Microsoft Stops Sharing Digital Sales Data with Circana
Microsoft has ended its practice of sharing digital sales data with Circana, the US-based analytics firm formerly known as NPD. This decision means Circana will now need to rely on projected figures rather than actual sales data when reporting on games published under Microsoft’s Xbox, Activision Blizzard, and Bethesda banners.
Circana has long served as a trusted source for gaming industry sales information in the United States, providing detailed monthly breakdowns tracking both hardware and software performance across the market. The loss of access to Microsoft’s verified sales figures represents a significant shift in the transparency of data available to the gaming industry, analysts, and media outlets.
The implications of this move affect broader industry-wide sales tracking and analysis, as Microsoft’s gaming divisions collectively represent a substantial portion of the digital gaming market. Without direct access to actual sales numbers, Circana’s future reports on these titles will rely on estimation models and projections rather than verified data from Microsoft. This change may impact how the gaming community understands actual sales performance for major Microsoft-published releases.