What you say is plausible, although these things (about sales data being public or not) would benefit both Microsoft and Nintendo as well. And even if one or several of system does well right now, it could be benefitial in the long run, just in case if future systems should underperform in terms of sales. Personally, i think its more likely that Media Create wants to offer their numbers exclusively to those who pay, not that they were pressured to stop releasing some of the number to the public for free. And as Herp Alpert mentioned, most 3rd party publishers probably have access to sales data, or could easily have it if they want, so i dont think this is much of an issue for them. Generally speaking, i guess you cant rule it out 100%, i just feel that there isnt enough evidence to say anything more concrete about it. It shall be interesting to see what Famitsu and Dengeki does going forward at least :)Let me give you a possible reason as to why now (I could be 100% off of course, and probably am). It's not like I believe in it, but it could be true.
The way I see it, it could be all about Japanese support for PS5.
PS5 will come out a year from now. Let's say that Sony has a few Japanese software deals in place for their launch year, as opposed to PS4 launch. Let's also say that for various reasons (e.g. relative Switch dominance), Sony are not entirely confident how well these will do in Japan.
Now if everything is out in the open, a potential lack of success of some of these games might affect decisions by some Japanese software developers.
Same goes for PS5 sales - if for various reasons they are initially not as good as one can hope, this might also affect the decisions of some Japanese software developers.
On the other hand, if no numbers are out in the open, you control the story and the public perception - we shipped a ton of PS5 in Japan to great acclaim (only a quarter were bought but no one knows at this stage) and some large amount of software (lots of it bundled and the rest just from one of the games, the rest were flops, but no one will know).
This is all out of my ass, I am just giving an example of why Sony could be motivated now as opposed to previously.
Added: You could say that some of these reasons could have also been there in the past - to which I would add:
1. It seems more extreme now, at least to me
2. Different management
3. Some people learn from the past and change their behavior. They "allowed" it in the past, they think it hurt them, so they decided to no longer "allow" it.
All the above assumes that Famitsu and Dengeki also stop at some point before next year, otherwise none of the above makes sense, since numbers will still be out there.
EDIT: I added some text.
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