That’s all changing now as as the NPD has made good on its 5 year promise and has begun tracking sales of digital software. Starting July 21st, the physical sales report will now be consolidated with digital sales data. According to NPD analyst Liam Callahan, this is thanks in part to support from major publishers such as Activision, EA, Capcom, Square Enix and more.

“This has been several years of beta testing and we’ve been doing this in partnership with publishers, shaping the product, encoding the data the way the industry wants to see it. It’s really at the behest of or on the behalf of the publishers that we’re moving forward with this announcement… Really the goal is to bring a new level of transparency never before seen, at least in the US market. This is really the first step. We recognize that there’s still a ways to go, we want more publishers to join, we want to be able to project for people who are not participating. It’s an evolution, it’s something that takes time and our philosophy was really to start – if we waited to have every publisher in the world to sign up it would take forever. We’ll be improving this as time goes on,”

It’s more than a little apparent that there are a few big names missing on the list of partnered companies, including all three first party developers. The NPD has stated however, that they will note which games are excluding digital sales on the report, which means it will be easy to see what data is still incomplete.

However while the NPD will track digital software sales and release information to the public, sales figures on DLC and microtransactions will be left to the participating companies’ discretion.

Still, this is a good move forward for the industry as a whole. Software sales have been leaning digitally for years now and there were only ever unreliable sources for seeing just how well a game performed. With more transparency like this it’ll be interesting to see whether larger companies like Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo will feel forced to comply, or stay as ambiguous as ever.

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To be fair the NPD, or National Purchase Diary if you’re naughty, is a group that does market research and analysis, and collects their numbers from wherever they can. Copies sold are usually gathered from a few sources like the developer/publisher, the retailers who sell games, and really anyone who might be “in the know”. Even these physical numbers can only go so far, however. In the case of the Xbox One, Microsoft has stopped publishing their sales numbers. So NPD must now guess based on the word retailers such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart. It gets even trickier when you get to digital sales. Games of all kinds are sold on any number of devices, through a variety of online marketplaces, and not all of those sources reveal numbers. Valve’s Steam for instance is notorious for never revealing any sales figures.

And that’s what the ESA are complaining about. The ESA released an advisory saying:

“Scores of millions of consumers purchase innovative content in myriad ways, including subscription services, digital downloads, and via their mobile devices…Unfortunately, NPD’s revenue data yesterday continued to reinforce that traditional model at the expense of new areas where the industry is growing…ESA will do its part by encouraging and motivating NPD to release the total consumer spend for 2015 that includes all aspects of this diverse industry.”

NPD has responded back that they are “fully committed” to reporting on the entire video game industry and stand by their physical sales data. They claim it still represents a large portion of the industry but not all of it. It’s really a great middle of the road statement. They’re still claiming that their numbers matter (you have to pay to see the full NPD numbers, by the way) but they also know they aren’t complete.

Really this all comes down to honesty and openness. Not every company wants to reveal mistakes or costs. Yet somehow movie studios show off their books everyday and that industry is still afloat. If video games want to lead the way on digital sales and revolutionize how consumers view their purchased goods, then companies need to be more honest.

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