Posted 02/19/2007 @ 06:00:00 AM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: The Weekly Curiousity

I find it amazing that Japan's console hardware and software sales numbers are reported on a weekly basis, yet here in North America they are released, with skepticism, monthly.

Japan's numbers are reported by a company called Media Create Co. Since I cannot read Japanese I have no idea if people trust the numbers, but in North America most web sites view the Japanese numbers as accurate.

North America's sales data comes from a company called NPD. According to this Kotaku article NPD receives data from roughly 60% of the US retailers. The rest, including data from Walmart, is projected.

How is it that Media Create Co is able to get this data and put it together so quickly? Are the Japanese retailers more willing to share and that much more advanced in their sales tracking systems?