Looks like consumers will soon be able to track the sales of their favorite digital download games. In a recent interview with MCV, the NPD have confirmed their intentions to begin charting the number of purchases for downloadable titles for consoles, PC, and even mobiles. David Riley, NPD’s director of corporate marketing, the charted sales records are needed to “provide a no-nonsense view of what’s happening on the publisher level, keeping away from the spin, and in some cases, misleading information that often appears on the internet.”
The industry talking heads have already begun discussing the idea, the difficulty of obtaining these figures might be cut out for reporting services like NPD. Many developers on both the independent and mainstream circuit utilize many avenues to publish their games on a variety of services, making the universal calculation of them a mountainous undertaking. Still, a fact sheet could have a multitude of positive effects on the industry.
Finally, why in the first place didn’t they track downloadable sales. I guess they thought downloadable games wouldn’t catch on. I can’t wait to see what they dredge up if they can about downloadable sales for games since the start of the decade (Milena for that matter of fact).
about time. pretty ridiculous they haven’t been tracking it yet.