EA vs NPD in Figures Fight
Stat company protects itself by snapping back at EA's claim of NPD irrelevance
Electronic Arts - like every single other major publisher - is planning one day to go totally digital in delivering its products. It's a no brainer. It's EA's Labels president, Frank Gibeau has even said as much, and at the same time called US stats collator NPD 'irrelevant'. This resulted in a response from David McQuillan, President of NPD Games.
First up, Gibeau tells GamesIndustry International, "For us, the fastest growing segment of our business is clearly digital and clearly digital services and ultimately Electronic Arts, at some point in the future - much like your question about streaming and cloud - we're going to be a 100% digital company, period. It's going to be there some day. It's inevitable."
He then pointed out that NPD, which collects sales data from retail outlets, "It's totally irrelevant. We don't even really look at it internally anymore. We're more focused on our services and how we're connected with consumers."
Well, wouldn't we all love to exclude competition from our internal figures and still see them as clean data without nasty third-party oversight? That would make declaring year-on-year figures to under-informed stockholders much simpler, given that comparisons with competing figures, well, there wouldn't be any.
NPD's figures are certainly less than up to the minute given that they do not account for digital, but the question should be asked: why does NPD not include digital? For example, is it not being supplied with digital?
For its part, NPD is not in agreement, "While digital is a growing part of the industry and something that needs to be addressed for the future, 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. Successful companies are looking at how their products are performing within all channels, particularly retail", said David McQuillan, President of NPD Games with an eye to his job.
"For that reason, we were surprised to read the comments by Mr. Gibeau that EA does not look at NPD data internally at all. 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."
Source: GamesIndustry International
First up, Gibeau tells GamesIndustry International, "For us, the fastest growing segment of our business is clearly digital and clearly digital services and ultimately Electronic Arts, at some point in the future - much like your question about streaming and cloud - we're going to be a 100% digital company, period. It's going to be there some day. It's inevitable."
He then pointed out that NPD, which collects sales data from retail outlets, "It's totally irrelevant. We don't even really look at it internally anymore. We're more focused on our services and how we're connected with consumers."
Well, wouldn't we all love to exclude competition from our internal figures and still see them as clean data without nasty third-party oversight? That would make declaring year-on-year figures to under-informed stockholders much simpler, given that comparisons with competing figures, well, there wouldn't be any.
NPD's figures are certainly less than up to the minute given that they do not account for digital, but the question should be asked: why does NPD not include digital? For example, is it not being supplied with digital?
For its part, NPD is not in agreement, "While digital is a growing part of the industry and something that needs to be addressed for the future, 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. Successful companies are looking at how their products are performing within all channels, particularly retail", said David McQuillan, President of NPD Games with an eye to his job.
"For that reason, we were surprised to read the comments by Mr. Gibeau that EA does not look at NPD data internally at all. 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."
Source: GamesIndustry International
Companies:
Electronic Arts
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