The research group NPD will no longer publicly report its data on videogame hardware and software sales, it said Tuesday in a statement.
NPD Group's numbers are the videogame industry's premier source of sales data. Of late, NPD had been pulling back on the amount of information that it released free of charge to the public -- it used to release the sales data for the top 10 games each month, but had rolled that back to the top 5.
The information it will now release to the public will include a list of the top 10 best-selling games of the month without hard numbers, and no hardware data at all.
The decision of whether to release hardware sales numbers will be made by the individual console makers, NPD said.
NPD will also update its press releases to make clear the fact that its numbers only represent the sales of new packaged software, not downloads or social network payments. NPD said it would release a report on total industry sales, including downloads, to the press each quarter.
