The industry tracking firm known as The NPD Group currently only communicates physical video game sales figures in its monthly reports. It’s been that way for a long time, but things are about to change. Starting July 21, NPD will also include digital game sales from the PSN, Xbox Live, and Steam stores. NPD will be acquiring its sales data directly from publishers, which NPD analyst Liam Callahan says is “…significant because this is the first service like this in the U.S. where we have something with a methodology sourced directly from publishers at a granular level. No extrapolation or interpretation.”
Of course, not everyone is on board. NPD has already partnered with Activision Blizzard, Capcom, EA, Square Enix, Take-Two, Ubisoft, Warner Bros., and Deep Silver, but several publishers have yet to join forces. There are significant omissions from that list, most notably the bigger first-party publishers like Nintendo, Bethesda, Microsoft, Sony, and Blizzard. As Mr. Callahan mentioned, NPD won’t be extrapolating data or giving estimates like some other services do; they’ll simply leave out the information they don’t have available to them. “The biggest thing here is this will bring a level of transparency to the industry that has never been seen before,” he says. “It’ll change the conversation about physical and digital, and it’ll change how these publicly traded companies speak about their businesses.” As we all know, digital sales make up an enormous portion of total games sales now, so it will be interesting to see how these figures impact and change our perceptions of trends moving forward.
Source: VentureBeat