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Record Video Games Sales in 2001
night_flyer noted an article running @ ZD talking about how
2001 was a record year for video games with
doing 9.4B and PCs getting almost to 6B. Mentions Grand Theft Auto
3's huge sales, as well as The Sims. Also the X-Box, and Game Boy
Advanced contributing to the big numbers.
It's interesting that in a $9 Billion industry, there's so little money going to Linux gaming.
What's not to understand? If you're comfortable with open source and free software and these packages are all that you use, why would you go out and actually pay for programs when you haven't spent money on software in two, five, or even ten years?
As good of a "service" as it was to have Loki allowing folks to only install one operating system on their machines and be able to play games, their business model just wasn't feasible. Perhaps if they truly understood the mindset of their target consumers and that they just simply weren't going to be paying any money for software, then they would have avoided starting a company and failing soon thereafter.
I realize this will probabyl get modded down to tarnation, but I'm hoping that someone appreciates my opinion as it is and doesn't take it personally. I'm right, people.
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Tell me, who's gettin' screwd in this picture ?
yush
Any year that has the release of a new portable (Game Boy Advance), followed by the near simultaneous releases of 2 home consoles, (Game Cube and X Box) is bound to spark a large number of software sales.
The Game Boy has been basically the only portable on the market for years and I'm sure that there were plenty of people who ready to upgrade to a newer technology.
And I would think that Microsoft's gigantic marketing campaign, following September where we are all looking to stay home more caused a few consoles to be sold.
people dont have as much disposable income, and tend to purchase entertainment that can be "reused". Books & Boards Games are always big sellers in bad economies, video games just follow the logical progression.
what falters in bad economies are "night on the town" style entertainment like movies and fine dining (with the notable exception of bars)
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Think about it, the growing power of the pc and its cheapness is allowing more and more people to run the best games on it, at $50 a piece. Along with that you have the ps2 which has sold some insane number like 18 million units (including one to me last week). I bought it for final fantasy X but decided I wanted to play it with my little brothers so went out and bought 3 more games. This is probably the first year that we've had 3 consoles that are all roughly equal in the minds of users so maybe the more of a choice has lead some people to check out details alittle more which I know once I got into hardware specs I couldn't help but buy one. Just wish the ps2 and xbox were alittle cheaper, but theres always the gamecube and computer games to cover that market. I suppose thats the biggest thing, its no longer you buy a system at $200 (the original consoles, nes, genesis, sega cd, saturn, ps1, 3do, super nes, etc) and thats it. Now you've got your super systems (xbox, ps2), your less pricey but still nice systems (gamecube, gameboy advance, psone combo) and with everyone owning a computer, your very low cost games (darkvault of camalot, soldier of fortune, wolfenstein, sims, etc). Definitly looks like a good time to be in the gaming industry with so many options.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
With all this piracy going on, and yet they still make money.
How is that possible?
Video game industry should stop bitching about piracy
You're forgetting that the Console had 9B while the PC had 6B. You can pirate the PC games, but it's much harder to pirate a console game. I mean I can give a friend a warez copy of Diablo 2 or the sims, but unless I go over to his house and solder a chip into his PSX/PS2, there is no way I can give him a copy of GTA3.
Also notice that top selling pc game is a game that requires little Hardware. The sims doesn't support accelerated 3-d at ALL. Which is one reason that it always looks the same on every platform.
I'm not sure if international sales count in this, but the only game I've bought this year was Uplink that was featured on Slashdot. Other than that, nothing else has really caught my attention in the gaming market. Maybe if they came out with something new and interesting I might buy it.
What the game companies need to do is figure out innovative ways to break out of standard genres like FPS or RTS, which is probably why I liked Uplink and probably why The Sims did so well, because they aren't standard genres that have been rehashed over and over again and are just getting old now.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
The article mentions that the number for the console market ($9.4B) includes hardware, which in the console industry is sold at a loss.
The PC number ($6B) did not include hardware. I have no idea how much hardware was sold, but there are some pieces of hardware that were sold solely for the purpose of gaming (I know you didn't purchase that GeForce 3 Ti 500 to browse the Net). Is it possible that the PC market is actually bigger than the console market? Of course, it would be very difficult to ever nail down PC hardware figures.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005YTYJ/ qid=1013201247/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/