Its certainly something I don't like. I would love to see numbers from game sales and extrapolate and analyze it as I think it creates lots of new talking points. Sadly, those years are behind us and now everything has to be hush hush.
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So why doesn't NPD release any actual figures while the Japanese trackers do?
- Thread starter jett
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I used to receive NPD numbers for the bicycle business and was always blown away by the detail and utility of their reports.
The data is simply too valuable to give away for free, and there is literally no reason for NPD to do so.
The data is simply too valuable to give away for free, and there is literally no reason for NPD to do so.
Don't like how NPD works tbh.
Other countries don't have issue related to sharing hw/sw data, but NPD will go after anyone who leaks or shares it.
All these back end deals and agreement involved are apparently exclusive to US, where everything related to information is treated as a way to make $$.
Other countries don't have issue related to sharing hw/sw data, but NPD will go after anyone who leaks or shares it.
All these back end deals and agreement involved are apparently exclusive to US, where everything related to information is treated as a way to make $$.
Really? Movie fandoms are obsessed with domestic box office take-in.
Movies aren't the same as games though. There are no secrets in making movies. What you see is what you get.
Games, much more than movies, are products, and developers and publishers are businesses. The more detailed financial and KPI info you get on a product, the better you're able to understand it, learn from its success, and integrate it into your own product.
Because at this point in the industry, success isn't measured purely by units sold.
I've no problem with expressing my take on anything the company does, nor does the company limit me from doing so.
The question was asked, I explained why it is the way it is, would be happy to clarify more if someone has an actual question beyond spicy hot one liners.
I wonder if there being no buy back on overshipped items has a part to do with Japan sharing more data. If I was a retailer I would want to have a lot more info available if that were the case.
You still have to subscribe for that info. Public data are very limited.
This is what Media Create provides.
https://www.m-create.com/english/sales_data/e_sales_data.html
Hmm, that's interesting. I assumed they provided much more analysis so makes sense.
NPD used to give platform splits but they stopped. I always wondered if this was done at the request of Microsoft to stem the monthly bad PR since their versions were always second place?
Success in television isn't purely by viewers, which is why Nielsen breaks down by demo.
Box office numbers are to the dollar, not viewers.
So yes, pure sales numbers aren't the only metric. Except the industry releases neither, when most other industries release everything. New York Times best seller lists even include MSRP.
I don't know what the actual reasons are, it was just a guess since I don't understand why this data is secret. I had thought that data isn't shared in part because the industry (game publishers) want greater control of the message that the public gets on game sales.
I apologise if my posts have been uninformed. Thanks for sharing with us what you know about this.
I'm appalled at the design differences between the EN and JP site. good lord
Wonder how streaming games would be counted. Music kinda makes sense, but how to qualify what a full purchase technically is on a streamed/game pass game?
Presume they will just go with the usualy PR bullshit of amount of players as opposed to purchases
Presume they will just go with the usualy PR bullshit of amount of players as opposed to purchases
General public don't care that much about it, other than some of us here and ofcourse the one's who pay for it.
Also there are have been leaks since at neogaf and here through people who have had access to the info.
Has nothing to do with 'general' public. Video game companies have been targeted time and again so i don't see any difference. I'm talking about hackers leaking the actual reports and PDF files rather than someone coming across information and sharing it.
NPD isn't a video game company, they collect data and sell it through their medium of secrecy.
truthfully I've always been more curious about how much of the data NPD has is useful. I swear I remember hearing awhile ago that when publishers ask about stuff. It's rare that they ever ask about games that are older than two years old.
I will give you a hint of what hackers can't gain anything from NPD that they can to what you just listed.
- DDOSing their server's wont effect, large number of public to outrage.
- Account/personal information stealing and selling them.
- No fanboy hatred of NPD just cause.
- Nothing worth "stealing" that isn't already accessible to the public through leaks.
The reason they're different is because games are direct to retail. Movie Box Office is a unique thing where theaters (not the actual film companies) report exact ticket sales. However, we don't have that type of hard data about bluray sales or streaming purchases because retailers and streaming sites don't report their sales in that way.
Is every publisher equally stingy/secretive? Like would Sega/THQ really throw fits if ya all posted the exact number of copies Jet Grind Radio on the GBA sold? Is there a "grace period" after which pubs don't care about numbers being let loose into the wild for some game they released a dozen years ago that they themselves prolly forgot existed, and we just haven't hit the end of it yet?
I honestly have huge issues with streaming services not disclosing numbers. I know at heart it's not a big deal as I'm not an investor but I like having a bead on what's actually in the broader zeitgeist and what just gets talked about a lot in more vocal communities.
And dvd, Blu-ray, and such sales can be gleaned at times, though that is more of a walled garden than box office admittedly. For what it's worth, physical music sales are fairly open and those are through retail thanks to soundscan.
I'm just generally all for box office style info being publicly available.
Is soundscan data publicly available? Googling around it seems like it works a lot like NPD where they publically provide trending data(via billboard) but detailed info is subscription only. I could be wrong though.
I do agree that I would love for there to be a videogame box office.
This is off the top of my head...
NPD was originally known as National Purchase Diary. Our data was from consumers that would manually log their monthly purchases into a diary book and we would manually tabulate purchases across a wide demographic spectrum. Over the years the name NPD stuck and while we still offer consumer data from survey panels, we use other methods including the utilization of retailer data to identify trends within many industries. And of course we are not limited to just Video Games. Basically if it's sold in the US (or the other countries we are in) , we likely track the industry it is sold in.
Back in the 90s and early 00s Rolling Stone and other places would include to the top 50 albums with sales every week.
Admittedly, they probably stopped including all sales given the earthquake that is streaming and the difficulty of quantifying that data. I don't keep up with that arena like I did.
So that's your name on here... hola.
Yep, $2 trillionish tracked, video games is less than $40 billion. Minuscule amount in the grand scheme of covered industries. Most people here only know the video game side though. Shrug.
