I've explained it as easy as possible, but it's extensive. just see the link: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/post.php?id=2436222

Digital distribution sales are normally never presented as a unit of sale because there is no physical object being sold so realistically the game did sell over what was reported in the financial statement. Its just considered a different form revenue.

Remember Valve reported on sales of Half Life 2. They said there were something like 5 million retail units sold but after factoring in Steam sales it came to about 7 million.

For the lulz (thx to waron):

see my post. It has nothing to do with copies of games because thanks to digital distribution there are no physical copies or units being made. There are no shipments. There is virtually no retailer.

Yet Activision must somehow get money from digital distribution sales. I don't say they know the exact number, but they can be estimated accurately.

Oh, they know the exact number. It is just not being reported like most DD sales numbers like most publishers do. If publishers reported DD sales we would be able to track PSN and PC sales.

Then why doesn't publishers that use the PSN, XBLA, WiiWare, and other DD methods display sales information for DD only games? And why does Valve only release information of B&M sales and just tells us about massive digital purchase increases whenever they have sales on their games? Remember Valve stated Half-Life sells over a million digital copies a year still but they refuse to give out any information on exactly how many copies have been purchased on Steam.

I'm thinking something is off it the minds of publishers thinking that if they don't give the public, let alone companies like us, details on DD sales that we will all believe sales are either fine and dandy or piss poor. I do not understand why they do as they do. Shouldn't DD be a separate area on income statements considering even if they only receive $400,000 of revenue from multiple DD platforms that is more than enough to show that the platform should be separated from the individual systems? Unless of course there is a massive loop hole in which development teams are considered substitaries making it so that it is impossible for the public to find out through publisher financial records.

God does shio ever give up on that worn out argument?  

DD is something that is growing at a rapid pace. PC gaming might be "hurting" but its still far from being something to worry about struggling. Shio might be a bit hyper on the subject but DDing general shows that all games will be DD in the next decade or so. Valve has displayed its success on the PC with the constantly growing Steam platform. Sony has displayed that full games can sell well on the PSN. Microsoft is displaying that DD of full games is the future by following Sony's lead. Nintendo has shown the same thing as Sony.

Also PCs are going down in price too which will help. Parts are getting better, faster, and cheaper to produce so even general purpose PCs can run some newer games. In the next 5 year probably people should be able to buy a PC from WalMart and run Crysis on Very High.

Shio thinks that Digital Downloads will save the day...too bad those DD are on torrent sites,lol.

Piracy is something that even Ubisoft complained,and we all know Ubisoft is very Pc friendly.

Plus,why should anyone buy a game they receive in GB when torrent sites do the same? Multiplayer? Plenty of pirate servers out there so no,there is no reason DD should exist...because they have heavy competition,that offers a free product with no disadvantage.