NPD Planning to Track Digital Sales This Year

<p>Digital sales of video games are becoming more and more popular as time goes on&comma; but the NPD Group&comma; in the past&comma; has neglected to track and document those sales&period; When speaking to <a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;gamesindustry&period;biz&sol;articles&sol;2013-07-02-npd-preparing-to-track-digital-sales-this-year">GamesIndustry International<&sol;a> recently&comma; David McQuillan&comma; president of the Games group at NPD&comma; revealed that the firm has been making plans to offer a digital tracking service&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;We fully realize that the market needs the same level of information for the digital categories as exists for the physical business today&colon; SKU-level POS &lbrack;Point-of-Sale&rsqb;&comma;&&num;8221&semi; said McQuillan&period; &&num;8220&semi;The progress on that effort up until recently has been slow and frustrating at times&comma; but today I am very happy to share that the pace of progress has changed recently&period; NPD has formed a leader panel to track digital POS sales of full game and add-on content downloads&period; It is an important and critical step toward that goal&period;&&num;8221&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The leader panel is currently made up of nine publishers&comma; whose main priorities will be the sale of digital content like full game downloads&comma; add-on content and PC and portable purchases&period; Portable could mean anything from the 3DS&&num;8217&semi;s eShop to the Apple Store&period; As for the identities of the nine involved publishers&comma; those can&&num;8217&semi;t be reveal yet&comma; as the service is still in its early stages&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>A launch date for the service also could not be given&comma; but the NPD hopes to release it &&num;8216&semi;quickly&&num;8217&semi; and before the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 hit retail&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;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&period; The timing of when that will happen has not been finalized&comma;&&num;8221&semi; stated McQuillan&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&lbrace;Source&colon; <a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;gamesindustry&period;biz&sol;articles&sol;2013-07-02-npd-preparing-to-track-digital-sales-this-year">GamesIndustry International<&sol;a>&rcub;<&sol;p>&NewLine;