The NPD Group recently got hit with criticisms from major video game publishers for allegedly "misrepresenting" the entire video game industry with their regular sales data reports. One major beef Electronic Arts had with NPD was that the latter didn't take into account sales from digital delivery formats. That's about to change, however.

"We are expanding the number of digital retailers we have relationships with in order to develop a digital POS (point of sale) service," the NPD Group's Anita Frazier told gaming news site GamesIndustry.

"The goal is to provide our clients with a total POS games tracking service that incorporates the growing digital channel as well as the currently predominant physical format, and to deliver this at the same frequency as we currently do for new physical retail sales (monthly)."

NPD recognized that even though boxed retail sales still account for about 60 percent of the market in the U.S., without digital sales data the picture is incomplete. Frazier also said that the addition of digital sales data to NPD's regular sales reports would lead to publishers and digital distrbutors becoming more open about releasing figures from the digital space.

"It will become increasingly challenging for the financial community to create proper valuations of companies in the absence of an objective third-party source covering the entire market," she said, "and it will be harder for companies to manage their businesses and resources without visibility into all forms of distribution."

Via [GamesIndustry]

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