NPD, EEDAR Collaborate To Improve Digital Game Sales Tracking

Retail sales analysts at the NPD Group have partnered with video game market research firm EEDAR to collaborate on improving the measurement and analysis of the video game industry. The NPD Group -- which provides monthly video game retail sales reports, among other services -- has been stressing in its reports as of late the exclusion of digital sales from its analysis. The group's collaboration with EEDAR should improve on digital sales analysis, painting a clearer picture of the state of the industry as digital sales continue to overtake retail in overall industry revenues. "The NPD Group and EEDAR have always shared a common goal of providing information and insights to our clients in the games industry," said the president of NPD's Games division, David McQuillan. "We expect that this synergy of resources and vision will result in greater transparency into the total games market including digital forms of distribution as well as the established physical format," he continued. An immediate effect of this collaboration will see the NPD's physical sales data incorporated into EEDAR's GamePulse service. According to information provided to Gamasutra, the NPD's monthly retail point of sales reports will not benefit from the collaboration just yet. "One of the core objectives of the partnership between NPD and EEDAR is to be able to expand coverage of the total games market. The timing of when that will occur is yet to be determined," NPD's David Riley told us.