[casual_games] Hard sales numbers?

[Brian Robbins]

> Tho again, absent hard sales figures. What happened to the initiative that

> the IGDA referenced on the list, early this year? Searching the list

> archives, I recall a few references to the IGDA working to collate casual

> sales figures. Has any of that come to usable fruition (beyond the

> game-sales-charts site)?


I think you're referring to the Data Sharing Initiative that James
Gwertzman has been spearheading. In it's first version the goal of
that was to develop a common data format that all distributors,
portals and developers can use, with the goal of simplifying the
process of sending and receiving royalty reports.

That first round has been completed and you can see the details here:
http://www.igda.org/wiki/Casual_Games_SIG/DataReportingInitiative

We're now at the point of trying to encourage everyone to actually use
the format! I know that Reflexive is and has been for quite some time.
I believe that PlayFirst is as well. I'm pretty sure a couple others
are, though it is far from an expected thing at this point.

Long term we're hoping that this will make it easier for actual sales
numbers to be shared ala the NPD game charts, but that's still quite a
ways off.

-- 
Brian Robbins
Executive Producer and Gaming Evangelist
Fuel Industries - www.fuelgames.com