NPD to finally track sales of downloadable games
Sales of downloadable games are raising rapidly, from Valve’s Steam platform, to EA’s Link and Xbox Live and the PlayStation Store, it’s hard to get an overview and some solid sales numbers, especially for games that are download-only. No digital content provider shares sales numbers, which is where NPD comes in.
NPD has been tracking retail sales for a long time, and is the third party sales tracking service that offers the most accurate sales charts each month in North America. The company has revealed plans of a digital sales chart for North America, and combat what it calls “misinformation”, from the publishers on sales numbers. However, it remains unclear how it plans on getting sales numbers from digital distributors such as Steam, as digital sales are a lot harder to track than retail sales.