Though there's plenty of organizations around the globe that track video game sales, there's one huge hole in this analysis: they don't count digital sales of games through services like Steam or Direct2Drive. Now, it seems that North America's NPD Group might buck that trend.

“Objective third party tracking is essential to separating the wheat from the chaff," NPD director of corporate marketing David Rile told MCV. "In other words, accurate tracking will provide a no-nonsense view of what’s happening on the publisher level, keeping away from the spin, and in some cases, misleading information that often appears on the internet."

It's not clear when the NPD could begin to produce these digital sales charts. Dorian Bloch, director of market research company GfK Chart-Track estimated in July that digital game sales for 2009 could top $1 billion. However, Bloch also stated that in order to accurately tally downloadable game sales, more publishers need to be willing to provide data.