IDG's global market forecasts are used throughout the video games industry for strategic planning, fiscal modeling, game platform selection, and other business-critical decisions. IDG forecasts are driven by robust, bottoms-up forecast models and informed by over two decades of industry experience and analysis. Our analyses of the global market use a variety of research techniques, including sell-through information and industry interviews. IDG believes that adopting a multifaceted approach is the best way to collect and present information in order to ensure that it is as unbiased, accurate and complete as possible.

IDG forecasts include:

• Country-specific sales forecasts
• Software-to-hardware-installed-base tie ratio analysis
• Average retail pricing estimates for hardware and software
• Installed base measurements

Sources of information used in IDG's forecasting models include:

• Field research: IDG analysts travel the globe, conducting in-market interviews and inspections of retail environments
• Public sources: Financial reports, trade interviews, and other analyst communications from major publishers and hardware manufacturers
• Interviews: IDG leverages its global network of contacts at developers, publishers, manufacturers, retailers, distributors, and other research firms to collect industry intelligence from a variety of perspectives
• Sell through data: IDG analyzes sell-through data from a variety of different sources for the US, Europe, Japan, and other global markets. IDG has one primary concern with regard to data collection services: the reliability of market data from any data service is subject to interpretation. IDG verifies the accuracy of sell-through data by conducting interviews with industry executives and competing sell-through services, if available.