Service to begin from the beginning of next year and will prove that the PC games market isn’t facing as heavy a decline as retail sales suggest.

Speaking at the London Games Conference, Gfk Chart-Track head Dorian Bloch revealed that the organisation, which currently provides official sales chart data for the UK, will begin offering charts for downloaded PC games from the beginning of next year.

Calling for publishers and distribution platform holders to offer data that would allow Gfk Chart-Track to compile the charts, he said that the digital download market is now big enough to support them.

He also showed estimated data that suggested that the PC games market is not in the steep decline that many have claimed through sales figures of retail-sourced boxed copies. Though he showed that retail sales had falled from 13.8 million in 2006 to 6.6 million in 2009 so far, he revealed that by Gfk Chart-Track estimates, digital downloads had risen from 0.8 million to 3.5 million in the same years. 

It means that the PC market has fallen from 13.8 million in 2006 to 10 million so far in 2009, some way short of many doom-laden commentators’ pronouncements.

Getting the data out of distribution platform holders and publishers, however, is the challenge, with the attitude of some attendees, specifically Mastertronic’s Andy Payne, to ask what is in it for them to reveal how successful their businesses are, and that they are already aware of their market share. Bloch claimed in response that a single source for digital download charts is the only way to officially show which companies were in the lead.

He also said that mechanisms are already in place in Gfk Chart-Track’s systems to hide such sensitive sales figures as exclusive titles from public view while allowing the data to contribute to market share figures.

Creating a similar chart for console digital downloads is some way off, Bloch continued, explaining that none of the three platform holders wanted to share data because doing so would reveal aspects of their businesses.