Why Sales Figures Matter

20th April, 0 replies

Tim Schafer, Double Fine Productions, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, iOS, Android, PlayStation 3



I’ve been hearing a lot of chatter recently from high level journalists that, with the next generation (now the current gen), sales figures mean little. The biggest example I’ve heard so far is from a brilliant investigative journalist over at Giant Bomb by the name of Patrick Klepek, the man who originally found out that Microsoft was going to pull a U-turn on the always-online DRM policy. In his most recent podcast, he states that:

“We don’t have enough information; NPD releases fewer and fewer bits of data every single year because the publishers have wrestled that control away from NPD. Steam releases precious little data about PC sales, and what this allows video game companies to do, and valve is culpable in this as well, is paint their own narratives.

We don’t have enough information to actually accurately talk about any of this, and that’s what's frustrating, because people are so quick to grab the first piece of data that fulfils their own personal narrative; whether it’s the console war, or a game that they’ve bought that they wanna validate that it’s sold really well. We just don’t have enough information to make any of those arguments, so that’s what makes any of these arguments so God damn frustrating; it's cause you’re arguing over nothing, cause the games industry has systemically removed every piece of information that allows us to even make a credible data-driven argument about the state of the games industry.”

This is a similar story to what I’ve heard from many games journalists across multiple sites, with many of them thinking they’re above sales numbers as that’s something only internet trolls get involved with. The fact of the matter is, sales figures are a great way to gauge what’s happening in the industry, and a great way to predict the future of a franchise, as well as getting into the minds of developers/publishers themselves...

To read the full article check out the link below.

Source:

gamrreview.com/article/91357/…

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