• by Shankar Gupta , May 16, 2005

CNET's GameSpot, which monitors pre-release buzz on video games, and the NPD Group, which tracks game sales, have formed a partnership to provide a more complete picture of consumers' reaction to new releases. The deal, which will be rolled out at the end of this month, following a limited release that started in March, is expected to be announced today at the E3 video game conference in Los Angeles.

GameSpot's "Trax" service, which has been up and running for more than two years, monitors nearly every aspect of a user's behavior on the GameSpot site, including the articles users read; videos and screen shots they download; and the games they've played or purchased. That data--which includes geographic and demographic information--is compiled to build a picture of the buzz surrounding a particular title. The service also allows subscribers to compare games' buzz to games of the same genre, and other competing titles.

Trax also compiles review scores from various sources like IGN, GameSpot's own reviews, and a number of video gaming magazines, and creates a composite review score.

Josh Larson, GameSpot's director of industry products, said that NPD Funworld's Sales data, combined with Trax's profiles of users, round out the view that developers, publishers, and retailers get from either service. "Together, our data sets and our services are providing the complete view of the life cycle for a game," he said. "The partnership really marries together well our two unique data sets--it puts the two halves together, and gives you a full glimpse of the life for a game from the time it's announced until its sales date."

A spokesman for NPD, Martin Zagorsek, said that the deal seemed like a good fit because Trax's data is used largely to measure buzz before a game is released, and NPD's data is based on hard sales figures after a game comes out. "The genesis of the deal is that GameSpot, through its Trax product, provides a very good source of data on what the reception of the marketplace is in advance of the game's launch," he said. "Our data is the benchmark on how a game is actually doing in the market via sales data. So it seemed like a natural fit." Moreover, many of NPD Funworld's clients also subscribe to Trax, Zagorsek said.

Midway, a game company that subscribes to both NPD Funworld's service and GameSpot Trax, uses the data from both companies to get a picture of how its games are performing relative to the competition, and the company already compares the data from the two companies in-house.

"We actually compare Trax data to NPD on our own, so the combination is going to be very appealing," said Mona Hamilton, vice president for marketing at Midway. "It allows you to do more of one-step comparisons, because currently we'd look at the top performers in terms of awareness with Game Trax, and then we'd look at the leaders in terms of sales with NPD--and then we'd compare the two ourselves. Now there's going to be more integration."