Unfortunately, it’s limited to a handful of publishers who signed up for it, but seeing as it includes EA, Activision, Blizzard, Capcom, Deep Silver, Square Enix, Take-Two, Warner Bros. and Ubisoft, it should be good enough for most. Now only data from Xbox Live and PlayStation Network will be collected, meaning no data from services like Uplay, Origin or the eShop will be collected.
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The Digital Games Tracking Service is now only available to companies contributing data to the service, and includes SKU-level sales data for both full-game sales and add-on content downloads.
The NPD is to begin tracking digital game sales in the US. Microsoft, along with Sony and Nintendo, has yet to sign on. Digital storefronts Uplay (Ubisoft) and Blizzard’s Battle.net aren’t included at this time, and not all publishers are on board just yet. This also means that digital-only indies available via eShops and other methods will finally have a chance at making the NPD listings, establishing themselves as real competitors in concrete, easily-calculable way. We’re likely to see drops for first-party publishers on the NPD, since the big names refuse to let their digital sales appear on the report.
NPD, the company behind the monthly NPD Reports which reveal the state of the gaming industry in the USA, has for a while now only paid attention to sales at retail, but while players are moving more to digital, it’s time to start paying attention to non-physical releases.
That said, Riley hinted that NPD’s reporting could expand in the future to include more publishers and could divulge DLC and microtransaction revenues as publishers become more comfortable with the new service.
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Over the last few years physical and retail sales in the gaming market have slowly fallen, mainly due to the rise in digital sales over the same period.
