to some posters here, who cares! The only people who should care are the players. If you're not a player, you shouldn't care.

I don't get that line of thinking. Those people really should just gtfo of this thread.
Click to expand...

If you buy a game and play a game and enjoy or hate a game, what do sales matter? People who need to know the information to make thier business decisions will still get that information. The sports analogy you've used just shows that some people only care about who "wins" and "loses" and not much about games themselves. Sales are just another piece of fanboy ammunition that gaming-age can do without.
 
S

Segata Sanshiro

Member
Jeels said:
How does this have any place in this thread.
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Because it represents another situation where people try to drive empirical data away because it causes discomfort?

Or alternatively, because I posted it in here. Cope.
 
Xilium

Xilium

Member
Micro$oft obviously paid them off to hide the inevitable smackdown that Move and PS3 will be delivering to Kinnect and the 360 this holiday.
 
G

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
Segata Sanshiro said:
No, they'll disguise them as charming little nuggets of anecdotal data.
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Anecdotal data is a long way from 'vanquish sold 20k units' type claims though. Saying 'it didn't sell well in my store' isn't very helpful, but it's not a bare-faced made up claim about total sales.

I get the point about the vacuum of data leaving things all up in the air though.
 
H

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
iosef said:
Which leads me to believe the real reason is...

2) A big customer demanded it. Market research businesses tend to have highly concentrated sales, i.e. a few large customers buy a ton of licenses and can account for a disproportionate share of revenue. These businesses are usually the largest vendors who use their customer status to influence what the market researcher publishes, because the market research announcement themselves influence other people's decisions who don't necessarily subscribe to NPD data (specifically, retailers). The version of this reading would be "MS/Sony don't want people to know that Kinect/Move bombed." Everyone will find out eventually, but with a three-month delay until those companies do financial reports, giving plenty of time to message to nervous retailers.
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I would guess that this is the real reason. Both Microsoft and Sony are apparently betting heavily on their new motion systems to give them something like Wii levels of success with the casual market. My guess is, with this happening right before September NPD numbers, that the Move is not doing anything near what Sony was hoping for and they want to keep that quiet so investors don't get super jumpy. (I work at an electronics chain, and it didn't seem to me that the piles of Move stuff were going anywhere fast, despite the fact that we had a prominent playable display in the middle of the store. Could be mistaken.)
 
S

SovanJedi

provides useful feedback
I took a brief glimpse of this whole thread and haven't seen SamBishop gloat yet. Let me know when he does. Unless he's banned, in which case oooooops!
 
S

SlipperySlope

Banned
Reginald P. Linux said:
If you buy a game and play a game and enjoy or hate a game, what do sales matter? People who need to know the information to make thier business decisions will still get that information. The sports analogy you've used just shows that some people only care about who "wins" and "loses" and not much about games themselves. Sales are just another piece of fanboy ammunition that gaming-age can do without.
Click to expand...

Oh please. Are you for real? Another piece of fanboy ammunition? Knowing the numbers only decreases dumb and pointless banter.

Not to mention some of us (me being one), actually hold stock in at least one of these companies, and do benefit directly from knowing these numbers.

Here's a question. Why not let us, who care, know who's winning and losing? Why keep the information secret? How does keeping the information secret benefit this forum in any way?
 
M

Megadragon15

Member
Xilium said:
Micro$oft obviously paid them off to hide the inevitable smackdown that Move and PS3 will be delivering to Kinnect and the 360 this holiday.
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Yeah. Sure. That is it since Kinect doesn't launch until November and this would have been the first full month that Move was on sale...
 
T

TOAO_Cyrus

Member
borghe said:
we'll see. How I'm reading it is that if you are media, no numbers for you. If you read above, it says "hardware and software subscribers" meaning that if you are a hardware manufacturer/subscriber you can release numbers for your own products.

So it isn't really told if numbers are being released to anyone else beyond the publishers/manufacturers.

As for why anyone would still subscribe, because this is still the only way to get ANY data.. it's just now the data has become a lot less valuable.

and I agree with the conspiracy theories, though not necessarily that it was only MS
probably was
. Bottom line is that NPD month in and month out devalues a lot of properties and IPs out there a lot more than they may otherwise be devalued without the pitiful sales reports to drag them down. Without NPD telling me, just from anecdotal evidence, I would strongly believe PS3 is in second place in the US just judging from most of the stores I see sales in.. Clearly that's not the case though. Is ignorance bliss? Maybe, but definitely more desirable than a shot to the nuts for some of these companies.
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Um I am sure subscribers still get all data, its just they sign a NDA preventing them from releasing any numbers. I bet they will still leak though, just like the top 20 usually did even though they only released numbers on the top 5. This makes a subscription less valuable to a media outlet but more valualable for the industry becasue they cant get numbers for free anymore.
 
S

Segata Sanshiro

Member
gofreak said:
Anecdotal data is a long way from 'vanquish sold 20k units' type claims though. Saying 'it didn't sell well in my store' isn't very helpful, but it's not a bare-faced made up claim about total sales.

I get the point about the vacuum of data leaving things all up in the air though.
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You aren't using your imagination hard enough.
 
L

lowlylowlycook

Member
Htown said:
(I work at an electronics chain, and it didn't seem to me that the piles of Move stuff were going anywhere fast, despite the fact that we had a prominent playable display in the middle of the store. Could be mistaken.)
Click to expand...

Welcome to the new gaf, everybody!
 
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