Post by leunas on Mar 22, 2007 3:15:54 GMT -5
Gameasure, a game industry report from independent research firm Interpret, says that past sales figures reported only capture a small fraction of the total audience playing each game title. In fact, Interpret's CEO Michael Dowling believes that there are more people playing most titles for console and PC games due to hot-seat multiplayer games, game rentals, and friends lending their game copies to neighbors.
The Gameasure report was enacted upon to serve a particular purpose: to prove to potential in-game advertisers just how large a population they will be able to tap into by investing in such a venture. NPD's inaccurate report of Activision's Call of Duty 3, for instance, sold two million copies by February 3, although Gameasure found that the game was played by approximately 9 million people.
Another report of Electronic Arts' Madden NFL 2007 said that it sold over six million units, but 14 million people were discovered to have already played the game. So apparently, because there are more gamers playing a title than game copies actually sold for that title, measure of sales may not be the only measure of a title's - or even a platform's - performance.
Article:
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