I agree on Sonic. Generations' combined take barely outsold Colors. Then again, business-savvy decisions seem to escape Sonic Team even more than Square Enix these days.
Completely random thought, but considering how much kickstarters seem to work these days. How hard would it be to pool money together to pay NPD for the results and then have the information exclusive to those who contributed to get the numbers?
$10,000 a month and there's no way NPD would consent to give a subscription to forum members. Don't know how it got like this with Japan being the way that it is, but that's the way things are. Only gotten worse since Chart-Track and NPD joined up, too. :/ Concerning in that Famitsu is part of the same group, but it hasn't seemed to infect them, yet...