14 DAY TRIAL // The NPD Group, the market research company which has offered both hardware and software sales charts for the video game industry in the United States every month, has announced that it will be limiting the amount of data it will make public.
The company has said that starting with the data for the month of September, which is set to arrive during this week, it will no longer list the actual sales figures for hardware platforms, only the chart with no additional information.
The NPD Group will also limit the information given out for the video game chart.
The company had already restricted the data offered to the public at large, only listing the actual sales numbers for the top five titles in the software chart.
From now on the company will combine the sales for all version of a game and report those in a chart which will not offer platform specific data.
The group also says that analyst Anita Frazier will be offering more information in her comments on the month's data, selecting bits of data that will be of value to the public and highlighting them.
The NPD also will begin reporting physical PC gaming revenues monthly, showing that the platform is still relevant to the world of gaming.
Each report will also carry a note that stresses that the figures only reflect actual physical sales and that there are other revenue stream associated to the video game industry, like subscriptions, digital distribution, mobile games, video game rentals and titles played on social networks.
The big companies linked to video gaming, from Sony and Microsoft to Activision and Electronic Arts, will still have a full picture of their sales for the month in the United States and will continue to emphasize the performance of their consoles and their video games, selecting those pieces of information that make them look good.