Support NeoGAF

[T0minator]

Excuse my ignorance but Im curious how all those NPD sales charts work exactly.

I just pre-ordered Spider-Man 2 for Playstation 5, will my purchase show on an Oct NPD sales chart for the game?
I've seen on those monthly NPD charts it'll show a range of dates from a specific date till another date.
Preordering a game early will that show as a YTD sale towards a game and not that specific month (in this case Oct NPD)?

Ive never really put any thought into game sales and how that works exactly. Just curious, thanks!

 

[SlimySnake]

Sony will report your preorder sale on PSN during the month of the launch to NPD.

As will gamestop or any other retailer/online store.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

All sales tracking companies work similar. They compile all participating sources who agree to sell their sales data. They take it all and add it up. It will be done at a UPC level. In turn they sell this data to all the companies wanting to know detailed sales data from everyone in the category.

This is verified sales.

They will also do a "rest of market" estimate and add that to the total to get an overall number to take into account all the places thy dont get data from. This bullet point may or may not happen, but it often happens. At least in the market research data I've seen at my company. They will definitely do this when talking overall market size like lawnmowers category is worth xxxx sales. Not every store sells their data to NPD or AC Nielson because they dont want competing stores knowing how much they sell of each product. And all the mom and pop shops dont. So they have to do some guesswork using their own algorithm to fill in the blanks.

 

[Woopah]

You have just contributed $70 to the Spiderman 2 revenue figure, which will be used to calculate its position in the chart in the October NPD (I imagine it will be numnber 1)

 

[deriks]

Let's take quick example:
Store solds to you, they make some fiscal note or whatever, which is registered to distributors and state finances. Some agency, maybe NPD or a medium between, cares to those numbers and registers store from store, and depending the case, some people even buy this information

 

[T0minator]

All sales tracking companies work similar. They compile all participating sources who agree to sell their sales data. They take it all and add it up. It will be done at a UPC level. In turn they sell this data to all the companies wanting to know detailed sales data from everyone in the category.

This is verified sales.

They will also do a "rest of market" estimate and add that to the total to get an overall number to take into account all the places thy dont get data from. This bullet point may or may not happen, but it often happens. At least in the market research data I've seen at my company. They will definitely do this when talking overall market size like lawnmowers category is worth xxxx sales. Not every store sells their data to NPD or AC Nielson because they dont want competing stores knowing how much they sell of each product. And all the mom and pop shops dont. So they have to do some guesswork using their own algorithm to fill in the blanks.

That's interesting, so sales figures are roughly estimated based off chunks of information. More or less.

I just wasn't sure if "Day 1" sales were actually purchased on the first day the game is available at retailers.

The sales potential and accuracy in the future, I'd imagine, will be closer to reality because there won't be any guess work from the mom n pop shops and different retailers.

 

[Fess]

That's interesting, so sales figures are roughly estimated based off chunks of information. More or less.

It’s both real data and estimations. Would be impossible to track every purchase at every store.

But then we have Nintendo who don’t even report digital sales. And there is no added estimated number there either. Pay attention to the * when Nintendo games are listed, says digital sales not included.

It’s a bit of an elephant in the room. I’m not good at math but I still understand that adding a 40% digital split would likely place a Nintendo game at the top of most sales top lists if all sales would be counted equally.