Digital sales of video games are becoming more and more popular as time goes on, but the NPD Group, in the past, has neglected to track and document those sales. When speaking to GamesIndustry International recently, David McQuillan, president of the Games group at NPD, revealed that the firm has been making plans to offer a digital tracking service.
“We fully realize that the market needs the same level of information for the digital categories as exists for the physical business today: SKU-level POS [Point-of-Sale],” said McQuillan. “The progress on that effort up until recently has been slow and frustrating at times, but today I am very happy to share that the pace of progress has changed recently. NPD has formed a leader panel to track digital POS sales of full game and add-on content downloads. It is an important and critical step toward that goal.”
The leader panel is currently made up of nine publishers, whose main priorities will be the sale of digital content like full game downloads, add-on content and PC and portable purchases. Portable could mean anything from the 3DS’s eShop to the Apple Store. As for the identities of the nine involved publishers, those can’t be reveal yet, as the service is still in its early stages.
A launch date for the service also could not be given, but the NPD hopes to release it ‘quickly’ and before the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 hit retail.
“The plan is to have digital POS sales integrated into our US new physical POS retail sales data to enable more efficient analysis for our clients. The timing of when that will happen has not been finalized,” stated McQuillan.
{Source: GamesIndustry International}