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Official March 2007 NPD Prediction Thread

D

DeaconKnowledge

Member
GhaleonEB said:
Let's just say the guy that runs the site is perma-banned from GAF. The numbers on his site are all adjusted by him according to - well, whatever he wants. His numbers won't tie to Media Crate, NPD, or anything else because he applies his guesswork to the data. And in the case of the numbers you cited, he just made them up entirely.

Bringing up the site is literally off-limits in Media Create threads and not encouraged in NPD ones because of this. It's an interesting site, and I do use it on occasion, but it's not at all a reliable source of accurate data.
Click to expand...

I'd say it's good enough for ball-parking. Nowhere near as accurate as NPD or Famitsu/MC, but still a barometer of trends.
 
D

deftangel

took a programming course
Mar_ said:
batmanbomb.gif
Click to expand...
:lol :lol :lol

Had to get that on this page
 
D

deftangel

took a programming course
Predictions

Nintendo DS 584k
Wii 427k
PlayStation 2 299k
Xbox 360 269k
PlayStation Portable 212k
Game Boy Advance 155k
PlayStation 3 140k
GameCube 15k
Xbox 0.5k
 
M

Mojovonio

Banned
GhaleonEB said:
Let's just say the guy that runs the site is perma-banned from GAF. The numbers on his site are all adjusted by him according to - well, whatever he wants. His numbers won't tie to Media Crate, NPD, or anything else because he applies his guesswork to the data. And in the case of the numbers you cited, he just made them up entirely.

Bringing up the site is literally off-limits in Media Create threads and not encouraged in NPD ones because of this. It's an interesting site, and I do use it on occasion, but it's not at all a reliable source of accurate data.
Click to expand...

he was permabanned?

:lol

for what?
 
S

sonycowboy

Member
This is going to be a hell of a month.

1) My HW Predictions:
NDS 450k
Wii 350k
PS2 325k
360 280k
PSP 230k
PS3 175k
GBA 160k
GCN 30k
Xbox 500

2) My SW Predictions
1) God of War 2 (PS2)
2) Ghost Recon: AW 2 (360)
3) Wii Play (Wii)
4) Guitar Hero 2 (360)
5) Crackdown (360)
6) Diddy Kong Racing (NDS)
7) GTA: Vice City Stories (PS2)
8) Motorstorm (PS3)
9) Guitar Hero 2 (PS2)
10) Zelda (Wii)

3) Ioi/Broshnat/VGCharts.org/vgchartz.com - completely putting their credibility on the line.

Now providing estimated weekly sales for NA. Someone can compare his results to NPD.

4) Storylines for the month, IMO
a) PS3 still bottoming out (HW)?
b) DS & Wii continuing their monster tear (HW)?
c) God of War PS2. Is the platform still viable for big hits?
d) Motorstorm PS3. Was it sent to die? Or can it do > 100k?
e) Guitar Hero 360. One weeks sales, looks to be huge.
f) PS2 HW - When does the decline begin?
g) 360 HW - When does the ascension begin?

5) Numbers to be posted ~ 6:30PM EST
 
S

sonycowboy

Member
ioi appears to have jumped the shark with respect to sales. NPD has approached them, so now he's going to make up his own sales and report them as valid. I guess between his so-called 2% of the market and NPD getting ~60%, his numbers will diverge to become even more worthless IMO.

Hi all, a brief explanation of what we are doing.

We now feel we collect enough data on a weekly basis to attempt doing weekly American charts. Having said this, the amount of data we are collecting is still very small (around a couple of percent of the whole market) so is likely to be open to errors - if one of the retailers we get data for has a sale on or a particularly high volume of sales for particular titles / formats then results will be skewed. We are of course working on this and wish to get more and more retailers on board. Despite the current limitations of our system we are doing it for two reasons:

1) Weekly sales data is what people want. It is current, up to date and directly comparable with Japanese data and data for other regions. Since we now have reasonable confidence in our accuracy we feel the time is right to switch. In due course, expect the comparison charts, totals and so on to be reinstated.

2) NPD have been contacting us a lot recently expressing concern and threatening legal action as they feel our data is in violation of their copyright. After having explained our situation and how we arrive at our data, we have felt it necessary to take steps to differentiate ourselves from NPD as much as possible and 'prove' that we collect our own data. Although we feel this is a little earlier than we would ideally want to launch in terms of the reliability of our figures, we have decided to implement our new system now.

In coming months we (as I'm sure will you) be comparing our figures and extrapolation techniques to the normal publically-released NPD figures and see what kind of accuracy we are achieving - much like we do with our Japanese figures at the moment.

Any questions please don't hesitate to ask and help support us in this new direction for the site. As part of our talks with NPD we have been asked to be more vigilant to posting of excessive data of theirs in our forums and so on so please understand and accept this.

Thanks
Click to expand...

And then he wants to rely on his tiny little communitity to be a barometer to project sales, even though he claims he has 2% of the market (and his regulars would make .000001% of the market?

Another idea we have began to explore is randomly polling buyers (the users of this site would be a good start) on a weekly basis to find out what titles they have bought. With a large enough sample size this, combined with retailer info and so on could be a strong step in the right direction. An interactive poll where users can vote once per week maybe - although this is open to "cheating". I guess only being able to select each game once would limit this to an extent but the idea still needs to be thought through.

I'd really like to develop vgchartz in this direction. Tha game database will be running soon, with page popularities and game rankings. We can estimate sales from users and also from a sample of retailers, conduct online research to see what games are most anticipated and so on, develop the predictions league further to use the community as an in-house anaylst. It could actually turn into a very powerful and respected information source indeed, even for industry.

Please please keep thought and comments coming in, these are potentially really huge developments.
Click to expand...
 
Jonsoncao

Jonsoncao

Banned
sonycowboy said:
This is going to be a hell of a month.

1) My HW Predictions:
NDS 450k
Wii 350k
PS2 325k
360 280k
PSP 230k
PS3 175k
GBA 160k
GCN 30k
Xbox 500

2) My SW Predictions
1) God of War 2 (PS2)
2) Ghost Recon: AW 2 (360)
3) Wii Play (Wii)
4) Guitar Hero 2 (360)
5) Crackdown (360)
6) Diddy Kong Racing (NDS)
7) GTA: Vice City Stories (PS2)
8) Motorstorm (PS3)
9) Guitar Hero 2 (PS2)
10) Zelda (Wii)

3) Ioi/Broshnat/VGCharts.org/vgchartz.com - completely putting their credibility on the line.

Now providing estimated weekly sales for NA. Someone can compare his results to NPD.

4) Storylines for the month, IMO
a) PS3 still bottoming out (HW)?
b) DS & Wii continuing their monster tear (HW)?
c) God of War PS2. Is the platform still viable for big hits?
d) Motorstorm PS3. Was it sent to die? Or can it do > 100k?
e) Guitar Hero 360. One weeks sales, looks to be huge.
f) PS2 HW - When does the decline begin?
g) 360 HW - When does the ascension begin?

5) Numbers to be posted ~ 6:30PM EST
Click to expand...


GH2 is an April title
 
Haunted

Haunted

Member
sonycowboy said:
ioi appears to have jumped the shark with respect to sales. NPD has approached them, so now he's going to make up his own sales and report them as valid. I guess between his so-called 2% of the market and NPD getting ~60%, his numbers will diverge to become even more worthless IMO.



And then he wants to rely on his tiny little communitity to be a barometer to project sales, even though he claims he has 2% of the market (and his regulars would make .000001% of the market?
Click to expand...
:lol holy shit. He's delusional if he thinks that this'll make his numbers more believable in any way.
 
Q

QVT

Fair-weather, with pride!
Jonsoncao said:
GH2 is an April title
Click to expand...

For the 50th time in 300 posts, this will include the first couple days of april.


Cowboy, what about Gears? You don't think its going to be over 100,000 even with the 5th week and appx 280k in 360 sales? Surely one in three new buyers is picking up Gears.
 
A

AdmiralViscen

Banned
sonycowboy said:
ioi appears to have jumped the shark with respect to sales. NPD has approached them, so now he's going to make up his own sales and report them as valid. I guess between his so-called 2% of the market and NPD getting ~60%, his numbers will diverge to become even more worthless IMO.



And then he wants to rely on his tiny little communitity to be a barometer to project sales, even though he claims he has 2% of the market (and his regulars would make .000001% of the market?
Click to expand...

:lol :lol :lol

He's lost his mind.

Or he's knowingly full of shit, and just wants to make some $$$ and keep getting cited in blogs and shit.

There's no way he has even .05% of the market, what a crock.
 
S

sonycowboy

Member
QVT said:
For the 50th time in 300 posts, this will include the first couple days of april.


Cowboy, what about Gears? You don't think its going to be over 100,000 even with the 5th week and appx 280k in 360 sales? Surely one in three new buyers is picking up Gears.
Click to expand...

It could easily be over 100k. I think all of the titles I listed have a good shot at being over 100k in fact. I'll have to look to see how many were over 100k last year.
 
Jonsoncao

Jonsoncao

Banned
QVT said:
For the 50th time in 300 posts, this will include the first couple days of april.


Cowboy, what about Gears? You don't think its going to be over 100,000 even with the 5th week and appx 280k in 360 sales? Surely one in three new buyers is picking up Gears.
Click to expand...

LOL

pwnage!

LOL again

its 4:30 est!

just i finish my office hour
 
M

Masklinn

Accept one saviour, get the second free.
Mojovonio said:
he was permabanned?

:lol

for what?
Click to expand...
Mostly because he kept plugging his site in (mainly) Media-Create threads and present his numbers as factual or near-factual, I think?
 
A

Arsenal

Member
You know, as much as we blast Ioi, I definitely have to have some respect for what he is trying to do here. His accuracy is surely a little suspect, but it seems like he is trying to be transparent regarding his methods and the longer he keeps at it, the more accurate he will become.

While I certainly respect the NPD and trust their numbers, I can't say I really like the way they do business and I don't appreciate their "monopoly" of sales data. People sometimes forget that NPD also does some extrapolation for their numbers as well and are not 100% accurate either. If other sources are reasonably accurate and start publishing reasonably accurate weekly numbers, there is no doubt NPD will receive pressure to start being a little more open and more timely with their data which is definitely a good thing in my book.

So while I agree that Ioi's data shouldn't infringe on the NPD threads, I think his data does have a place in the world and as long as people realize how he does his extractions and simply take it for what its worth.
 
manzo

manzo

Member
6 hours? 2 am my time... Oh well, it'll be a fun friday morning at work, take a big mug of coffee, a banana, relax and read the first 2 hours of GAF meltdown.
 
S

sonycowboy

Member
Arsenal said:
So while I agree that Ioi's data shouldn't infringe on the NPD threads, I think his data does have a place in the world and as long as people realize how he does his extractions and simply take it for what its worth.
Click to expand...

As long as folks are aware that he scales Nintendo sales upwards (NPD undertracks Nintendo, but he knows by how much), assumes sales between Canada and US (and Mexico) are directly comparable, has absolutely no idea about European sales, and is making empty claims about having retailer participation (other than maybe a few store employees).

I don't mind him providing an opinion and in the Japanese prediction threads, he always did quite well, but my problem is with massaging the numbers in a very specific way, as opposed to providing raw numbers and let other folks bias determine what they think vs injecting his own.
 
F

Forgotten Ancient

Banned
sonycowboy said:
As long as folks are aware that he scales Nintendo sales upwards (NPD undertracks Nintendo, but he knows by how much), assumes sales between Canada and US (and Mexico) are directly comparable, has absolutely no idea about European sales, and is making empty claims about having retailer participation (other than maybe a few store employees).

I don't mind him providing an opinion and in the Japanese prediction threads, he always did quite well, but my problem is with massaging the numbers in a very specific way, as opposed to providing raw numbers and let other folks bias determine what they think vs injecting his own.
Click to expand...

Well, in fairness, we don't ever really get raw, actual numbers. Every source we have (MC, Famitsu, NPD, etc) are close estimates - though, they're obviously more legitimate.

My problem with ioi was that he was stating his figures as "most legitimate", was rather coy about his methods, and he spammed the hell out of threads with links to his site.

anywho...on topic
NDS 507k
Wii 410k
PS2 275k
360 300k
PSP 240k
PS3 140k
GBA 200k
GCN 35k
Xbox 470.5
 
O

Omar Ismail

Banned
sonycowboy said:
As long as folks are aware that he scales Nintendo sales upwards (NPD undertracks Nintendo, but he knows by how much), assumes sales between Canada and US (and Mexico) are directly comparable, has absolutely no idea about European sales, and is making empty claims about having retailer participation (other than maybe a few store employees).

I don't mind him providing an opinion and in the Japanese prediction threads, he always did quite well, but my problem is with massaging the numbers in a very specific way, as opposed to providing raw numbers and let other folks bias determine what they think vs injecting his own.
Click to expand...

I hope you see and appreciate what ioi is trying to do and how it'll be VERY useful in the future for everybody if it actually works out. Right now? It sucks. Like you said, it's TOTALLY bias, inaccurate, etc. However, it's the only openly available source of global information we have around. Plus, there are various "keeping honest" metrics such as publisher reports, NPD stuff... pretty much the things that GAF does on a regular basis.

Now, as his site improves and expands etc and gets more useful, I guarantee you that it will be extremely popular and in a few years may become the authoritative source for sales data, and the world will be good.
 
H

Hcoregamer00

The 'H' stands for hentai.
sonycowboy said:
ioi appears to have jumped the shark with respect to sales. NPD has approached them, so now he's going to make up his own sales and report them as valid. I guess between his so-called 2% of the market and NPD getting ~60%, his numbers will diverge to become even more worthless IMO.
Click to expand...

Maybe he should open up his own sales tracking firm that directly contacts each individual retailer, and hires statistical specialists with PhD's that costs at least $250,000 per year.

Yeah right :lol :lol
 
J

JoshuaJSlone

Member
Parl said:
What's with all of the low PS2 predictions? Bouncing around the 250,000 mark and lots slightly above and below. Because of the amount of people that have this kinda number for PS2, I think I am overlooking something important.

It did 295,000 in Feb. That was a 4 week month. If it sold at the same rate in March, that's 368,750. The interest in PS2 is naturally declining, as we see in Japan, so that number will be hindered because of that, but not by a far cry to reach around 250,000.
Click to expand...
With the exception of prior supply constraints, hardware revision, or giant game release, even with the extra week March is usually flat or down from February.
 
V

Vrolokus

Banned
sonycowboy said:
ioi appears to have jumped the shark with respect to sales. NPD has approached them, so now he's going to make up his own sales and report them as valid. I guess between his so-called 2% of the market and NPD getting ~60%, his numbers will diverge to become even more worthless IMO.

And then he wants to rely on his tiny little communitity to be a barometer to project sales, even though he claims he has 2% of the market (and his regulars would make .000001% of the market?
Click to expand...

Christ. :O

If this clown had taken (or paid attention in) a single statistics and/or sociology class, he'd know why everything he describes is just hopelessly ****ed up.
 
G

GhaleonEB

Member
InterMoniker said:
I think it will too.
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Of all the predictions in this thread, that one strikes me as the most unlikely. 360 sales would have to drop dramatically, and PS3 would have to sharply reverse the downtrend. But stranger things have happened!
 
M

Mojovonio

Banned
DreamMachine said:
U think ps3 will beat out 360?

you're bold
Click to expand...

I'm going strictly by anecdotal evidence.

It went from seeing piles of PS3s at best buy and FS to seeing maybe one or two, a lot of my friends got one as well.

we shall see.
 
F

FrankT

Member
GhaleonEB said:
Of all the predictions in this thread, that one strikes me as the most unlikely. 360 sales would have to drop dramatically, and PS3 would have to sharply reverse the downtrend. But stranger things have happened!
Click to expand...

It's not going to. People have predicted that since the launch of the PS3 and it has yet to do so. This isn't going to change anytime soon.
 
I

InterMoniker

Member
GhaleonEB said:
Of all the predictions in this thread, that one strikes me as the most unlikely. 360 sales would have to drop dramatically, and PS3 would have to sharply reverse the downtrend. But stranger things have happened!
Click to expand...

I dunno I did just launch in PAL territories...

Jtyettis said:
It's not going to. People have predicted that since the launch of the PS3 and it has yet to do so. This isn't going to change anytime soon.
Click to expand...
We'll see.
 
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