EA Duels With NPD Over Sales Reports

Written by: Jason Winter (Twitter @winterinformal - Google+) | July 3, 2012 1:00 pm

8 Comments

Used to be, it wasn’t so hard to count video-game sales. You just… well, counted video-game sales.

But now, thanks to that pesky Internet and digital distribution platforms like Steam and Origin, tallying up games’ sales figures is an extra-difficult chore. It’s hard to figure out how much sales figures from independent parties take digital sales into account — or if they do at all.

The most recent skirmish on this front is between EA and NPD, with EA claiming that NPD’s numbers “measure a sliver” of the gaming industry and that the company ignores said numbers, while NPD maintains that “all our publisher clients” use their numbers.

NPD goes on to say that physical game sales comprise 56% of all gaming sales, which, while significant, definitely leaves a lot of room for digital sales to skew numbers, though NPD isn’t clueless on that front:

“We do cover digital. Granted, it’s not near the level of granularity that we provide via physical point of sale, but physical POS is still huge and needs to be taken seriously. In my opinion, you do a disservice to our industry when you dismiss the value of retail sales research.”

What’s your take on reported sales numbers? Are they worth the paper (real or virtual) they’re printed on? And if not, where do you go for your sales data?

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7BitBrian

So NPD said something bad, or is going to say something bad about EA, possibly about their stocks, so now EA is attacking them. /sigh
http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-Johnson/1353890372 Michael Johnson

Oh cool. More EA butthurt.
/popcorn
Jado Cast

This makes me feel really bad for EA. NOT! :D
jgelling

Hmmm, so now EA is waxing philosophical over what really, an MMO subscription is, and now how to even count video game sales?
http://twitter.com/MrSunrock Sunrock

Well they have small point that you can’t really just look at one aspect and then say that this is true all over the board.

I buy certain games digital and other type of games physical. Like I never ever would consider to buy a digital copy of a game to my 360 or PS3 as I like to know that I can take them out in 10-15 years again and play them. I mean I still some times dust of my old Nintendo (8-bit) to play Metroid for an example and I like to do the same thing with Skyrim later. I also never buy MMORPGs as a digital copy because they look good on my shelf. On the other side I would never buy a half ass PC game or a single player PC game as a physical copy. As those are games I just play though once or they wont be able to play 10+ years later because you have a new PC with a OS that bugs out the old games anyway.

So if I was some what normal in this behavior and they looked just at what games I buy digital they would get a skew pictures of what games I buy.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Bergevin-Jr/1393526370 Jim Bergevin Jr

Put 10 expert witnesses in a room and give them the straight up facts of a case and you still get 10 different opinions. That’s all any of these sales reports and companies are at this point. You cannot write off physical sales any more than you can write off digital sales. For any report to do true justification to a particular game, it needs to fully cover the sales in any and all formats 100%. Any reported figure that fails to do so should be taken with a grain of salt and rightly so.
Revanhavoc

3rd party sales data is always incomplete. It’s meant to be a piece of the puzzle for analyzing a company, its not meant to be a point of debate for the company that is being examined.

Unlike with most ideolgical and even economics discussions, numbers don’t lie. Numbers can be twisted or contorted to help make a certain point, for sure, but in the end numbers, though potentially incomeplete, give the best snapshot of financial success.
DoctorOverlord

Curious little scuffle. I’m less inclined to believe EA because they’re interested in maintaining their stock value and we’ve seen them make incorrect statements in the past. A marketing research firm is only as good as the accuracy of their reports and if it turns out their numbers of wrong they can’t just shrug it off as marketing hype like EA can. Of course, maybe they are wrong and people will stop using NPD if they can’t improve.