I
still don't think there's a thread for this on ResetERA tbh
At least NeoGAF has a thread for the topic, though.
You'd have to pay me at this point to think ResetERA hasn't been compromised by certain shills or Ambassadors.
All of a sudden sales discussion doesn't matter when we get hard numbers from a professional industry analysis firm? Sure, Jan
Fair enough. My only issue is that if people don't want to use any numbers for Xbox Series because it's not from Microsoft, then Ampere simply doesn't count either. You either have official numbers or it's all just guesswork. That's how I look at it is all.
I don't personally have a problem with unofficial numbers as long as they seem reasonable and come from a reputable, professional source. I mean we get game sales numbers from NPD (or at least chart placings) and most of those games we never hear sales from the actual publishers, should we disregard NPD as well? Famitsu too, for that matter?
There has to be a limit. Things like NPD, Ampere, and Famitsu carry a very strong sense of professionalism and just report the data. VGChartz has a history of being unprofessional and being sensationalist to drive certain ideas or narratives (at least in the past; they may've tried cleaning up their act very recently but that doesn't do away with the previous stuff they did).
Now to the specific people who don't want to use Xbox numbers from sources outside of Microsoft, then yeah they should be consistent and not use numbers from sources aside Microsoft. But me personally, I just want Microsoft to give some actual sales numbers (for Xbox; what I'd really like are revenue figures for GamePass). If they aren't willing, however, then there are professional industry sources I trust that can provide very-close-to-accurate numbers even if Microsoft don't want to.
Because how do you think Microsoft (or Sony or Nintendo) get to know how many of their consoles have actually sold? They talk with their retail partners, who sell the systems, and report back to those companies. That's also how they can adjust shipments in the distribution chain. Ampere can (and does) talk with those same retail partners, that's how they get the numbers. NPD and Famitsu? Same deal.
So the only reason a platform holder would want to not report these numbers, that other firms can gather anyway (and I strongly doubt a platform holder can put these retail partners in a clause preventing them from sharing sales data with those aside from the platform holder, that would be both ridiculous and potentially illegal), is because they either want to not focus on unit sales in data relayed to shareholders, and/or they can silently rebuff those numbers as if suggesting they are inaccurate, by not validating them (they simply don't report any sales numbers).