I am sure this question has been visited before in previous forum threads, but I wanted to revisit this issue to get all of your thoughts on the matter: VGChartz is able to track the Physical sales of Game consoles and physical game media. It however dosn't seem that they are or will be able to track digital purchases unless they were able to make some kind of agreement with the console makers for their digital sales data. So this is more of a question/discussion thread on the topic, but its obvious that next gen will go even further into digital game purchases.

We know that the Xbox One and PS4 will release digital copies of games on the day of their physical releases. This will be the first generation where that will occur for all retail games. If thats the case It will almost surely split the numbers greatly between those purchasing physical copies and those purchasing digital. It may not be as apparent at the start of the generation, but its obvious that as digital versions become more attractive/convenient to consumers that they will outspace physical game sales in this next generation for day 1 purchases.

So the question is...How will VGChartz deal with that? What if the ratio of digital sales vs physical sales is more lopsided from one console to the other? It will skew results and physical sales data will surely no longer be reliable. With only tracking physical sales this will make it extremely difficult to judge who is winning in game/software sales war for the coming generation.

I just wanted to get other VGChartz user's take on it...veterans, new comers...whoever you are...what is the solution for VGChartz sales data to stay relevant in an increasingly digital environment? Maybe this has already been answered, but if so..spill the beans to me.

FADE is estimating digital sales data.
And ioi is involved in the FADE "project". So he might just make a collaboration between the two sites ?
At least this is a possibility IMO.

http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/brett-walton/13/b03/215

That is great news! XD

Ah, interesting. Thanks for responding, Barozi. So in a sense FADE uses certain internal sources and calculations to be able to closely estimate what digital sales are for each game platform on a weekly basis?

First of all I'm just going by what LinkedIn is telling me. I don't know how recent that information is as I've never heard ioi talking about FADE (other than some FADE articles that were posted on VGC a few years ago).
So by that I don't know if they will work together in the future. I've talked to Benjamin Schlichter a few times though and as far as I remember he said that it's not impossible that there will be a collaboration of some kind.

FADE is going to track digital sales on a weekly basis (it already does internally) and is soon going public. Again I don't know what the final decision is, but it was talked at one point that data will be accessible for free (but obviously limited) and paid products that aren't as limited.

As for how the data is obtained, you might want to read how VGC does it:
http://www.vgchartz.com/methodology.php

It's surely going to be similar. If you poll enough random gamers you know how many percent buy their games online and how many of these have bought this or that game. You only need to ask about 400 people to get results that have a 5% margin of error with a confidence level of 95%.
http://www.surveygizmo.com/survey-software-support/tutorials/sample-size/
That's certainly good enough.