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Forums - Sales Discussion - NPD will start tracking digital sales (July NPD delayed one week)

Aquamarine on 11 July 2016
Azuren said:
Aquamarine said:

Kinda. NPD / EEDAR / DFC Intelligence / GfK / other research groups get direct digital data from EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Capcom, Square Enix, Take-Two, Deep Silver and Warner Bros every month. They're all linked to each other (aka. they all use / share the same data).

Everything else they do about digital sales beyond that are just estimates based off of their existing hard data, algorithms, and conversations with publishers.

 

 

I still think this digital data is going to be bad for us.

NPD is going to release a combined digital-physical chart every month, so the Top 10 ranking is now useless because they don't have digital data from smaller publishers, some exceptions like Bethesda, and 1st-party data. We're losing that accuracy that we had before in the Top 10.

And, they're getting rid of platform rankings as well in their PR report.

And I still don't think anyone but the major publishers will actually have access to this data day-one. So that means no digital leaks because the leakers won't have access to it, more obfuscated PR data, a week long delay in data release...just seems like we're getting shafted at every level here.

Not having the digital sales doesn't improve accuracy, though.

In my opinion it's better to have a public Top 10 where you can trust that #1 was the #1 best seller in physical sales.......than this weird combined physical+digital Top 10 where you can't trust the rankings because NPD doesn't track digital for 1st-party, Bethesda, and many others.

Obviously it's better for those in the know to have physical + digital wherever possible. But for the public, you guys are getting screwed when NPD releases their PR.



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Swordmasterman on 11 July 2016

This is the end of the "sold 80% Digital" thing.



nanarchy on 12 July 2016
Shadow1980 said:

Aquamarine said:

From a more recent GameStop Corporation investor meeting (April 2016):

*snip*

 

So 20% of the overall market revenue-wise is digital including all digital content (e.g., indies, DLC, subs). It appears they break down retail-release titles into "AAA" and "catalog." What do you suppose the difference is? The DFC data for 2014 covered "AAA" games, which I assumed was all retail-release titles, which apparently isn't the case. It appears there was no breakdown for that category this year so we don't know how much that 88/7/5 split between physical, bundled copes, and full downloads for the category shifted. Still, I do agree with their assessment that full game sales will probably stabilize at most at around 30% digital. There's a non-trivial portion of console gamers willing to go digital, but physical is still overwhelmingly dominant because, unlike PC games, console games are covered by the first-sale doctrine and all that entails and everything built around that (e.g., the second-hand market) has been something entrenched in the market for decades. Most console gamers will be unlikely to give up physical.

Too bad NPD is going to be super-secretive about digital numbers...

I Iwould take ANY numbers from gamestop with a huge grain of salt especially numbers to investors, they need to convince investors that digital is not the major thing moving forward and that their own outdated business model is what will remain dominant.



hanssolo on 12 July 2016

Protecting that information and making sure it stays within the participating publishers only is our number one priority. What we're providing media is very top line of course, but it does give reporters and the media what it has been asking for for years
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/interview-how-npd-persuaded-the-likes-of-activision-ea-and-ubisoft-to-share-their-digital-sales-data/0169503

 

we won't get leaks and the public info will be very limited (for now)



Sam1994 on 12 July 2016

It is really good news,thanks for sharing.



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ZhugeEX on 12 July 2016
Shadow1980 said:

Aquamarine said:

From a more recent GameStop Corporation investor meeting (April 2016):

*snip*

 

So 20% of the overall market revenue-wise is digital including all digital content (e.g., indies, DLC, subs). It appears they break down retail-release titles into "AAA" and "catalog." What do you suppose the difference is? The DFC data for 2014 covered "AAA" games, which I assumed was all retail-release titles, which apparently isn't the case. It appears there was no breakdown for that category this year so we don't know how much that 88/7/5 split between physical, bundled copes, and full downloads for the category shifted. Still, I do agree with their assessment that full game sales will probably stabilize at most at around 30% digital. There's a non-trivial portion of console gamers willing to go digital, but physical is still overwhelmingly dominant because, unlike PC games, console games are covered by the first-sale doctrine and all that entails and everything built around that (e.g., the second-hand market) has been something entrenched in the market for decades. Most console gamers will be unlikely to give up physical.

Too bad NPD is going to be super-secretive about digital numbers...

 

Have a look at Gamestops recent presentation, or the one before that. It includes a full break down of physical and digital revenues by category. Really useful for you.



ZhugeEX on 12 July 2016

Here-



Platina on 12 July 2016

That's nice to hear, especially if we get leaks for the new numbers too



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animegaming on 12 July 2016

about time cause i barely paid attention to the NPD cause of their lack of digital sales.



Aquamarine on 14 July 2016
Shadow1980 said:
ZhugeEX said:

Here-

I found the full version of where that's from on GameStop's website. Do you by any chance know where the report Aqua screencapped can be obtained? GS doesn't appear to have it up. The only things from that date are basically that presentation above and a duplicate.

The report isn't available publicly (only through private / insider channels), but there isn't any more insight from DFC listed there...at least not until I can find the slides for it.

 

 

Also...

Insights from CosmicQueso on NeoGAF (he has access to NPD data / other insider information...probably more than what I have access to):

1)

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/interview-how-npd-persuaded-the-likes-of-activision-ea-and-ubisoft-to-share-their-digital-sales-data/0169503

"That MCV article is pretty funny. Hope they don't hurt themselves patting themselves on the back.

EEDAR not being mentioned makes it even more funny since the EEDAR guys are the ones doing a lot of the heavy lifting on this from what I've heard."

 

2)

"Actually, participating publishers have to pay to access this data, even if they also provide data."

 

3)

"The digital numbers that will be reported will be very solid. It's just that there are only 3 digital storefronts being reported on, and only for a handful of publishers. "

 

4)

"With some titles having digital and others not, the platform rankings in the top 10 would be unreliable. One could easily argue that having some titles with digital and others without make the top 10 itself unreliable. Both statements are true."

 

5)

"So there's a flag in the feed for physical vs digital sales. Participating pubs will see everything broken out by packaged and digital while standard subscribers will see packaged only."

 

6)

"Nope. Not without specific leaks from people at companies that purchase the digital data supplement. No (physical / digital) splits will be included in the public release."

 

 

7)

"Very nice of aqua to post that. Hopefully it'll help when discussions get sidetracked on "winning" when we get more of a crowd in the threads around release. The "war" has been settled for a while, there's more interesting things to discuss. 

Like how messed up the top 10 charts will be lol.

Aqua's been making great points about this. Because the detailed digital data will be only provided to participating publishers, leaks will be exceptionally rare."

 

 

........So basically, this move to digital is going to screw us over.