NPD to start tracking digital sales this year

NPD will start tracking digital sales this year, and according to president of the Games group, David McQuillan the firm plans to launch rather "quickly" due to the impending next-gen console launch.

Speaking with GI International, NPD said that so far nine publishers have agreed to share data.

"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," McQuillan said. "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. Full market transparency, including digital is incredibly important to the health of the industry."

NPD will initially focus on full-game downloads and DLC on consoles, PCs and portables, and the tracking will be done in partnership with research firm EEDAR and will be completely global, unlike retail figures which only cover North America.

At any rate, this should make a lot of folks in the industry happy.