Earlier today the Internet went a bit nutty when Newsweek columnist N'Gai Croal wrote on his blog that The NPD Group would be scaling back the amount of video game data it typically releases each month.

Croal said that beginning with the October data (expected later this month), NPD will no longer provide hardware sales numbers and will scale back software sales to the Top Five SKUs as opposed to the usual Top Ten. "We'll eventually receive hardware numbers and Top Ten software numbers, but only on a quarterly and annual basis. There are signs that this may only be a temporary pullback, but for now, this is were things stand," he added.

GameDaily BIZ caught up with NPD spokesperson David Riley to find out what's behind this.

"It used to be policy that NPD not provide hardware sales figures," he explained. "Instead, we would leave it up to the industry to release their own numbers. NPD would only become involved with media if they needed us to verify data provided to them by the manufacturer.

"However, in Nov'06, when all three new consoles were on the market for the first time, we discussed internally, then reached out to various reps. on the manufacturer side and asked if it would be acceptable for NPD to 'temporarily' provide hardware install base figures (we had been inundated with media requests and felt it best to consider changing this policy on a temporary basis). There was no push back... it's been a year, so we decided to pull this monthly feed and leave it up to the manufacturer as to whether or not they wanted that sales information released to media. It's really that simple."

Riley told us that so long as the console makers give the greenlight, NPD would have no problem continuing to provide the data to media and other non-clients.