MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
The United States is getting a combined digital-physical games chart which launches later this month
Research firm NPD’s monthly games reports will now include digital sales, starting with on July 21st. The firm’s round-ups will also now be launching on the third week of the month.
So far, Activision Blizzard, Capcom, Deep Silver, EA, Square Enix, Take-Two, Ubisoft and Warner Bros are signed up the service, which sees NPD tracking digital sales on PlayStation Network, Xbox Live and PC.
The firm is in the process of recruiting additional publishers.
Some companies aren’t giving up all of their information, however. For example, digital data from Ubisoft’s Uplay and Blizzard’s Battle.net services are not included in NPD’s reports. EA’s PC digital sales aren’t included, either.
NPD is also trying to approximate the digital sales of publishers not signed up for its digital tracking service, though this will not be part of the firm’s reports initially.
So far the service is restricted to the United States, but NPD isn’t ruling out bringing this scheme to international markets.
As has been experienced across a wide variety of industries, digital has made a big impact on the overall gaming market, and we’ve risen to meet the demand for a reporting mechanism that tracks those sales in a timely and accurate way,” said NPD Group Toys and Games head, Joanne Hageman.
With the participation and support of leading publishers – whose cooperation makes this possible – we are excited to launch an industry-first service that addresses a long-standing need.”
Hageman continues: While digital gaming has exploded in the past several years, physical gaming sales, including hardware and accessories, have a major presence in this industry,” added Hageman. With a more complete picture, participants are able to make better business decisions with a broader set of data.”
This follows MCV launchingour Digital Counts campaign in an effort to get publishers to share their digital data as well as physical information.
Check MCVUK.com later today for a full interview about NPD’s digital games tracking service.
