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The future of NPD info on NeoGAF (Update)

starship

psycho_snake's and The Black Brad Pitt's B*TCH
Props to NPD, the future of sales-age won't as dark as I thought before.
And btw, can we have November data Evilore?
 

Masklinn

Accept one saviour, get the second free.
In the immortal words of Бора́т Сагди́ев: "Very niice"

Thanks, NPD guys
 

Flakster99

Member
Nicely done, NDP, GAF mods. This place wouldn't be the same without the chaos that insues for a few days, every month. :)
 

Kiriku

SWEDISH PERFECTION
Cool. Thanks to GAF mods and NPD. The monthly entertainment I get from (people getting upset about) NPD numbers is now saved. :D
 

ElyrionX

Member
Wow, that's pretty awesome of NPD.

EDIT: I forgot to mention. Great work, Evilore! What did you do to convince them to do this for us?
 

donny2112

Member
Pros:

* Hardware! I'm assuming the actual specific hardware and not rounded to the nearest 1K.
* Hardware LTDs! I'm assuming that NPD goes back and adjusts hardware numbers occassionally (3.81 million for the DS in the U.S.!?!), so we'll get to see those adjustments, now.
* Get the top 20 (with numbers or just by units without numbers?) for the month with occassional other numbers.

Cons:

* We used to get a lot more software. It'll now be nigh-impossible to have intelligently made LTDs for a platform. :( e.g. The #20 for November 2005 was > 100K, so that's a lot of missed data.


Considering the other option was to only have what was posted on sites like Gamespot and Next-Gen.biz, this is better than I ever could have ever hoped for, though. :D :( :)

Just a thought:

I wonder if GAF's visibility to NPD customers that do matter (e.g. magazine editors, developers, etc.) helped NPD decide to 1) not come down on us terribly hard and/or 2) actually offer this arrangement. Either way NPD does deserve thanks, so "Thank you" NPD.

Also, this makes Dalthien/Rock_Man's Japanese LTD numbers that much more important, since they're the only LTDs on GAF, now. No pressure, guys. :lol


Edit:
Great job, EvilLore and the rest of the NeoGAF staff! :D
 
You're amazing NPD!!
This will actually improve the NPD threads. They have severely deteriorated over the last year after bunkum bowed out.
 
i´m shocked.

i mean in a good way.

great PR spin by the NPD group. now they are apreciated by hardcore gamers.

so...

can we see the numbers for november now? top 20 software with numbers? where are they?
 

medrew

Member
donny2112 said:
Just a thought:

I wonder if GAF's visibility to NPD customers that do matter (e.g. magazine editors, developers, etc.) helped NPD decide to 1) not come down on us terribly hard and/or 2) actually offer this arrangement. Either way NPD does deserve thanks, so "Thank you" NPD.

I think it is probably more to do with their being more than one member of GAF that has access to the numbers. That means more than one person to keep tabs on, which is near impossible. Or at least too resource-consuming. The numbers would probably eventually leak out through email, IRC or AIM/MSN or other message boards.
This takes off some of the mystique to the numbers if we didn't have them and now most will be content with the numbers they supply and NPD can still protect the majority of their information.

It's a compromise that benefits the peons of GAF like myself that aren't in the inner cycle that the above situation would result in. I am thankful :)
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
from the other thread.

mrklaw said:
As NPD clearly provide abridged versions of the numbers to media, I think it'd be good if someone from GAF (sonycowboy, the front page guys, whoever) contacted them to get those numbers supplied directly to GAF when they are sent to the other media sites.


Good to see they consider us/you a relevant media site - I think thats absolutely fair. Good on whoever it was that contacted them.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
DarienA said:
Very nice, above and beyond what the HAD to do.

well, not really. All that information would be made available to the other media outlets so GAF could just collate it separately. This is just shortcutting that and making sure the data at least arrives in good condition. It has also instantly changed 'those nasty NPD guys' into 'those lovely NPD guys', so it has PR value.
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
I see no one has pointed out the obvious "read between the lines" part, which I find kind of funny...

that of GAF essentially being a major media outlet.. which in and of itself is kind of ****ed up :p

kudos on the agreement. that is a pretty big step.

mrklaw said:
well, not really. All that information would be made available to the other media outlets so GAF could just collate it separately. This is just shortcutting that and making sure the data at least arrives in good condition. It has also instantly changed 'those nasty NPD guys' into 'those lovely NPD guys', so it has PR value.
this is incorrect. aside from REAL basic numbers, not much is usually made publicly available through the media. yeah sure we get console numbers and the top 5ish titles, but no media site gives out anywhere near the level of numbers that GAF traditionally has.

To make matters even more complicated, this will essentially be like napster/riaa NPD style. they've already set precedent with GAF. at this point any other forum their data just turns up in can be easily monitored for the numbers also (hell, over half of them have rss installed).

NPD didn't have to do this by any stretch. And while it is nice PR, they don't market to the crowd who would care about such PR (aka consumers). No, this was well above and beyond what they could have done (i.e. slapped GAF with a cease and desist and gone on with business as usual)
 

Zynx

Member
Like everyone else has said in the thread, this is a very classy way of handling it. Not something they needed to do, but very welcome.
NPD Group said:
a synopsis of the market, which includes the Top 20 with unit sales, install base LTD and monthly for each platform
This is actually MORE than what the 'mainstream' sites get, usually we only see sales rankings and not actual units for all top 20, and this is really all the essential information. Who cares if Catz is number 51st in the list and sells 4,000 units?
NPD Group said:
Also, I wouldn't be against answering a few requests each month for data like we do for our elite media outlets. In other words, if you wanted to start a thread about licensed titles, I cold pull data for you and provide it to give your readers something to write about [within reason].
Hah, I bet there will be so many requests here it'll be overwhelming...just look at the previous threads.
mrklaw said:
It has also instantly changed 'those nasty NPD guys' into 'those lovely NPD guys', so it has PR value.
Well, honestly speaking, NPD is a biz-to-biz corp, so really any PR they have with us doesn't matter too much. But still, it's a great move.
 

Ikael

Member
NPD = :)

This is how you gaing respect. Information needs to be free. Also, NPD is VITAL for this industry. We need an informed public, and the restriction of this info would only harm this industry and go back to get misinformed via retarded PR speak.
 

SuomiDude

Member
I'm not a big NPD-follower, but it's always nice to see the info available. But I can also understand how NPD wants to protect their IP, I understand how much GAF is into the sales, so this sounds like a great compromise by NPD. :)
 

Rlan

Member
If we cut out all the Licensed games and anything from THQ, we could probably get the numbers of all the games we care for! :lol
 

bill0527

Member
This is great news for GAF.

85% of this forum can now be taken off suicide watch.


Its a nice gesture from NPD, but it remains to be seen if we'll get these numbers in a timely manner or will they give them to us long after we've been able get some of this info from one of their elite media outlets.
 
bill0527 said:
This is great news for GAF.

85% of this forum can now be taken off suicide watch.


Its a nice gesture from NPD, but it remains to be seen if we'll get these numbers in a timely manner or will they give them to us long after we've been able get some of this info from one of their elite media outlets.


Original post says "on the day the data gets dropped" so we'll see.
So where is the "official" November data now that this is a go?
 
Alright so who's going to post the TOP20 & HW (w/ exact figures)?
I hope all the NPD posters haven't been scared off (or permabanned yet)...

And the titles that don't make the TOP20; we must agree (or vote) on what other titles we want to see...
Could be some vicious fights over this...
 
EviLore said:
So there you have it. Not a bad situation, eh?

Wow.

So, uh, thanks, EvilLore -- it's pretty above and beyond the call of duty for you to get on the phone (or whatever) with those dudes and work this shit out. Way to be awesome!

Also, that seems like a pretty smart plan from the NPD dudes, to me. It's really no skin off their backs to provide us with that limited information if it accomplishes their actual goal (keep the full numeric contents of their expensive report private.)

It's true, now more than ever:

neogaf1.gif
 
borghe said:
that of GAF essentially being a major media outlet.. which in and of itself is kind of ****ed up :p

He didn't say "major," he said "elite." :lol

GAF definitely isn't a piece of major gaming media the way that, say, IGN is, and it's not an exclusive industry club the way that, say... well I have no idea since I'm not an exclusive industry insider. But it's probably the biggest gaming forum with any sort of resasonable discussion and probably the most public forum with a big industry presence. Having NPD numbers discussed here (as long as they aren't comprehensive enough to harm the value of their paid-for reports) is probably a vague positive for the company as a bullet point for the value of the numbers.
 
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