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PC Game Sales Trending Downwards
Thanks to GameDaily for it article discussing a perceived struggling in the PC videogame business. According to the article: "The overall PC game category, from January through May of 2003, was $471.0 million in the U.S. according to NPD estimates. 2004 is well off of that figure already, according to The NPD Group's industry analyst Richard Ow, who put a dollar figure of $360.0 million for the January to May 2004 period." However, Ow also notes: "There's still lots of sales ahead and major releases are pending, so there's still a wait and see factor", and comments on the recently-gold Doom 3: "It is the most well-known among the core gaming group, which is a smaller market, but a group that can still drive sales."
A bit like books. Anyone know enough about the book, music and video game industries to draw informed parallels?
Games done for the love of it, but not for profit?
;-)
Wow that would great, but it sure wouldn't make any economic sense. Games today are huge in scope requiring not just programmers but an army of trained graphics professionals. Somehow I don't think they would all be willing to work on something 'for the fun of it.' They have mortages to be paid you know
Does lower sales mean a bad market or lower quality?
Have you read my journal today?
Besides a few notable games like Battlefield:Vietnam and Far Cry, there were only few good titles released from January through May of 2004.
Also there must have been a lot of carry over sales from the slew of games released for the holiday season '02 as compared to the lackluster game sales of holiday season '03.
Things should really pick up for the PC with the releases of Doom 3, HL2, Rome:Total War, and the likes.
These days I'm far more inclined to spend money on a DVD movie or two as opposed to a computer game. The games that I do have I tend to play for several months. I don't have the time to play anything more than a few titles.
At present it's Battlefield Vietnam, and C&C Generals. I used to play heaps of America's Army, Enemy Territory and Dark Age of Camelot as well.
Most disappointingly, I noticed when I recently purchased splinter cell: pandora tomorrow - I played it for two nights then forgot about it. My Xbox is sitting under the TV gathering dust, while my DVD collection keeps growing.
These days when I walk into the local EBgames, there are very few titles that jump out at me. The handful that I'm probably looking forward to - I already know about and will pickup as soon as they appear. It's been a long time since I've gone in and made a on-the-spot purchase of a game I've never seen before.
Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
... when you put out a lower number of good games that people want to buy, people spend less money on games... who woulda thought it?
I don't know about you, but it seems a bit much to ask me to pay twice the price of a good DVD. Call me a nut, but I'm guessing the average production cost for a PC game is a bit less than that of a motion picture (even allowing for a smaller audience).
Even so, I'm happy to pay cash for a truly enjoyable and well-made game like FarCry or HL2. I'm even happier if I'm paying from a game from a little-known (and not-well-funded) developer like CryTech to fund their future endeavors.
I used to buy almost every new game I could get my hands on. Anymore, though, I see a game price on a store shelf and I spend a lot more time thinking over whether I really want it or not--the pricing has driven the product out of the impulse-buying range.
Karma
I'm running a pretty out of date PC these days. It keeps up with HL and its mods, but probably couldn't play a newer game like Far Cry. As soon as HL2 is out I'll put together something a bit more state of the art. This will probably encourage me to buy more games, too. I imagine many people have been waiting for the next big game (be it doom3 or hl2 or, poor suckers, Duke Nukem Forever).
It could be the market is just waiting for an excuse to upgrade before buying a bunch of latest and greatest games.
"Preceded by itself yields falsehood" preceded by itself yields falsehood.
I have said this before. No 2 other companies are more responsible for the success and failure of PC gaming. If video cards work like they should...
1.) There won't be 8 million forums for troubleshooting. You don't see tons of PS2 owners complaining about their games not working.
2.) There wouldn't be a new driver needed every month. There is no reason for regression. The old drivers should never work better than the newer ones.
3.) There wouldn't be overburned cards and returns. Christ, I shouldn't have to run a cable to my bathtub.
could a reason for this be that more and more programmers,writers, etc. are being drawn to console's due to the increasing price (and therefore decreasing probablity) of upgrading PCs in general? If the ability to make the new amazing games is going to rely on expensive upgrades for most gamers, doesn't it make sense that any one in the gaming industry is going to recognize the advantages of the console market due to their relativly inexpensive nature and therefore higher appeal to most gamers? last time i checked, buying a decent X-BOX game at 50 bucks is a heck of alot cheaper than buying Far Cry for the same price and having to buy a new vidcard at upwards of $200 to make it worth while.
We need to compare system requirements with the average home system. If games are relying more and more on higher end video hardware then there is naturally a smaller audience. It would be interesting to track the sales of less demanding titles and see if they follow the same trend as the high end eye-candy laden titles.
Well lets see, the year's two biggest titles, being HL2 and D3, havn't come out yet. I bet that those two games will make up a lot of the short fall.
With the improvement of console system technology, PC gaming has turned back into a niche market the past few years.
However, characeristics of the current PC gaming market could be reducing the need for customers to buy more titles each year:
1) Quality titles usually take time and insightful management with talented, dedicated employees to produce;
I don't think this point needs an explanation.
2) Replayability of older titles: While waiting for Half-Life 2 and Doom 3, I still play older titles like Starcraft, Counterstrike, and X-Com.
Since these titles still run well under XP, and offer good replayability, this helps to reduce my need to constantly purchase a new game every few weeks.
3) Utility from online gaming: Many people are fans of online games like the Battlefield series, Unreal Tournament series, Counterstrike.
Also, MMORPGs allow players to frequently experience new game content in exchange for their monthly subscription fees.
4) Mods/Customization: I still see new mods appearing every month for games like Half-Life and UT2004K. Mods also allow players to extend the utility of the old game title with new content.
5) Appeal to wealthy customers: Not to brag, but I plan to upgrade later this fall with the fastest video card and CPU I can acquire, so I can enjoy Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Dawn of War, Far Cry 2, and other system-taxing games at a high frame rate.
I have followed this same behavior for a number of years, including upgrading for Doom 1, Quake 2, Deus Ex, Splinter Cell, and probably other titles I like so much I'm willing to pay extra to ensure they run as best as possible.
There are other people, wealthy and not wealthy, who are also willing to spend extra money to have the same utility from computer games. I think I went $2,000 into debt when I upgraded my 386 to a 486 to play Doom 1, but, I wasn't just using the computer for gaming.
Let's see..the first half of this year..I can't remember one single PC game that I wanted to play. The last game I wanted to play on the PC was Far Cry.
Could it be that all the games that came out sucked?
I predict the next press release will say "PC games sales surged in the latter 2004 but I dunno why!" Of course you have to look at the games that were released in context of the hard numbers. mm w/ Doom 3 and hopefully Half Life 2 coming..the sales should shoot up!!
The PC game market gets a death notice about once a year for the last 20 years. Yet it lives on. All it takes is one or two 5 star titles to kick start the beast again. I think we know what those titles are this year.
-newman
Well, obviously it does to those who have posted here, to the article author, to GameDaily, to the gaming industry and even to you.
Functionally its still less incentive to make PC games. Pointing blame doesn't help.
What kind of corporate sympathy laden, bed wetting rationale is that?
Game Developing Asshat: Well, yes... we have reduced the quality of our products... but since nobody is buying them now, can we please be the victim?
Man, that's really twisted.
Pointing blame most certainly does help. Consumers have two very powerful means of showing displeasure with substandard products:
A: Withholding purchases for those products
B: Voicing their displeasure about those products to those who produce them.
You can hang that notion of consumer guilt by the door, because it's that kind of skewed thinking that created the problem.
It goes like this: Corporate entities have a responsibility to their consumer base if they wish to see a profitable return on their endeavor. That responsibility is to provide a product of desirable value. If they choose not to provide a product of value then the (intelligent) consumer has the responsibility to find another product to spend their hard earned money on. It's just that simple. There is no rule of commerce that says people must buy shite. I promise you, in the real world, if someone offers you a steaming plate of horseshit, you have the right to refuse it... and if they have the actually have the gall to expect payment for said horseshit; well, you have the right to inform them to shove their incredulity of your lack of consumer loyalty right up their ass -- as soon as they remove their head.
The other side of the issue is that that the big three (MS, Sony and Nintendo) have created console devices that effectively handle most consumer's expectations of "high end" games. It's very difficult to convince a family on a budget that the one (or more) console(s) in their home are not enough to handle their gaming needs. And when you add in the cost incurred by short-term PC obsolescence, well... let's just say the answer for the average (read: non-hardcore) gamer becomes obvious. I mean, my Xbox didn't need an upgrade between Halo and Doom 3... so why should I need to upgrade my CPU, RAM and graphics card on my PC that's actually newer than my console to play the same game?
That's the fault of the industry, plain and simple: Banking on people's willingness to purchase yearly upgrades for one product while providing a (relatively) equal product to another consumer base upgrade free.
In short, as long as game publishers rush bug ridden products (of less than original content) out the door, blatantly disregard the value of the average consumer's income and continue to divide the market between PC's and consoles... well, yeah, I think it's actually rather fair to point blame where blame is due.
rage
#SickNotWeak
I think that if PC gaming is to succeed in the future, it's imperative that game and card developers address the issues of game setup and configuration for less knowledgable users (from a sound, control, and graphics perspective). An average gamer may not know what 'AGP', 'DirectX' or 'Hardware Transform and Lighting (T&L) Capability' mean. He isn't able to judge how well his system can handle various texturing options. He may not even understand the concept of resolution or which ones his system supports. Yet some less knowlegable users that may feel compelled to try out to a new PC game are still put in a position that forces them to configure options blindly in hopes of getting some sort of visual performance they had envisioned when they bought the game.
Some may say that if a gamer cannot understand these sometimes simple options, then he shouldn't be playing PC games anyway. But in reality that statement summarizes the PC gaming industries inablility to bring on new users and proves my point. If the game and card manufacturers are unwilling to devote time to more simplified setup (even at the expense of graphics), then they probably deserve to see thier market share dwindle.
I think that it's unreasonable to to believe that the PC industry has to reduce its interfaces to the level which console game enjoys, but certainly a lot more could be done.
Whats the point in owning a lot of movies? I could never figure that one out. You can rent them for cheap and how often does your movie collection actually get used? Most movies you buy you watch a few times and then they sit on your shelf just like games you've finished. I never got why people could have collections of 100's of DVD movies. I can see owning a few or major releases that are worthwhile but I never understood the fascination with purchasing a huge movie library.
You say "... while my DVD collection keeps growing." yeah but I'm sure 90% of those titles are collecting dust as well. Out of curiosity, how many times do you watch the same movie?
I think the problem is that... there's too much quantity and not enough quality. Too many "me too's" and very little original ideas or IP at all. But the downward trend was caused by companies abandoning the PC for consoles. Case in point - Bioware, Microsofts 'Mechwarrior developers' (forget their name), Blizzard focusing on console's and MMO's when they should be doing Diablo 3 and/or Starcraft 2. (Both games with HUGE audiences that would most likely love a sequel). But lets face it...
1) PC games are too obsessed with hardware requirements (especially your video card) no one wants to upgrade their card every 1 to 2 years at 300 and 400+ a pop for the latest and greatest and possibly on top of that a CPU/Motherbaord + ram and/or powersupply.
2) There have been no good PC games in diverse amount of genre's in a long time. The last 'half decent' singleplayer RPG released for the PC was KoTor but you can get Kotor multiplatform anyway. Also there has been a dearth of good RPG's for the PC. NWN was a let down, there has been no word on baldurs gate 3 or whatever either and bioware success started out on the PC.
3) Too many FPS games. I'm sorry but everyone's flooding the market with FPS and/or MMORPG's. I'm thankful EA still ports the Need for speed series games to the PC because no one has a good game that can really compete in the racing/driving arena. Most of the companies stick to the tried and true formula. For instance how many mechwarriors, dooms, unreal tournaments, and whatnot do we really need? Every update fragments the multiplayer online game community.
4) No one's made a serious attempt at publishing console games and designing with PC hardware in mind, this means NO CRAPPY PORTS of OLD GAMES. They must release at the same time on all platforms or for the PC first and then the consoles. Part of a games sales is exclusivity. Doom 3 and Half-life 2 are first and foremost PC games and are exclusively better on PC. If console companies would try to design a game with the PC in mind as well as for their 'sacred' consoles from the start then we would see better sales and whatnot period.
Even though you say that I still think the problem is very difficult because on the PC you're trying to be all things to all people, so your drivers and software have to interact normally on different platforms, motherboards, chipsets and whatnot. This is why I never bought Via or 'non-intel' chipset motherboards because of the stupid random crashes, driver issues, and whatnot you'd have to deal with for going with a cheaper board.
You have to stay compatable with games that are many years old already that people continue to play and also you on a PC the operating environment is much more chaotic and non-standardized. I mean how many programs do people install on their computer that effect some OTHER program and whatnot, or what about different CD/DVD drives and copy protection, as a case in point, not all DVD/CD drives are tested against the copy protection so they end up having to disable it or tell their customers 'tough luck'.
It's also the PC game industries obession with copy protection and really bad QA so that their games require patching that ruins new users experience IMHO. NWN for instance from bioware crashed right out of the box if you played the game for a while or when loading/saving you could experience frequent crashes and whatnot.
I think on the whole MS and Intel and hardware companies are going to have to come up with some sort of "quality of service" initiative so that when you write drivers for hardware and whatnot they aren't going to 'break' something in some application/game on different platforms.
As good as competition (ATI vs. Nvidia) for the industry is, it has drawbacks in spreading support resources too thin (i.e. multiple chipsets, motherboards, etc).
For gaming having one chipset to support and one platform makes it easier to keep compatability from breaking. This is part of the reason why consoles do so well and even sony's PS2 had growing pains in the backwards compatability so we know that being backward compatable is difficult. But I think it has to start with Intel, Microsoft, hardware/motherboard chipset/video companies and whatnot to come up with a system that ensures any 'missing feature' and whatnot can be automagically compensated for.
The game industry isn't blameless, the games industry itself has to start thinking like console game companies: No patches, release once. If they were releasing buggy games on consoles any major showstopper bugs would kill their reputation as a company and probably make for a lot of unhappy customers.
The Diablo storyline is over. There is no reason for Blizzard to make a Diablo 3, except to cash in on the name. The only problem is every game Blizzard makes is a million seller, so there's no reason for that, either.
The Baldur's Gate storyline is also over, so, again, there is no reason for a Baldur's Gate 3.
I think this is one of the problems with today's gamers. Instead of wanting new titles, they want the old titles with better graphics and a higher number cat'd to the name. What's the point if all we're doing is waiting for sequel after sequel? Have we really exhausted all of the potential plots and names that we really have nothing to wait for other than sequel after sequel?
I think that from now until the end of this year is probably the most important period for PC gaming in the last decade. Simply put, it's do or die. The reputation and success of PC gaming is now inextricably linked to that of two games; Doom 3 and Half-Life 2. If they do well, PC gaming has a chance, if they don't make so much of an impact, I'd predict PC gaming will be effectively dead by the end of the first year of the next console generation.
Why? The PC gaming market has succumbed, in the last few years, to one of the most dangerous and destructive tendancies possible; paying too much attention to the hardcore fanbase. In doing so, it's undermined completely its own biggest selling point. PCs dominated the gaming scene so heavily during the 90s largely due to their technical prowess. When the console kiddies has Mario, PC gamers had Wing Commander. When the console gamers were playing the latest 16-bit Sonic the Hedgehog game, the PC had Doom. A gaming PC has always been the expensive option, but the technical lead over the consoles has been dramatic enough to justify the expense in the eyes of many. Other than that, the PC's advantages over consoles are fairly trivial; you can get mice and keyboards for two out of three of the current console generation, should you desire. Monitors allow for higher resolutions than TVs, but TVs are usually situated in more comfortable locations for gaming and console game developers are adept at compensating for this.
But this just hasn't happened during this console cycle. With a very few exceptions, modern PC games don't actually look any better than games for the current crop of consoles. Most PC developers have taken the whingings of the neo-luddites (a group particularly well represented here on slashdot) about "gameplay over graphics" to heart and have released games which are either spectacularly ugly (eg. UFO: Aftermath) or bland and generic, built on a dated engine licensed from an old game (eg. pretty much everything that uses the Quake 3 engine).
There are a few notable (and noble) exceptions. Far Cry was the first real indication I've seen in the last 3 or 4 years that any PC developers are taking the capabilities of the platform seriously. If Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 can spark a technical rennaisance in PC gaming, then there's hope for it yet. The PC has traditionally been made to look poor by a new console generation in the first few months, but the faster pace of technological change on the PC has allowed it to catch up and outstrip the competition very quickly. If the momentum hasn't been regained by the time the next generation of consoles appears, then it really is all over.
True. The PC gamer's expectations are higher than those of the average console gamer. PC games today do not have a chance unless they have the latest pixel shader, filter and bump-map effects. The monitor is far less forgiving than the television.
These features are complex to implement and artwork must be of a higher standard, because there will be someone, somewhere running the thing at 2048x1536. Together with mods and other improvements, this is also partly the reason why games on the PC have a longer life and sales are slower; people return to titles with their upgraded PC to enjoy the experience anew.
Supporting the PC platform properly costs time and money and I for one am very grateful that developers who do so, like id, still exist.
If a developer comes along with something unique but which may be considered a risk, there's practically no incentive to go for PC over PS2, unless there is some hardware/interface requirement; why limit sales? I found there was only so much Unreal/Half Life/id stuff I could take, and most other games work much better on joypads (IMO), and/or with multiple people (one PC is expensive enough to maintain!).
I can't see as many people upgrading this time just for Doom 3 or Half-Life, usually an upgrade is justified by something other than games at the same time, maybe a new version of Windows or some other significant requirement, but it's becoming more and more obvious that the only reason the average home user needs anything more than a bargain basement PC is for games.
On the bright side though, I don't think it will ever disappear, we're just seeing it find its natural shape. I don't think anyone can seriously believe that the PC game market as it is currently defined, with cutting edge hardware and requirements, could ever seriously compete with consoles on a unit or sales basis, in the same way that Mercedes don't compete with Honda (to use the old worn out automotive analogy).
Either way, there is precious little software taking advantage of this supposed boom in laptop sales, where the common-or-garden FPS need not apply (ever tried an FPS on a trackpad?).
There are also a lot more 'lifestyle' PC's around these days, like Sony's VAIO stuff. Is the platform changing too quickly for the developers to notice/react?
In January of this year, I pieced together a small LAN game machine in the hopes that I would be playing HL2 or Doom 3. It was a nice P4 2.8Ghz, 1GB RAM, 80GB SATA HD, Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB in a nice little Shuttle XPC.
It was great and I was highly anticipating the release of said games but then they were delayed. So here I was with this awesome gaming rig and no game to take advantage of it. Sure, there was BF: Vietnam and Farcry, both of which were entertaining but not what I wanted (Demons and Aliens are what I prefer to kill). Now all I ever play is Natural Selection. A half-life mod. My system is a little overkill for that.
In the end, I would have to say that there are several reasons for lack of PC game sales.
One reason is due to the fact that there haven't been many really good releases barring BF: Vietnam and Farcry.
Another reason is value. PC games can rarely be traded in or purchased in used condition. EB is the only one I know that does this. Gamestop used to but now they are only console. Blockbuster is also like that. I buy more used console games than anything else. It's easier to buy a $20 console game and get $2 in trade-in versus buying a new PC game at $50 and not being able to trade it in at all.
Three, portability and ease of use. I can take a console game to a friends house and easily pop it in and play it. A PC game only works if our computers have the same minimum requirements.
I'm sure there are other reasons but those stick out most in my mind.
Maybe you would get more PC sales if you:
1.) Released the game on PC.
2.) Release it on PC when you release it on [insert council name].
3.) Release them with the same features as the council game (Yeah I'm talking to you Microsoft, dbing it with no halo pc co-op, True we did get online, but Xbox got it with gamespy tunnel, ok so we got some new maps and we got the halo CE, I get your point, but I was looking forward to playing with some of my high school buddies that live on the other side of the country).
I mean common the prices are cheap enough, most people have enough on their system to play the game well enough, and there are all those cool features that people find out about. I guess a reason why they have dropped is because of pirating, but common these things don't help any, if I find a game I like I buy the game and I think there are a lot of people out there that do the same. Oh wait...
4.) Make the game good. (some of these games are just horrible!)
redvsblue.com
::BANG!::
Sarge: Did you just shoot yourself in the foot?
Simmons: Yeah I do that sometimes now..
EOM
Of articles comparing the sales of a single period of a single year to the same period of the next and calling that a fucking trend.
Much of these sales figures largely depend on what was actually released during said time period. So, what, we didn't have another Sims expansion pack released in Q1 of this year, so profits dropped from 2003 to 2004? You don't say...
Either way, it's silly to call this a "trend".
I wonder if the same trends hold true for all the re-packaged collections that have been coming out.
For some time now I've been saving a pile of cash by just buying things as they get re-released at a lower price point, or with more stuff. And it seems these types of compilations are coming out more quickly these days, so I've less time to wait before buying a game.
Of course only the larger games come out this way, and there is the slight chance that supply and demand might make a game harder to obtain some time after the release, YMMV.
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
Actually, i add to that the opposite argument: the PC market is a victim of its own success.
Let's elaborate:
- the PC has had some great games out in the past year. Those games have a good replay value, enhanced by the fact they work on internet and allow multiplayer setup (think UT, Ennemy territory, warcraft 3...).
- people are still playing those games
- the newer games do not bring much more
- there is only 24h in a day
Hence, why should you buy a newer, but less complete game if you are still happy with the one you have?
The market will pick up with the new expected games if they do not disapoint.
If the newer game is just the same as the last one with better graphics, only the wealthiest part of your audience (the ones able to upgrade) will be interested.
In my case, i used to play a lot of different games, switching very regularly. I now have less time to play and lately, i've played only a handful of games (but i still enjoy them).
This is the paradox of MMO for example. You are supposed to pass an (unhealthily) large amount of time on them, but they expect you to buy a new one every 2 months? Does the sales number quoted include the monthly MMO charges? That number was going up, last i heard...