News PC game sales constitute 14 percent of total sales

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/01..._total_sales/1

It isn't looking good for PC gamers as it is revealed that of all last years games sales, only 14 percent of them came from PC titles.

[phat-ant]

I don't think its dead, it will always be where the cutting edge is. Dont forget that console games also cost more meaning they will rake it in more from them. I certainly hope that they still continue to make PC games and exclusives.

[naokaji]

i dont think pc games will die due to consoles, but what will kill pc gaming though is the problem with 1:1 ports, forever running franchises, not much innovation if it comes to gameplay and lack of quality control which makes 100+MB launchday patches necessary.

[BioSniper]

I think that half the problem is that a lot of PC games exclusively target the high end (Crysis) and people don't want to spend that kind of money (£500+) on a PC when they can get the same quality of experience from a console that costs around £250.
Some games will still be better on PC but consumers will vote with their wallet.

I can count on one hand the amount of games that I bought for PC in the last year where as for console its up in the high teens just due to it being a no fuss, cheap way of gaming.
Also with large screen high def TV's getting cheaper and better all the time, where is the advantage to playing on a smaller high-res monitor? Other than the resolution the experience is somewhat less cinematic than a TV, and it's not as much fun to huddle round a computer with your mates where as slinging in GoW or similar to your 360 and playing it in 42inch glory from the sofa is way more enjoyable than squinting at a game of Counterstrike or Crysis.

Also I cant imagine that games like World of Warcraft are helping PC sales much, when you think that about 8mil people sub to it and probably play but don't buy anything else because their game budget is spent on the sub, they are also not likely to upgrade components either all the time their old stuff runs it well too.
I'm not solely blaming WoW here (though I will try my hardest) but MMO's in general could be something that is killing the PC market.

We then also have that "something-for-nothing" culture on PC. With the accessibility of P2P to even the most casual of users and the mentality of wanting everything for free because you are able to do so with movies and music, people want the same with games too and there will be a loss in sales (however marginal) because of that.
Which option would you take? £45 for a game or 10 mins hunting and a couple of hours download and to have it for free?

Still, that's just my take on it

[Carbon_Arc]

Thats not that bad surely?? It's about quality not quantity!! I wonder what percentage of the sales total attributed to consoles was spent on generic churned-out moive tie-in rubbish. Plus PC games are generally cheaper than console games, and i wonder how much the buy then trade-in cycle for console games influences the figure, i sure went though a lot more games in my PS2 days than i do now i am gaming on a PC.

[kenco_uk]

Well, crikey, only $910.7 million. Best they get busking, eh?

[Cthippo]

I'm betting the majority of that is due to digital downloads and the WOW effect BioSniper mentioned. It also seems like games are getting more expensive for the number of hours of entertainment you get, which tends to encourage piracy.

[steveo_mcg]

Can't blame WOW with out blaming CS:S or vanilla CS (or TF2) for that matter. Or in my case Pirates! and Supreme Commander i find that older games of these genres keep me engrossed much more than than all the FPS's in the world when i start playing these i loose weekends. Do the consoles have games to keep one occupied for months at a time, thats not flame bait but a genuine question, I tend not to follow consoles very closely.

[Hamish]

Originally Posted by BioSniper

I think that half the problem is that a lot of PC games exclusively target the high end (Crysis)

disagree, my x2 4400 and x1900xt handled everything but crysis and even crysis could be played at medium settings
that is far from high end nowadays
very few games target exclusively the high end for exactly the reasons you stated, hardly anyone would buy it
and some of the best games last year run just fine on mid-low hardware, TF2/hl2 anyone?

as for the playing with your mates on the sofa stuff people always bring up in console vs PC, i dont think its comparable
to me its like the difference between having a kick around in the park with a few mates and playing football with a local club or something
one is just having a laugh and the other is competitive, while i dont do the clan thing in games anymore its still similar
'Serious Fun' vs 'Silly Fun'

[Veles]

Think about it though, how many supported platforms are there right now

PC
PS2 (Huge)
PS3
PSP
Wii (Huge)
DS (Massively Huge)
Xbox 360

7 platforms, if each one is equal and has an equal share of sales, then each has 14%. As said, that still doesn't count things like steam, I imagine steam got a load of sales when the orange box came out.

While it's not great for PC gaming, it's still not too bad, especially when you think that the gaming market is growing more and more. Using my guestimation, PC sales haven't really dwindled, it's just console sales have increased a lot. Of course I have no evidence at all to support this claim and I'm pulling this right out of my ass.

The thing I chalk it down to really is the perceived expense. A good quality gaming PC is horribly expensive, so many gamers are put off by that, and buy a console instead. Even though in the long term they're just as expensive.

I wish developers would stop going on about piracy already. Yeah there are those *******s who pirate instead of buying the game even if they like it, but they're the same people who would be putting a mod chip in their 360 so they can play downloaded ISOs offline. It's very unlikely that someone would have bought the game in the first place if they pirated it. For instance, I pirated Rome Total War, I loved it, so I bought it. I bought B&W 2 without downloading it first because I was in halls at the time, and it was a complete waste of money, if I had pirated it, I would have deleted it off my hard drive after not too long.

With consoles you also suffer from second hand sales, you don't get that so much with PC games because not many shops buy them off you (at least, not in the UK). Shops like GAME buy games off you then sell them, the developer sees no money from that, it doesn't see money from eBay sales either.

[steveo_mcg]

xBox (360) also...

[crozon]

14% of the retail market is good. And i'll tell you why, they don't count mmo revenue or digital distribution. Now a lot of people are buying games online. I bought the orange box online and looking at the forums a lot of people did as well. Plus again this is only US figures, Please can ya give us worldwide figures as PC gaming is massive in europe and korea. I mean you can buy PC games in supermarkets here in the UK. When i was in the states it was a nightmare to find PC games in shops.

Also EA said they were happy with sales of Crysis, could it be that it sold really well in europe and they got a fair few sales off their distribution system???

[crozon]

and from gamespot:

"The PC games sales landscape is changing to one that is increasingly reliant on digital sources of revenue," NPD analyst Anita Frazier told GameSpot. "Our sales reflect the retail climate but there is a lot of gaming sales activity that is generated from digital downloads and subscriptions. I think the PC market continues to be quite healthy and we're continuing to work on how to get our arms around the spending that occurs outside of retail. A number of our [surveys] ask respondents to indicate which platforms they game on, and the results of those questions make it very clear that the PC remains very prevalent, if not dominant, in the total gaming picture."

[Veles]

Originally Posted by steveo_mcg

xBox (360) also...

Ah yeah I forgot to write that one down

[BigD79]

Originally Posted by Veles

7 platforms, if each one is equal and has an equal share of sales, then each has 14%.

The thing I chalk it down to really is the perceived expense. A good quality gaming PC is horribly expensive, so many gamers are put off by that, and buy a console instead.

QFT

Die Konsole... ist das Opium des Volkes.

[Laitainion]

Originally Posted by BigD79

Die Konsole... ist das Opium des Volkes.

:-D

Although looks wrong mainly because, as I'm learning German, I haven't come across that many nouns that are neuter that I end up using.

[DXR_13KE]

figures quoted by Shacknews don't take digital sales into account,

[sarcasm]this study is very well made [/sarcasm]

[crozon]

here are the sweedish charts for the 46th week

01Assassins Creed (360) 02Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) 03Assassins Creed (PS3) 04Crysis (PC) 05Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PC) 06Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (360) 07Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PS3) 08Singstar Svenska hits Schlager (PS2) 09World of Warcraft (PC) 10Ratchet & Clank Tools of Destruction (PS3) 11The Sims 2 Tonårsprylar (PC) 12High School Musical: Sing It! (PS2) 13World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (PC) 14Counter-Strike 1: Anthology (PC) 15Hellgate: London (PC) 16The Sims 2 Jorden Runt (PC) 17The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (DS) 18Football Manager 2008 (PC) 19En riktig jul - Julkalendern 2007 (PC) 20FIFA 08 (PS2)

http://www.dataspelsbranschen.se/lis...px?y=2007&w=46

crysis is number 3 in the amazon.de charts, and there are 4 pc games in top 10, 1 ps3 no 360 games and the rest belongs to nintendo

[impar]

Greetings!

The 14% (plus legitimate digital distribution) is representative of the number of PC gaming supporters. The number of PC gaming freeloaders is a lot higher.

Freloaders are slowly eroding PC gaming. And they always have some sort of excuse.

[fargo]

this is false and misleading information I would think that bit-tech could see through this like window pane
and not put it out there.