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NPD Changing The Way It Releases Game-Sales Data
The NPD Group is revising the way it releases game-sales information to the press each month, in a move that's sure to make armchair analysts impotently shout "Noooo" at their monitors.
Most notably, hardware sales will no longer be a part of the monthly release. That's bad news for folks who like to track every gallop of the console horse race, but those positions have largely stayed the same in recent months. It is disappointing that sales on upcoming new hardware such as the 3DS and PSP2 could go unreported, but it's equally likely that Nintendo and Sony will be the first to toot their own horns when they get their own sales data.
The other major change is that the top 10 software charts are getting tweaked a bit, too. Unit sales will no longer be a part of the monthly NPD reports. The 10 games listed will now be arranged by title, rather than SKU, as well. That essentially means that when a new Madden comes out, for example, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions won't occupy two positions on the chart. Instead, combined sales for the title as a whole will determine its position on the top 10.
What do you think? Does any of this really matter to you? Do you think we put too much emphasis on NPD data, or is it something you look forward to each month? What do you think about these changes?
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