NPD to Begin Tracking Game Subscriptions

As the years pass by, it’s becoming increasingly clear that game subscriptions aren’t just a fad – they’re here to stay. The NPD Group has announced that it will begin tracking the market for online subscription-based products in the PC software, PC games, and videogames industries. It’s unclear if these quarterly reports would include figures for services such as Xbox Live, but at the very least, we’ll get a glimpse into the number of people playing Lord of the Rings Online. From what I can gather, though, numbers for Live and company will indeed be tracked.

NPD’s Video Game & PC Game Subscriptions Report provides insight into market size and title shares for paid online subscriptions to video games and MMO/PC games, gaming Web sites, and video game console services.  It delivers the best view available of this burgeoning market, with reliable consumer insight straight from thousands of gamers ages 13 and older who are members of NPD’s online panel of 3 million consumers.

These products are an important step towards NPD’s ultimate goal of providing a truly complete view of the North American PC game and video game markets, including all of the different ways consumers pay for and play video games, PC games, and related products,” said Zagorsek.

Hey, maybe we’ll finally get an idea as to how many Xbox Live Gold members there really are.