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EA welcomes NPD digital plans

Publisher praises research firm for moving towards monthly digital download reports

After vocal criticism of US sales research firm NPD, Electronic Arts has praised the company for both its current work and for its plans to offer monthly digital download data.

"NPD does a good job reporting sales of physical media and we're glad they are taking action to fill the gaps related to digital revenue," said EA corporate communications executive Tiffany Steckler to IndustryGamers.

"We hope that media and analysts understand that any report on industry performance which doesn't include digital sales is incomplete. We will continue working with NPD and other services to help improve reporting on digital sales," she added.

Previously EA had hit out at NPD, with Steckler suggesting that "using NPD data for video game sales is like measuring music sales and ignoring something called iTunes."

"We see NPD's data as a misrepresentation of the entire industry," she said in an interview last week.

Just a day later NPD told GamesIndustry.biz it was planning to include digital sales data in its monthly reports. It also revealed plans to form an advisory council to define what constitutes 'digital' in terms of social, mobile, downloadable content and microtransactions.