Chart-Track defends MW2 sales count

By Games Industry.biz Published 12 November, 2009

Analyst questions hasty results.

Chart-Track has defended yesterday's record-breaking Modern Warfare 2 sales claim after industry analyst Michael Pachter questioned the figures.

"UK retailers have been at the forefront of electronic data capture for decades, which in turn allows us to capture daily sales from 99 per cent of retailers on our panel," Bloch told GamesIndustry.biz. "That's over 6000 retail outlets plus all the etailers - currently 25 different store fronts.

"Every retailer on our panel supplies Electronic Point of Sale data. In the specific case of pre-orders through retailers with High Street stores, we can and do pick these up sometimes months before a product actually launches and these are set up by the retailer to report as a specific retailer code. When the product goes live we begin to track sales on the actual barcode for that product, along with the actual selling price for every single transaction.

"In the specific case of online retailers and pre-orders, the moment they ship a product it registers as a sale in the daily transaction files we are sent. Online retailers have to ship the product in advance in order to hit the street date, so we will pick up actual sales (shipped to the customer) prior to the day one release. These are re-dated to day one," he added.

Earlier this morning, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pacther cast doubts over the early count.

"I don't know how anyone could aggregate UK sales that fast," said Pachter. "However, you can't argue with 'facts' such as Chart-Track reports of first-day sales. I have a feeling that the figure includes all pre-orders, but not necessarily those units actually picked up on day one."

Bloch added that he expects Chart-Track will update the day-one figures next week, at the same time ELSPA publishes full-week sales for the game.

Picture of Games.

About Games Industry.biz

Read more articles from Games by visiting the Games Industry.biz archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (17) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • RumpyStumpy #1 2 years ago

    It's not like Chart-Track is counting this on their fingers as people leave the shops.

    1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 shit now Im going to have to take my socks off!

  • Olemak #2 2 years ago

    Hm. Either way, I am becoming suspicious that my one-man boycot of MW2's publisher is not really putting that big a dent in Activision's coffers.

  • HermitArcader #3 2 years ago

    Post deleted at 09:17:39 22-12-2011

  • M_of_the_sys #4 2 years ago

    @Rumpy Stumpy

    You obviously weren't taught the method of counting with the lines on your fingers too. You can go all the way up to thirty that way!!

  • tobsen #5 2 years ago

    Can we please just have one single consolidated MW2 news article per day from here on, instead of 17 individual ones? Would still be more than enough.

  • skillian #6 2 years ago

    Can we please just have one single consolidated MW2 news article per day from here on, instead of 17 individual ones? Would still be more than enough.

    I agree, and so do lots of others, but there's no point asking for it in every story (not that you have, just that I picked this story to say it). MM2 is the biggest game of the year, and articles on the game probably get way, way more hits than all the other stories. Asking EG to stop writing them is pointless. It's like asking the tabloids to lay off the celebrity stories.

  • penhalion #7 2 years ago

    Basically a lot of pre-orders don't translate into sales so (and I don't believe I'm typing this) Michael Pachter is correct to be sceptical. Unlike say the japanese or American charts. Chart Track don't release the actual figures. This leaves them wide open to manipulation.

    MW2 may be popular but, it's very unlikely to have actually sold the quantities being claimed by charttrack. Not least of all because anyone with a brain will already have realised that the number of 360s and PS3s in england just doesn't add up. Somehow every console owner must have bought a copy for their numbers to be true.
    Edited by 1 at 12/11/09 @ 12:09

  • skillian #8 2 years ago

    Apropriately for what we were talking about a few posts back, Chart-Track just needed to get a number out there so they can be mentioned in lots of news stories, maybe even some national press. Getting the story out is the most important thing - accuracy is much less important.

    Many people are riding the Modern Warfare bandwagon this week, and they're all doing well out of it.

  • bioreit #9 2 years ago

    Don't see what the problem is regarding whether this includes pre-orders along with normal sales, or whether after returns and whatnot (as folk buy it from Sainburys for £26 and return their £45 GAME copy) the numbers reduce significantly - if all other 'Day One Sales' press releases/announcements, i.e. the GTA IV one, were carried out along similar lines, then the two are comparable.

    I would suspect that they are.

    Also, from what Chart Track say, looks like they have a fairly sophisticated way of actually counting transactions, rather than Micahel "Hey, I'm an analyst - I get PAID to pull nonsensical words out of the ether" Pachter's probable assumption that they use methods akin to working out TV viewing figures; i.e. taking a small sample of viewers and applying special algorithms to work out national results.

  • shinesevens #10 2 years ago

    Vetical Stand: MS make stab at sizing the secondhand matket by comparing sales and the play data on XBL, I know of one case of ghat data being shared with a dev.

  • bioreit #11 2 years ago

    @ Penhalion

    "Somehow every console owner must have bought a copy for their numbers to be true. "

    According to VGChartz (yes, yes, I know, but they retrospectively update things like sales figures, so they aren't going to be massively off), UK hardware sales currently stand at:

    PS3 - 2.5 million
    360 - 3.75 million

    So even saying that these are console-only sales (and none are PC), at say 600,000 a piece, that's 24% of PS3 owners and 16% of 360 owners will have bought this on day one/pre-ordered.

    Based on the numbers playing on Live the last few days, I reckon that's about accurate!

  • HermitArcader #12 2 years ago

    Post deleted at 09:17:39 22-12-2011

  • VeniVidiFlati #13 2 years ago

    I don't know where the doubt for these numbers is coming from. Anyone who works in retail or publishing knows that at least 90% of the UK videogames market use Electronic Point Of Sale systems, and it is this data that Charttrack use, directly from the retailers' own systyems. For highstreet retailers, pre-orders are an irrelevance in terms of EPOS (they have different reference codes per retailer, and often no money is taken), they are NOT a sale and so do not get reported to Charttrack.

    Online pre-orders (and it;s worth noting here that CHarttrack are only talking about sales that take place before the product's official release date) are slightly different, but only in that the sale may occur a day or two before release date (due to shipping early to arrive on release day) - again only once the product has been physically sent to the customer is it recorded as a sale.

    Chart-track are impartial, and it would not be in their interest to overstate the figures for COD, they simply report the sales as they actually happen.

    For Pachter to say that 'I don't know how anyone could aggregate UK sales that fast,' when any retailer worth their salt has live sales data (I know of some that have systems that can be polled down to individual store level every 15 minutes), means he's somewhat behind the times. And to base his note on 'a feeling' sums up a lot of the 'analysis' that he spouts.

    @Skillian: I think you're being overly cynical, Charttrack's entire business relies on the accuracy of the information they supply - marketing their brand is not really important, everyone in the industry that would need to know about them already does

  • symmetry #14 2 years ago

    You can actually count up to 1024 on your fingers and thumbs alone.

    If you use binary....

  • skillian #15 2 years ago

    @VeniVidiFlati

    Actually, you are probably right. Sometimes my cynicism gets the better of me :)

  • Notallowedhere #16 2 years ago

    Chart track do have sales numbers of both software and hardware,they are only made available to subscribers and protected with zeal, as if they were made public there would be little point to subscribers paying chart track anything to get them. If they were anyway inacurrate or open to manipulation publishers wouldn't pay. And it's everything that goes through the till so preorders are only counted if they are fully paid for and processed.

  • Vin #17 2 years ago

    Patcher doubtful over something AGAIN?

    Give over.