Valve's director of business development thinks digital games charts are a backwards step for the games industry.
Speaking to MCV, Jason Holtman said "The idea of a chart is old. It came from people trying to aggregate disaggregated information." He also claimed that charting sales proves "less useful in the digital space."
Read on for the details.
However, Jason isn't against the idea of supplying sales figures to specific publishers. He pointed out that Valve provide partners with "Much more rapid and perfected information.” From the moment of release, Steam supplies exhaustive data to help track the success of promotional campaigns, along with detailed figures to help track customer's buying habits.
The UKIE were hoping to create a PC Games download chart with the data but, according to Holtman, devs should be more interested in purely tracking the sales of their own products, not their competitor's: "The point is, it's not super important for a publisher or developer to know how well everyone is doing. What's important is to know is exactly how your game is doing – why it's climbing and why it's falling. Your daily sales, your daily swing, your rewards for online campaign number three. That's what we provide."
If this news story has got you in the mood for some Steam stats, click here . You won't find any sales figures though. No chance.
