The NPD Group is expanding later this year to begin analysing European and Asian video game sales.

The NPD Group, who are currently one of the major US video game sales trackers, announced today that it will begin to report on consumer video game spending in Europe during the fourth quarter of this year. The service will start in three of the largest European markets: the UK, France and Germany.

The European service will not be targeted towards new physical game sales, but to other methods of distribution such as downloads, social networks and mobile phone games. NPD says that these areas are not being assessed by any other analysts in the market, so it could be interesting to see the results of their research.

NPD also announced that it will be spreading a similar service into Asian countries afterwards. Anita Frazier, one of the analysts at NPD, explained the expansion by saying 'the new digital distribution channels in video games are not country specific. They are global in nature, which is why NPD is taking its proven, proprietary methodology, developed over a number of years, and applying it to a global perspective'.