Getting excited about charts

Today, ELSPA announced its plans to compile a digital chart, bringing together as many of its publishing members as possible in order to create a much clearer picture of actually how well the industry is performing with digital downloads.

Make no mistake - if this chart works out, and is made public towards the end of the year, as is hoped - this is a massive step for the industry.

Until now the only weather vane for industry commentators, analysts and investors - not to mention developers, publishers, retailers and gamers themselves - to judge a game's commercial success (in the UK) has been the ELSPA/Chart-Track retail chart.

That's been a good barometer over the years, and has come to be regarded - with its estimated 85 per cent coverage of High Street and online retail - as fact.

But the industry picture has changed in the past couple of years, and with the rise of broadband take-up and consumer trust, not to mention the availability of content, digital distribution is now taking a fair chunk of the overall revenues.

But how much? Nobody knows. Everybody accepts that Steam is the king of the market, with some onlookers estimating as much as three-quarters of PC digital sales globally coming via the Valve portal (no pun intended).

Valve declines to share its numbers, however, so while each publisher will have a snapshot of its own titles (and therefore the comparative popularity of retail versus digital), no one really knows how far we're at on the road to complete transition.

So with all of the significant publishers in the UK throwing in their data, while it'll remain secret for the time being during an 'evaluation period,' we can hope to see just where we're at soon enough. Whether that's good news for retailers, and boxed product still proves important to gamers (and particularly seasonal buyers), or bad news - and we can identify a tipping point in the near future - remains to be seen.

One thing isn't up for discussion, however, and that's just how important the publication of a digital chart is. It won't bring us any closer to understanding the XBLA, PSN or WiiWare pictures, and neither will it take in indie developer content (although they are apparently more than welcome to join in - and I hope they do), but it's a good start for the UK... and potentially beyond.