Pc gaming is far from dying.

interesting article.



more here

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/878/878144p2.html

article from the pc gaming alliance.

http://www.developmag.com/news/29331/The-PC-market-is-not-dying-says-newly-formed-PC-Gaming-Alliance

Really, Gabe?

Some actual figures:

Half-Life 2 (PC): 4M
Halo 3 (360): 8M
Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (PS2/Xbox): 20M
Call Of Duty 4 (PS3/360): 10M
Super Mario Bros (NES): 40M
Gran Turismo 3 (PS2): 15M

Source: VGChartz.com

another interesting quote



The pc gaming alliance seems really interesting especially the firms backing it Activision, Epic and Microsoft, AMD, Nvidia, Intel, OEM firms Dell, Acer, Alienware and Gateway.

They said they want to provide a voice to the PC gaming market



anyway guess that shows pc gaming isn't dying and still at the forefront for hard core gaming. Either way I own a 360 and quad core PC beast. I hope each sector continues to advance and compete with each other can only mean good things for us gamers.

cant wait till futuremarks start making games http://www.futuremark.com/games/ especially if its like the other stuff they have done...

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PC games aren't dying at all. There's a paradigm shift in PC games, however. More than ever, PC games are being purchased as digital content. Retail sales figures generally don't account for this. Not only that, but subscription based revenue also makes up a huge chunk of the pie (consider WOW and other MMOs).

"Hardcore games" aside, another extremely profitable venture are the more casual oriented games. They're incredibly accessible, run on most specs (due to the casual games generally being programmed on a high level language), and don't involve massive installations. Some of the more prominent examples of sites focusing on these kind of games include Kongregate, Pogo, Nonoba, and Newgrounds). Their business plans range from user buying 'tokens' to selling ad space.

Finally, between hardcore and casual, are games like Maplestory and gunbound. Games that are free to play, but if you want premium content in the game, which is generally avatar dressing stuff, you have to pay. Both these games have raked in millions. Maplestory alone made millions in North America before they began aggressively marketing here and before they even had any english customer service!

In short, the PC games business is moving away from a upfront retail-centric business models to ones that incorporate digital downloads, micropayments (ie. buying tokens or in-game goods for real money), subscriptions, and advertising. Our current metrics for measuring game profitability does not properly account for these factors.

Exactly. This is the way forward. If the PC segment manages to do the exact opposite of what Big Media has done with music and movie downloads. Rather than trying to fight it in vain, you make it your business model. Altough mid-session games (the game is free but you pay for gear) has been extremely big in Asia for quite some time, we have not seen too much of it here. But it'll come.

Best part is we'll probably see a lot of interesting new game ideas in the process. Hopefully more studios will shy away from making games that are almost like console titles, but bound to be shadowing them, and do the stuff you can only really do on a PC.

Interestingly, the major selling franchise on the PC, The Sims, could hardly ever have been a console game. Not so much because of tech reasons, but rather demographics. With exponentially growing development budgets it's imperative for the PC scene to solve it's profitability issues-whether real or imagined. Otherwise the guys in suits won't hand out the good stuff from their coffers.

The Sims, 50 million sold, 70 with the expansion packs. The revenue from WOW dwarfs your entire list annually.

Super Mario Bros only sold anywhere near that high because it came with the NES itself. The Sims still beat it by a wide margin. Cherry picking data out of context never gets you accurate results, just useful ones for a particular point.

You're basically making the point that I have tried to put across. Which is that PC games can be very successful when they are specific to the platform (e.g. WOW or The Sims). When they try to mimic console games they can not match the bigger audience that consoles have.

As for cherry picking data, all I tried to point out was that Gabe Newell is talking silly talk when he tries to claim that it's a myth that console sales are way bigger than PC sales. With the exception of the giant sales of The Sims, which is not a good example as it caters to a whole different demographic, and WoW, being subscription based, very few PC titles ever come close to the sales figures that a good console title can generate.

This discussion started with the idea that the PC is dying as a gaming platform. I don't really believe that. I think it has some major problems that needs to be resolved, and those are in many ways being addressed--primarily through the pursuit of alternative revenue streams and distribution methods. Valve is on the forefront of that and I applaud it. But apples are still apples.

I don't subscribe to that particular dichotomy of "PC or console". I enjoy both and they have their different strengths and weaknesses, but it is important to remember that consoles do have a very large audience, and to many studios it makes more financial sense to produce console titles rather than PC games as it stands today.

Just to be clear on this, PCs aren't mimicing anybody. Outside of platformers and JRPGs, most of the best games out in recent history were originally slated for, or had a prequel on the PC, even Halo was originally supposed to be PC. Yes, it makes sense to release your game on the system that provides the best profit margin, but that doesn't make other systems mimics.

Semantics. What I meant is when they are sufficiently different in design as to not be viable on a console. Why are so many PC gamers so stingy about this subject?

Because others are stingy about giving credit where it credit is due.

You list a handful of titles, with the highest seller going back a couple decades, and use Half-life 2 as your example for the PC. A game that sold half as well as it's predecessor, is rumored to be improperly tracked, and isn't anywhere near the top of the chart.

Either you're attempting to mislead people on purpose, or you don't double check your sources and are mislead yourself.

Reality is the exact opposite of the claim, the console industry is dwarfed by the PC industry. The NPD only measures retail sales, and doesn't even track the other models at all. The PC is a rapidly expanding market with oodles of cash to be made, and versatility far beyond the narrow niche of retail box sales that the industry is tracking and pointing to as their doom.

Valve does not release sales figure for Steam, so what Newell says is just that, whatever he says. Estimates, based on info from Valve (http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article2271.asp), from 2005 had it at 25% of their total sales. This might, and probably, have increased since then but Half-Life 2 was released in 2004. The reason these sales models are not properly tracked is because they have been more or less inconsequential until pretty recently. This will change.



Yeah, all the big publishers just stay away from those oodles of cash because they really don't want to make money. And what exactly are you backing your points with? At least I present some figures, you just make claims.

There is no gloom and doom or hidden console conspiracy at work. A few years back publishers just noticed they were not really making significant profits from the PC market. Simple as that. It might take some time for some of them to return if this changes, but if the cash is there they will come.

It's of course obvious that platforms like Steam and Ironclad will be excellent ways to avoid the clumsiness of the boxed retail system. But this also goes for Xbox Live, Playstation Network and the Wii Channels. The PC platform is neither more or less versatile in this respect.



I'm neither mislead or trying to mislead anyone. This discussion stated that the PC market was dying. I questioned that, but stated that it does have some problems and is trailing behind the console industry in terms of sales. I showed figures to illustrate that, because it seems a lot of people don't know how many units console titles really move, and I felt those absurd quotes from Gabe Newell needed to be balanced with some real facts.

I have been an avid PC gamer since the very first days of that platforms existence, but I also happen to know it's not just all roses. Although I hope the PC market will return to it's former excellence through some of the means that have been discussed in this thread. I just don't make it black or white and it's neither PC or console. They have co-existed for years and will continue to do so.

One thing we should all consider is that a console is just a PC with a dumbed down interface (read Gamepad rather than keyboard), and that the capabilities of each new generation of console make them more and more PC-like, thus blurring the lines between PCs and Consoles.

PC gaming IS dying. Also, the earth is transforming into a giant kangaroo!!!


  



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