NPD to report monthly digital sales

The NPD group confirms plans to publish monthly digital sales data alongside its US retail physical product sales report.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, NPD analyst Anita Frazier says that they are attempting to include digital revenue in their monthly sales reports. This include revenue and sales figures from downloadable content, digital copies of games, mobile games and game subscriptions.
“We are expanding the number of digital retailers we have relationships with in order to develop a digital POS (point of sale) service,” said Frazier.

“The goal is to provide our clients with a total POS games tracking service that incorporates the growing digital channel as well as the currently predominant physical format, and to deliver this at the same frequency as we currently do for new physical retail sales.”
This new announcements seems to be a reaction to EA’s negative response to the most recent set of NPD figures. EA Corporate Communications rep Tiffany Steckler calling the numbers a “misrepresentation of the entire industry” and likened it reporting music sales without taking into iTunes.