The NPD Group – a consumer market research group – will begin tracking digital sales of games later this year.
When speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, David McQuillan – president of the video games group at NPD – revealed the group's progress towards tracking digital sales of video games. With the PS4 and Xbox One launching this fall, their emphasis on digital content and the year-over-year growth in digital sales, forced NPD actively solve this problem.
In response, NPD formed a leader panel to track both the digital sales of games and DLC sales. While the panel doesn't track all sales, it represents a "precursor to a formal launch of a POS tracking service."
As of recent events, the panel now consists of "nine leading game publishers" which McQuillan would not reveal.
In a partnership with research firm EEDAR, NPD will track the digital sales all over the world rather than North American markets exclusively tracked at retail.
In recent years, NPD restricted the data to the public by no longer including the exact units sold. They instead opted for the much vaguer list of top ten selling games of each month.
With the quickly approaching releases of the next-generation of consoles and their day one digital sales, public and retailers can compare the sales from a physical and digital perspective with the NPD tracking.
Source: GamesIndustry
