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Businesses Entertainment Games

NPD Will No Longer Publicly Provide Games Hardware Sales Data 56

Posted by Zonk from the end-of-the-fun dept.
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."
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NPD Will No Longer Publicly Provide Games Hardware Sales Data More

NPD Will No Longer Publicly Provide Games Hardware Sales Data

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  • Can someone summarize what NPD is? The summary doesn't say (but it should).

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

    by Gothic_Walrus ( 692125 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2007 @06:47PM (#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 @07:06PM (#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:1)

        by whoop ( 194 )
        If they are looking to increase sales by requiring subscriptions, I would think they'd likely have some sort of restrictions in their user agreement to prevent one blogger from just posting all the sales figures and everyone else pulling from him.
        • They do, you're not allowed to publicize it. In fact this is very much an all-or-nothing situation: either NPD publishes it for free, or the public at large can never have it because the press can't report on it. Since it's basically up to the Big 3 to approve another year of public data, hopefully they'll go through with it.

      • 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

    • Re:Summary is seriously lacking here. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by badasscat ( 563442 ) <basscadet75NO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Tuesday November 06, 2007 @08:53PM (#21262207)
      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.
  • I think /. will lose half of its page views without the regular release of console sales numbers to spawn 500+ comment threads on why sucks.
  • Who needs NPD? http://www.vgchartz.com/ [vgchartz.com] has detailed weekly sales data available for free, and they're no less reliable than NPD nowadays.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dobeln ( 853794 )
      VGChartz aren't halfway as reliable as NPD.
      • Yes they are. The farthest they've been away from NPD was 30% (so there goes your "halfway" comment). BTW, Vgchartz was more reliable than NPD for the Wii and the DS in the last quarter.

        • 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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Turken ( 139591 )
          Try re-reading the parent post. His claim is that VGchartz is less than half RELIABLE, not half ACCURATE. If VGcharts was reliable, then they would not always be revising their numbers to match the industry-accepted NPD numbers.

          So... to check reliability, count the number of months where VGchartz's initially published numbers have been acceptably close to the NPD numbers, and then count the number of months where they had to make adjustments after the fact. I'm willing to bet that their initial guesses w
          • There are other ways of knowing whether your numbers are truly off or not. Each quarter, the manufacturers release shipped numbers which in some cases can show whether your numbers were correct or not. Of course shipped doesn't equal sold, but there's still something to judge numbers against without NPD.

            How do you think NPD judges if their numbers were correct too? They have around 60% of the market covered, which is obviously not enough for perfect estimates. There's plenty of historical data and news repo

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Turken ( 139591 )
              There are other ways of knowing whether your numbers are truly off or not. Each quarter, the manufacturers release shipped numbers which in some cases can show whether your numbers were correct or not. Of course shipped doesn't equal sold, but there's still something to judge numbers against without NPD.

              Again, just asking for some examples. Can you point me to somewhere (give me a link, not just your assertion that NPD was wrong) where one of the console manufacturers has posted their own numbers which con

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