In news that will rattle the High Street, MCV has learnt that ChartTrack plans to establish an official PC digital downloads chart before the end of 2007.

The industry sales adjudicator has been holding meetings with “all the major players” in the games on demand field, with a view to setting up an authoritative weekly chart before the revenue rush of Q4.

"We’ve been talking to all the major players and negotiations are ongoing," ChartTrack director Dorian Bloch told MCV. "We’re looking at Q4 to start splitting the data on downloads. It would be great to get a PC chart up and running by then.

"Once retailers have set up downloads on their sites, we  hope that they will be happy to supply us with their data."

However, Bloch conceded that the creation of an official chart may be hampered by download specialists, who could be reticent to share data until their market share has grown. "It needs to be a decent sized panel before we can give out numbers," he added. "Unfortunately, a lot of the companies might want to wait until their numbers can rival the High Street."

- For a full investigation into the digital downloads sector, read the latest issue of MCV