I'm thinking about these question for some time and now I want to see what the VGChartz community thinks about it: tracking digital sales. Some of the new platforms are being quite focused on digital sales. Not all PS3 games are available digitally, but in Vita all games are available on PSN, so it's now possible to be a digital only gamer. Recently, we have some interesting situations:

- PayDay 2: sold 1.58M, 80% digital (source). VGC has it at 0.31M right now.

- PSN on 2013: The Last Of Us broke the all-time download record on PSN. Months later, Fifa 14 and GTA V bested it digitally. GTA V was pretty strong because of PSN exclusive bonus and because you could pre-download it and play sooner.

- PC gaming: Steam rules the sales. VGC data is allready useless here.

- Nintendo eShop: Nintendo consoles have been offering almost all of its games catalog in digital format. Wind Waker, for example, reached eShop sooner than the retail version hit the shelves, so a lot of gamers got it digitally. The game jumped to 1st place in the eShop in just few days. (thanks to Rogerioandrade for the info)

Don't get it wrong, I'm not a big fan of digital (my only digital game is PSABR and that was only because the Vita bundle came with a download code). The point is, with the rise of digital sales and VGC only tracking retail sales, isn't VGC becoming obsolete? Maybe soon we won't be able to know if a franchise is selling less or if it wasn't just an increase on digital sales. Besides that, could VGC start tracking digital? Or is it impossible right now?

Ya idk how they would even track digital sales.

No independent company or person can track digital sales. That data is held only by the platform holders (Sony, Valve, etc.) and the publishing company.

In other words, the only way to know the digital sales is to have an informant from the platform holders or the publishing company in VGChartz's members.

As far as software tracking sure. For news and forums no.
I know its a sales site but I don't come here for the sales. I come here for the informative topics and news

Edit:

I can actually see the loss of sales data is a good thing. I see more threads of people using sales to hate on companies then I do positive ones.

Yes, I also think it could be untrackable. But how we will kn ow the sales? Only by financial reports? Sad days coming....

This is an issue the staff is well aware of and has come up in topics many, many times. There's just nothing VGC can do about it. We're completely at the mercy of publishers when it comes to accurate sales numbers now.

Yes

They'll still be relevant for hardware sales. Aren't over half of Vita games purchased digitally? So they're already pretty damn unreliable there.