That said, they don't have a conduit for digital sales. When they go and get digital sales, if you read their research, they came out with their first PC research last year. They're relying heavily on users to come in and answer questions, which when you start to count 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 people, which is the typical approach for a research firm to undertake, that is just not going to give you the picture.

It's like the that came out the other day that said the majority of PC gamers were female. These guys have obviously never been to China, because in China, it's overwhelming how many people are gaming on PCs there, and the overwhelming majority of them are male. There's a lot more female than you might expect in China but it's still dramatically different than the picture Nielsen painted. Nielsen has their methodology that they choose to use, which is largely North America, and it's an opt in mentality. NPD takes the same approach. You can go sign up on their website today and become a feedback mechanism for things that they can't measure in their retail research reports.

That said, when NPD's data comes out, they've got a big audience for their research, because for the console video game industry, they're it. I mean that's all that the console industry needs to worry about in North America because there's nothing missing from that equation. There's some holes in some of the online stores that sell physical goods via eBay or Yahoo or other shopping destinations, but they do a pretty effective job estimating the sales through those venues based on the overall revenue picture from those sites. They're really good at carving that up and figuring that out.

They do not have relationships however with , who is the largest back end fulfillment engine for software sales online, so how can they possibly complete that picture? won't talk to them. None of the , customers will talk to them and tell them what their sales figures are, so how are they getting that research is the question. And the answer is, it's all through survey.

GO: According to , online gaming for video game consoles and portables increased from 19 percent in 2008 to 25 percent in 2009, but PC online gaming experienced a slight decline over the same time period.