VGC vs. NPD Round 2, Plus Q&A with Ioi
A couple weeks ago, we showed off the new weekly North American sales charts at VGChartz and compared them to the publicly available NPD data for March. Now, we revisit the comparison now that the NPD numbers for April have been published.
VGC:
Console
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Total
DS 112,257 133,939 169,690 164,038 579,924
Wii 56,181 75,335 100,027 104,157 335,700
PS2 61,684 60,545 59,650 64,933 246,812
PSP 61,730 52,564 48,070 45,155 207,519
360 39,517 38,465 55,712 63,691 197,385
GBA 30,348 29,565 28,954 29,830 118,697
PS3 26,168 25,521 25,766 29,104 106,559
NPD:
Console
US
Canada Total Difference %
DS 471,000 34,900 505,900 74,024 14.6%
Wii 360,000 42,100 402,100 -66,400 -16.5%
PS2 194,000 18,000 212,000 34,812 16.4%
PSP 183,000 12,100 195,100 12,419 6.4%
360 174,000 12,800 186,800 10,585 5.6%
GBA 84,000 7,900 91,900 26,797 29.2%
PS3 82,000 7,200 89,200 17,359 19.5%
Except for small-quantity extrapolation errors from the GBA and PS3 sales, all VGC hardware sales were within 17% of the corresponding NPD numbers, a vast improvement over the 50%+ errors seen in the March data, though not quite ideal. Wii numbers were slightly underestimated, while other platforms were slightly overestimated. Since NPD numbers are themselves estimates, accuracies within 15% are desired (and under 10% errors are ideal).
As an added feature for this article, we talked with ioi, site administrator for VGChartz, to ask a few questions about the new charts and the site in general.
http://www.vgchartz.com/news/news.php?id=316