The most recent released figures of this title from Media Create have sales at 943,000. Coupled with the roughly 300,000 sold in the US and the recent launch in th EU, sales are clearly at or beyond the current price point.
It seems odd we have sales expectations of nearly 7 million for GTA IV on the PS3 when the userbase is not even half that, while titles of this caliber are priced so far below their realistic lifetime target.
Well I suppose you could gather up all the NPD information you could find and put it up together on a site but if you didn't pay NPD for that information they could still sue.
Now they're probably not going to do anything if you only have a few small lists up but as your lists get more comprehensive, full of NPD numbers past and present, it would be completely up to NPD's discretion on when they feel like shutting you down.
This is one of the problems in the videogames industry, there is no de facto source of game sales information, and what information is out there is controlled by the one group that actively tries to collect it, NPD.
This is also why the simExchange is so interesting and exciting, together we are using all our collective knowledge and insight to get to a number and closer to the truth. As more people become active and participate on SE the predictions should also become more accurate.
What if it is just the numbers NPD released publicly already? The knowledge is out there, just scattered. I assume if NPD released the data to the media, like the Top 30 data, they know they aren't going to make money on that data and it would be ok to put on a site dedicated to keeping track of NPD data?
Sorry for all the multiple posts, new posts keep popping up as soon as I reply ;)
I believe what VGcharts.org is trying to do is similar to what you describe Workwork, they take numbers from NPD USA and take that into consideration for their numbers. However the thing is the numbers we look at are meant to represent North America as a whole and probably include numbers from NPD Canada and whatever numbers they can get from Mexico, if that even is a signifigant market.
So why don't they just put up NPD numbers, maybe just broken down by country? NPD would not allow another site to publish their complete charts verbatim. It's their business to sell that information to others.
Ahhhh...so I think that settles it, VGcharts.org puts some number out until they see real data, then they "revise" with no indication that a mistake was made before.
Basically, I think we need to just work off of NPD. Is there any site that collects NPD data straight off the press releases and organizes it in an easy to view web site?
According to VGcharts.ORG, Kirby sales fell from 30,000 copies in January to 16,500 copies in February.
According to NPD, Kirby sold 26,395 copies in January and went up to 59,610 in February.
I dunno how accurate those numbers are but the guy claims they are NPD numbers. They are very comprehensive though, does NPD usually release top 30 of each platform to public? If so, that should be pretty good data to use here.
Well one possible explanation for the odd numbers is that Kirby may have been more successful in it's first month than anybody expected (229,500). All initial shipments of Kirby may have been sold out in December. A second shipment may not have come till later in the month of January accounting for the low sales that month (30,000). Now in February supply has caught up to demand and Kirby looks like it's selling relatively well again (59,610). Just my theory on the fluctuating numbers.
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