Tag Archives: analysis

Edge doesn’t take shit lying down. No sir. Despite losing the delights of Matt Mathews’ famed NPD analysis features back to Gamasutra in November, Edge’s own Kris Graft has stepped up to the plate with his own graphs, his own words, his own coloured pie charts based on the monthly NPD release. See here.

It’s good. Strong colours for the graphs and four whole pages. And it’s fast. The figures were only released last night, and Mathews’ piece is yet to appear. Has Matt been flanked? How will Gama respond? Features an hour after the NPD release, 20 pages long with 4D graphs?

This sort of stuff keeps us awake at night. Check Kris’s pies out.

Chart Get’s published some awesome graphs on November’s NPD data, involving colour, lines that go up and down, and data for the past 12 months as well as the last set.

Matt Matthews – raise your game. Perfect forum ammunition.

Next-Gen’s May NPD analysis is as exhaustive as ever, but we can’t help feeling the graphs have their sparkle this month. Still, there are enough facts here to make you cry, so you have to read. Just to prove you can.

According to this Next-Gen piece, February 2003 was the best ever month for average review scores, and February has seen the highest review scores on average for the past six years.

According to the site:

• February turns out to have the best average review scores at 70.6%.
• August is a closer runner-up at 70.2%
• May through July are rotten, with averages from 65.0% up to 66.2%.
• December – unsurprisingly – is the absolute worst, with a stinky 64.1%

Nice piece, but there are no graphs, only a coloured chart. Matt Matthews, the guy that puts these stats features together for Next-Gen has clearly peaked, being out-graphed by a Neogaf poster last month, of all things.

New NPD data’s due this week, Matt. If we don’t get the best graphs ever, we’re going to be tagging your analysis as “scrap heap”.

This week’s news was dominated by EA’s third quarter conference call, but it was just smoke and mirrors masking the main event. While not blatantly obvious, this GamePro cover was by far the biggest story this week, signalling the beginning of 2008’s big reveals and the start of the stories and games that will dominate consumer, trade and retail press for the rest of the year.

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