The Union of Game Publishers in Europe has started counting digital sales of games
The independent Association of European game publishers Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE) has started keeping official records of digital copies of video games sold along with retail. France became the pilot territory for the implementation of the project.
ISFE, with the help of the B2Boost service provider, plans to process sales data and issue weekly, monthly and quarterly reports.
Previously, similar studies were usually conducted by analytical companies such as GfK Group and others.
Activision Blizzard, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Codemasters, EA, Focus, Koch Media, Microsoft, Milestone, Paradox, Sega, Sony, Square Enix, Take-Two, Ubisoft and Warner Bros. have already agreed to provide ISFE with official data on sales and downloads of their games on PC and consoles.
At the same time, Bethesda, Konami and Nintendo are still postponing a decision on cooperation. Why exactly, the ISFE did not specify.
According to Simon Little, Managing Director of ISFE, the reports so far will only provide data on paid downloads.
Statistics will not take into account DLC sales and downloads of free titles. In addition, there are many independent game studios that are not in contact with ISFE.
Little identified these areas as areas that could be focused on as the project progressed.
Simon Little stressed that ISFE already collects more market data today than their American counterparts from the NPD Group.
Following France, a similar accounting is planned to be launched in the UK in January 2019. In the future, the initiative will extend to 40 more European countries.
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