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Stardock’s Brad Wardell Questions NPD Digital Sales Numbers July 23, 2010 Speaking to Shacknews in response to yesterday's report from the NPD Group that digital sales of games have caught up to retail sales, Stardock CEO threw some cold water on the numbers. Conspicuously absent from NPD's rankings were Stardock's popular game portal Impulse. In his response, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell said that NPD's numbers are not rooted in reality mainly because it is based on survey data rather than actual sales numbers. Wardell also said that, while he is a strong believer in the future of digital distribution, he can't think of one company that sells a majority of units digitally. From the Shacknews report: "NPD's numbers on digital don't tend to have much reflection on reality. As much as I would love digital distribution to take over the world, I can't think of a single publisher (including ourselves) that sells even close to a majority of its units digitally. I am a big believer in the future of digital distribution but the numbers we typically hear from publishers is that it's about a third (which is pretty darn good, by the way). I had my own skepticism about the NPD report as it was compiled with survey data and not actual sales figures. It is quite possible that Impulse was omitted from the list due to less awareness by consumers. In any case, it is likely that Impulse, Direct2Drive, and others are fighting over what little market share Valve does not hold with Steam." Wardell went on to say that Impulse will not support games that use Steamworks because it has a policy of not supporting games that requires third-party software bundling. Games that uses Steamworks require the user to use the Steam client to play the game. While Stardock owns Impulse, not all of its business is done online; the company still teams up with publishing partners to release games at retail. The company's next in-house title, Elemental: War of Magic is set for release on Impulse and at retail in August.

Impulse who? Exactly!

The second most popular DD service of PC Gaming? From the creators of Galactic Civilizations and Sins of the Solar Empire?

Stardock to be banned from GAF?

Not to metnion Elemental, which is shaping up to be one of the best gaming titles in 2010, but once again, this site is a console gaming site, so what can you expect.

Is there a second DD service? That's surprising.

Dosen't stop the fact that games downloaded digitally still can be in the 50 percentile.. i mean if you have a limited library of games and you're second ranked with an inferior product, compared to Steam, you're obviously not going to sell as much.

I get that the dd numbers aren't measured in sales, but much like VGC, and that the number can be off.. but just because some "nobody" says the numbers are off, dosen't make it true.. but also not false.

He's also kind of making a mountain out of a molehill. He throws out a 1/3 figure as accetable, but "almost 50%" is outragous apparantly.

The fact is the difference between a third and a half, even if it was that, isn't an outrageously large amount.

Anyways, I never understood this NPD study at all. If it included farmville and all those millions of non-hardcore games, it's pretty skewed if you ask me. Those games really dont even count as games imo.

When I read this study I think something like "50% of starcraft 2 will be sold digitally". When the reality is nothing like that if they're including the likes of facebook and popcap non-games to skew the average.

Basically NPD did not make it clear what was covered in the study, so the study is useless.

"As much as I would love digital distribution to take over the world, I can't think of a single publisher (including ourselves) that sells even close to a majority of its units digitally."

Huh?

LOL Stardock, the Steam and Direct2Drive wanna be's. I had to install that impusle crap when I bought Sins of a Solar Empire.