Gibeau says EA mostly ignores NPD reports; NPD knows 'for a fact' major publishers us

[DP ServBot]

Last year EA went on record calling the NPD's sales reports "a misrepresentation of the entire industry," and this year EA Labels president Frank Gibeau is taking that sentiment one step further, saying EA largely ignores NPD reports.

"An occasional bad report from NPD, which measures a sliver of what's actually happening in gaming, gives people an erroneous impression," Gibeau tells Games Industry International. "My point is it's an irrelevant measure on the industry. It's totally irrelevant. We don't even really look at it internally anymore."

NPD reports track retail games sales from stores such as GameStop and Wal-Mart, but don't provide a comparable breakdown of digital sales. In Q4 2012, EA saw digital sales generate $419 million, while packaged goods made more than double that, with $949 million.

David McQuillan, president of NPD Games, is "surprised" by Gibeau's comments for a few reasons, provided in a statement to Joystiq. The first: "While we will not comment on the specifics on our long-standing relationship with EA, we can say with confidence that we have daily dealings with all of our major publisher clients. And we know for a fact they're using the data."

The second reason McQuillan cites is the continued prevalence of physical sales, making up 56 percent of industry sales in 2011. "The current games industry is still largely rooted in retail and any industry player involved with AAA content simply can't take their eye away from the retail environment," he writes.

NPD Group's David Riley adds, "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."

EA's Digital sales are growing rapidly, Gibeau says, and EA is focused on riding that streaming, cloud-based, downloadable wave into the future, with or without NPD sales reports.

"We're going to be a 100 percent digital company, period," he says. "It's going to be there some day. It's inevitable."Gibeau says EA mostly ignores NPD reports; NPD knows 'for a fact' major publishers use them originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 02 Jul 2012 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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[Link41]

And EA wonders why they were voted the worst video game company....

[kupomogli]

And EA wonders why they were voted the worst video game company....

No. I'm sure they don't give a shit. They were more than likely voted by people like you who obviously goes into a thread and bashes EA for no reason. Seriously. Oh no! EA doesn't care about NPD sales reports when they have data of their own. Everyone should bitch about it like it effects us as consumers. Whatever shall we do since we didn't have EA's approval of the NPD actually being needed. Oh. That's right. The NPD is still around and allows other consumers and companies to look at sales and it may very well be useless to EA who doesn't care about sales from other companies.

[Griking]

"We're going to be a 100 percent digital company, period," he says."

Quote of the story.

This includes Madden which I'm sure will impact some sales. What I'm curious about is how. It's obvious that Origin is their plan for the PC industry but are they going to be content with paying Microsoft for the right to sell games on Live for the long term?



Also, people will point to anything that they don't like about EA and say "And they wonder why they're the worst company in America"

[Link41]

No. I'm sure they don't give a shit. They were more than likely voted by people like you who obviously goes into a thread and bashes EA for no reason. Seriously. Oh no! EA doesn't care about NPD sales reports when they have data of their own. Everyone should bitch about it like it effects us as consumers. Whatever shall we do since we didn't have EA's approval of the NPD actually being needed. Oh. That's right. The NPD is still around and allows other consumers and companies to look at sales and it may very well be useless to EA who doesn't care about sales from other companies.

I didn't say that I thought they were the worst company...This just gives them bad press. I enjoy several EA franchises such as Battlefield, Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, etc. I just think that EA is a little full of themselves at times. Who am I to vote them the worst? They have not done anything to me as a consumer. I may not agree with everything they do, but they aren't the worst. I don't even have a worst studio in mind. Ubisoft will continue to be my fav publisher though

[Griking]

No. I'm sure they don't give a shit.

Actually it bugs the hell out of Peter Moore

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/...people-hate-ea

[duffmanth]

Until ISPs stop limiting people's data usage, streaming games from a server isn't going to be realistic any time soon.

[The 1 2 P]

Since NPD stopped reporting sold thru numbers for the top 10 skus and stopped showing console sales figures they have become less relevant. I mean, we all know that they are basically just a measure for boxed copy retail sales but lately they can't even seem to get that part correct.