14 DAY TRIAL // David McQuillan, the president of the NPD Group, says that his company plans to introduce tracking for video games sold via digital distribution channels before the launch of the Xbox One from Microsoft and the PlayStation 4 from Sony.
He tells GamesIndustry.biz that, “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.”
Digital distribution will be more important for next-gen devices as Sony and Microsoft move towards a future where disk-based games will become a rarity.
The NPD Group tracks hardware and video games sales for the United States video game market.
Many observers believe that its current numbers, which do not include channels like Steam, fail to reflect the state of the industry.