Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

NPD Will No Longer Publicly Provide Games Hardware Sales Data

Posted by Zonk on Tue Nov 06, 2007 07:17 PM
from the end-of-the-fun dept.
Businesses Entertainment Games
Newsweek's LevelUp blog has the big news of the day: the monthly releases of NPD sales information for the games industry have (for the time being) come to an end. N'Gai Croal and Geoff Keighly have a lengthy discussion about the withdrawal of that information from a reliable source. They also discuss the huge number of AAA games releasing this month, and which of those are likely to come out on top. N'Gai also notes that, as far as the NPD was concerned, we should have seen this coming. "NPD Group director David Riley contacted us with a statement to clarify his company's new position, which reads: At this time last year, it was made very clear that NPD will provide media with hardware sales figures, but that it would only be temporary. As you may recall, we never provided these numbers until Nov.'06, the first month when all three new consoles were on the market. It's been a year, so it's time to pull back. It's better to pull back and leave it up to our clients to release their numbers. Or, if manufacturers tell us it's okay to release their hardware sales numbers, then we'll go back to providing them, but that shouldn't be our call."
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] NPD Reverses Console Numbers Decision 23 comments
The wailing and gnashing of teeth from the game-playing media seems to have gotten through to the NPD group. Despite earlier statements to the contrary, it looks like for the time being they plan to continue to release console sales figures to the press at large. Next Generation reports: "NPD Group's David Riley admitted in an e-mail Monday, 'Honestly, it was terribly naive of me to think that we could simply stop providing these after giving them freely for a year ... Nothing is going to change. All will remain the same ... The 'Big Three' [Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony] are on board, so we'll be providing these figures indefinitely.'"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

NPD Will No Longer Publicly Provide Games Hardware Sales Data 25 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Summary is seriously lacking here. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gothic_Walrus (692125) on Tuesday November 06 2007, @07:47PM (#21261097) Journal
    The summary neglects to mention two important parts of the (admittedly long) blog post I saw mentioned elsewhere that I think are important.

    First, NPD will still be releasing annual and quarterly hardware figures. Not as nice as monthly, maybe, but the data will still be out there in at least some form, even if it is in a form that's not nearly as useful for analyzing sales throughout the year.

    More importantly, though, NPD is going to cut back on game figures as well - they'll only be releasing a monthly Top Five instead of a Top Ten from now on (though the Top Ten will be quarterly and annually released as well). I don't have a clue why they chose to do this...anyone have any insights on why that decision might have been made? With the amount of software released in a month and the presence of perennial best sellers like Super Smash Brothers in the sales figures, I can't imagine the usefulness of a pared down list.

    • Re:Summary is seriously lacking here. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sanosuke76 (887630) on Tuesday November 06 2007, @08:06PM (#21261317) Homepage
      Now that they've gotten folks used to seeing a lot of info from them, they're probably hoping to start coaxing folks into paying for subscriptions in order to see the data.

      Given that NPD info was being watched by an ungodly number of gaming bloggers and such, there's probably more than a few who would pay for continued access at the same level.

      When in doubt, always ask, "Is there a way for them to monetize this?" Because if they can, it's probably why they're doing it.
      • I think the paying people got a lot more information either way. Maybe this last year was a publicity drive to show that.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by DarthJohn (1160097)

        Before November last year they weren't giving out the numbers. When media folks were asking for the numbers for the new systems they decided to, for a limited time, make more information public for free. They have been selling the data all along, and presumably haven't been giving all of it out. The whole thing was just to answer what they thought would be a short lived higher demand due to the launching of the new gaming systems.

        Apparently they've noticed the whining from the blogs and are surprised at t

    • With the amount of software released in a month and the presence of perennial best sellers like Super Smash Brothers in the sales figures, I can't imagine the usefulness of a pared down list.

      Wrong question. The real question is the utility in releasing these lists to the public at all.

      The industry gets a list that includes sales data on every currently produced game. They pay good money for that. That's not going anywhere.

      But what does anybody gain by releasing those numbers to the public? All it does is feed the trolls (some of which work under the title of "editor" for major gaming sites). Game makers hate it because unless you're #1, it just makes you look bad. The NPD feels like they're giving away part of the report they charge for, so they don't like it either. It's debatable whether or not it serves the public, because all we do is argue about what the numbers mean, as if we know anything. It's certainly not information we *need*, in any case.

      So I can't say I have much of a problem with the list being pared down, and I certainly understand the reasoning for it.
      • You know VGChartz compares their numbers to NPD and adjusts them to fit within 5-15% depending on the bias they prefer, right? Have you seen the game ranking page? There's no way in hell Nintendo has 8/10 top 10 games. Where are all the XBox and ever popular PS2 games? You'd think that with over 140 Million PS2 sales, the top ranked PS2 game might be higher than 36th place.

        VGChartz is no better than nexgenwars. They both guess at the numbers, adjust them when it suits their motive and have a forum full
    • Hasn't the PS3 had lackluster sales for its entire lifespan? A serious question, rather than a disagreement with parent or an attempt to troll.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Gothic_Walrus (692125)
        His use of "same time" is up for interpretation, though I'd agree with you that it implies a shorter period than the PS3 has been available for.

        I guess we can't entirely discount the theory that Sony was involved in this; if they're worried about the upcoming holiday system, they may well have asked NPD to stop releasing the figures. Unfortunately, we'll probably never have a more definitive answer than the quotes that are in the article...which aren't saying much.

      • Hasn't the PS3 had lackluster sales for its entire lifespan? A serious question, rather than a disagreement with parent or an attempt to troll.
        In the US it is lack luster. World wide it's picked up a lot. Media creates data for the 22-28th of October shows the PS3 1:1.4 to the wii and 5:1 with the 360. Couldn't find data for the US. Apparently world wide it's shows a more 1:1 with the 360 and a 2:1 with the wii.
        • I find it hard to believe it's anywhere near half the sales of the Wii. Maybe the current weekly sales are close to 2:1 in the Wii's favor (it was 1.46:1 in Japan Oct 22-28), but total sales are vastly different... Wii (in Japan) was selling at 5-10x the numbers of the PS3 for most of the last year, and its sales in the US were only limited by supply. The 360 also I imagine is beating the pants off the PS3 in total sales, as they moved quite a few units in North America and the PAL regions with their one ye
        • Source for your numbers?
    • I don't know about the US, but in Japan their sales are picking up quite quickly. If they were going to suppress the numbers because of low sales, they would have done it a year ago. As it is, it looks more like it was either a legitimately temporary policy that came up for review or else they realize that their sales are going to start surpassing the Wii's within a year or two and they want to be the only ones that know when that happens for sure (and being able to claim it whenever they want to).

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Chibi Merrow (226057)

        I don't know about the US, but in Japan their sales are picking up quite quickly.


        They've been under 20k units/week in Japan since August. Are we talking about the same Japan?

        • They've been under 20k units/week in Japan since August. Are we talking about the same Japan?
          I believe this is what he's referring to. [72.14.253.104]
          • Yeah but that's due more to Wii's sales trending downwards in the pre-holiday slump. PS3 sales hit ~10k in Sept. and again for a week in Oct. It's not really on much of an upwards trend.

            Hell, if you'd just look at September you'd think that the PSP was ruling the handheld market with ease, but in October it's way behind the DSL, again... Sony's being beat by what they described as a "gimmick" and "a last generation system", I don't think they want the NPD numbers anywhere near a headline. They'd much rather

          • I believe this is what he's referring to.
            If he is then he is an idiot.

            Most of the change in ratio in Wii to PS3 sales has been because of a reduction in Wii sales, not the PS3 "picking up".

      • But in Japan their sales are picking up quite quickly
        Really? [vgchartz.com] They've certainly had a couple of weeks that aren't as bad as some of the others but I think it's a bit early to be claiming some sort of significant upswing.
          • Well I get my numbers secondhand from media create... And PS3 hasn't broken 20k/week since August in Japan. Compared to DS Lite clearing 75k. Granted Wii's been around the 30k mark for about a month, but that's after posting almost a year of straight 150-200k numbers every week. Eventually you run out of people in Japan.

            but they both degrade and berate anyone that posts Sony published numbers.

            Probably because Sony publishes "numbers shipped" as "numbers sold" which are vastly different. What's interesting i

          • You seriously used VGChartz for your example?

            I linked to them because I don't know of anywhere else that shows figures for a time period as a nice graph.

            Whilst I didn't check every week what I did check seemed to tie in with Media Create Simple 2000 figures which are presumably more than just "guesses". Given that the poster specifically mentioned Japan and the data from there should be quite good I don't have a problem with referring to it.

            Sorry, I hate when people use numbers from those sites as tr

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Shados (741919)
          They're good "enough", but the problem is that their numbers are adjusted to NPD... without NPD, they'll be progressively farther until their data is meaningless.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.