I don't know about VGCharts data as a whole, but what I just pieced together is that the January data that lead to the big sell off in Kirby is now questionable.
If US sales of Kirby were really 59,610 in February, I don't think Kirby sales were really as low as 30,000 in January for North America. In fact, they may have been higher than 60,000 copies, which would not have been so disappointing.
I was just pointing out that VGcharts appears to be filling the gaps in data (lower selling games) with similar numbers. Like how eventually games just sell 250 copies each week in Japan on VGcharts? I speculate they didn't really have data on Kirby and so put it in their class of games that sell 16,500 copies.
Their website says something like they interview execs, etc. I wonder how hard it is to call the regional or national inventory people at a large retailers and get their data directly if they already share w/ third parties.
I guess you just gotta figure out how to make money doing this to cover all the trouble. Like I said earlier, I'd pay $10-20/month just for basic sales figures.
There seems to be a lot of VGcharts backlash lately. Now I don't want to be an apologist for them especially since ultimately I cannot prove or disprove any of their analysis and research or lack thereof, but even the most well respected news agencies like the AP and Reuters get things wrong almost on a daily basis. The important thing is that they will issue corrections as they realize their error or the errors of their sources.
I can only speculate that VGcharts is trying to get their numbers out as fast as possible and are making errors and omissions in the process. I guess the alternative is they are all liars and it's all just a conspiracy made to deceive people on how a much certain videogames sold.
I guess like everything you can either believe them or not, but in my humble opinion the numbers don't look fake. And if anybody out there knows a better more reliable source please let us all know, an alternative source would be useful.
If you look at the lower sales games on the monthly charts over there, it is pretty obvious they are just making numbers up.
I really wish NPD would have a subscription service for like $10-20 a month for just basic sales numbers. There's a market for selling data to gamers, and we don't need in depth demographic data on who's buying what games. We just want to know how many copies are being sold. I bet they could get enough gamer subscribers that it'd be worth it. I mean, its just additional revenue right? The game developers and analysts are still going to want the in-depth data.
Sales have totally dropped off in NA. Kirby only sold 30,000 copies in Jan compared to 229,500 copies in December. This is bearish news.
Japan is now at 924,250 copies sold.
VGcharts has the game at 1.24 million copies sold on its world page (not out in Europe yet?). I think the stock may be overvalued at this point since Europe doesn't really buy into Kirby games anyways.
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