NPD not giving out platform splits is quite depressing, but I guess it's all my fault. I apologise.
A few weeks ago I asked on this forum for a breakdown of top positions in platform splits. Me, narcissistic as I was, ignored the warnings. A kind Gaffer did the maths and revealed, shockingly, that there was a strong lead for the PS4. Noone else before had ever realised this well-hidden fact. And the world would have stayed a better place if I would just have kept silent. But I made a quick note in my agenda and thought that everything would be fine and dandy.
Unfortunately I did not count on Gaf NPD threads high popularity among industry titans and true gamers. Logically, MS headquaters became aware of the dangerous truth and the potential harm these numbers could cause in the wake of the one-two-punch console release to come. They took action.
They convinced their buddies at EA (Moore, easy), Ubisoft (french, easy) and Microsoft (themselves, easy) to provide the long desired digital download numbers to NPD. But, quid pro quo, they blackmailed NPD to get rid of those meaningless platform splits.
That, in the end, the digital sales are quite meaningless (not full picture of participants, difficult to seperate US from WW customers, sales and free games distorting the picture) was willfully accepted by the Redmontians. Because in the long term, every sales number becoming fuzzy will just be another argument for MAU as the better, reliable and more prestigeous alternative.
With all of this, NPD will have dug their own grave.
And it was me who offered the shovel.