npd-group posts

The NPD Group is reportedly clamping down on how the organization's US game sales reports are being reported by the press. Gamesindustry.biz (free registration required) cites unnamed sources as reporting that financial analysts, have been asked by the company to "remove members of the media from their mailing lists and not discuss stats with reporters or outlets."

Analysts pay thousands of dollars to receive the full monthly US game sales report from NPD. In 2010, the company choose to restrict the sales info it released to the public. However it has been hit with recent criticism from game publishers who claim NPD's reports are incomplete and don't take downloadable sales of games into account.

Update: Shacknews received a statement from NPD's Anita Frazier who says that there was not a "warning" issued to analysts about revealing NPD's info to the press. However the statement did admit, "It is our responsibility and right to manage the usage of that information, and our Financial Services clients have agreed to help us and the industry in this regard."

The NPD Group has been slammed in the past, and most recently by Electronic Arts, for its lack of direct game sales reports via digital downloads. Now Gamesindustry.biz (free registration required) reports that NPD is working to add digital download game sales to its regular monthly US game sales reports.

NPD's Anita Frazier is quoted as saying, "We are expanding the number of digital retailers we have relationships with in order to develop a digital POS (point of sale) service." Specific retailers were not named. Frazier also states that NPD expects both publishers and digital download retailers to reveal more info about their sales in the future.

Electronic Arts is having a verbal spat with the NPD Group over how that organization presents its monthly game industry sales results for the US market. CNN Money reports that EA has now attacked those results, claiming that the NPD Group doesn't take into account the numbers from digital downloads of sales products. An EA rep is quoted as saying, ""We see NPD's data as a misrepresentation of the entire industry."

NPD Group's Anita Frazier countered that the organization does indeed release a quarterly report on digital download sales for its clients. However even that data has been criticized as being inaccurate in the past due to the organization's method of using user surveys rather than getting raw sales numbers from download services.

The launch of two PC games from Blizzard helped boost sales of the overall PC game software industry in 2010. A new report from the NPD Group said sales of PC games in retail stores in the US were 3 percent bigger in 2010 compared to 2009. The biggest reason were because of sales of Blizzard's sci-fi RTS sequel StarCraft II and the MMO expansion pack World of Warcraft Cataclysm. According to Gamasutra, NPD stated that those two games generated 14 percent of all PC game sales in 2010.

World of Warcraft Cataclysm was the third best selling game, console or PC, in December according to NPD's numbers. Call of Duty Black Ops was the number one selling game in the US for the month of December and for 2010 overall.

According to the latest study by the NPD Group, more and more game purchases are being bought as digital products. The new study says that only 71 percent of game sales were of the boxed retail game variety while the other 29 percent were digital purchases (that includes casual and mobile phone games).

GameSpot reports that of those digital game purchases, 47 percent came from casual game portals or from digital download stores such as Steam. The study also claims that one in five gamers bought a game add-on in the last three months. As with all of NPD Group's study's on game downloads, its results come from surveys of people rather than collecting hard sales numbers from Steam and other download sites.

This week the NPD Group announced that Call of Duty Black Ops sold a combined total of 8.4 million units in its first month, making the game the seventh best selling title of all time in the US. However, Gamasutra reports that, in terms of retail sales, the PC version only contributed to a small fraction of the game's total sales.

According to numbers supplied by the NPD Group, the combined sales of the PC, Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS versions of the game totaled just 400,000 units. That compares to 4.9 million units for the Xbox 360 console and 3.1 million units sold for the PS3 version. However, the NPD Group's numbers don't include digital download sales of the PC version via outlets like Steam and Direct2Drive. It's more than possible that those sale numbers would give the PC port a considerable boost.

It's hard to find out exactly how well the PC game industry is doing since a large part of the business, which includes digital downloads of full games and DLC releases, doesn't have its revenues released to the public. Indeed THQ CEO Brian Farrell stated in a new chat with GameSpot that the industry's biggest follower of sales, The NPD Group, offers up "no DLC revenues, no MMO subscription revenues" when it releases its numbers.

However he did give a tiny clue as to how the publisher's PC download revenues are doing, saying, " Our Steam business is going through the roof, but that's again, not reported as part of NPD." That would seem to indicate that the PC game business is much bigger than what the general consensus says it is.

The games industry has been in a downword trend in terms of sales of games in brick-and-mortar stores. This issue has apparently "caused unnecessary angst for many" in the games industry, according to a new blog post by NPD Group analyst Anita Frazier.

While sales of games in stores have dropped for both PC and console games Frazier states the obvious; those sales numbers "did not represent 100 (percent) of the consumer spend on the industry." Frazier states that a new report from NPD, "Games Industry: Total Consumer Spend" will record these other game sales sources, including downloadable game sales.

While we certainly think games sold via download are becoming a bigger part of the game industry, we do question whether the NPD Group will truly be able to get an accurate gauge of this portion of the game market since many downloadable game sites keep their sales numbers to themselves. NPD has relied on surveys of consumers for its examinations of the PC downloadable game market in the past and those numbers have been disputed by others in the industry.

The amount of money generated by the video and PC game industry is not restricted to just selling games at at brick and mortar stores. This week the NPD Group announced that in the first half of 2010, $3.7 billion was spent on PC and video games in stores.

However, that number goes way up when other sources are factored in. The NPD Group claims that in a new study, an additional $2.6 million - $2.9 billion was generated in the same time period for game software. The money come from "used games, game rentals, subscriptions, digital full game downloads, social network games, downloadable content, and mobile game apps." The NPD Group will reveal more info when its latest report, Games Industry: Total Consumer Spend, is released later in October.

The consumer stats company the NPD Group has announced some changes in its public reporting of sales of PC and console games. Gamasutra reports that NPD will begin offering monthly revenue numbers from sales of PC games sold in physical retail versions. NPD gets its info from about two-thirds of US-based retailers (Wal Mart, perhaps the biggest seller of PC games in retail stores, is not included in NPD's numbers)

NPD will also continue to offer its stats for downloadable games every quarter. However, as we have reported before, NPD's numbers come from online surveys of consumers and don't come directly from outlets like Steam.