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."

Comments

You can't support this many titles forever.

[Kris_J]

I believe that video gaming is going to collapse into a small core of well known titles that sell very well, a group of niche titles probably six to eight times larger than the core that make a profit but not a huge one, then a big cloud of titles that are done for the love of it, not particularly for profit.

A bit like books. Anyone know enough about the book, music and video game industries to draw informed parallels?

Re:You can't support this many titles forever.

[Damien Neil]

I'm somewhat familiar with the science-fiction corner of the book market.

Despite constant cries about the "death of the midlist", there are more SF books being published now than ever. The average per-book sales are lower than they used to be, but the overall sales are up--in other words, the pie has grown, but not as fast as the number of slices in it.

Not very similar to the PC gaming industry, where both number of titles and overall sales appear to be declining.

Personally, I think the PC gaming industry is suffering from a lack of innovation, ever-increasing hardware requirements, poor quality control, and (most importantly) competition from consoles which mitigate many of these problems.

Re:You can't support this many titles forever.

[incubusnb]

from my perspective it seems that PC Gaming is growing into a Niche group, whereas Console gaming is growing worldwide by leaps and bounds. as much as i love playing on my PC, many games are just far more enjoyable on a couch with a dozen people passing a controller around, or even in bed staring at a TV. at the same time, i can't feel comfortable playing an RTS, TBS, or 4x on anything but a PC.

i predict the Gaming industry will, and has, evolved more like the Movie industry than Literature. but Games will go that extra step because they give you something neither of the other mediums give you, interactivity, and the fact that your not just playing as the charactor, you are the charactor. sure, there are many games that are made purely for money and have no heart put into them, but movies are the same way

as for comparing it to Music, thats apples and oranges, both entertainment, but both meant for a different kind of entertainment

Hmmm

[Paladine97]

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 ;-)

Re:Hmmm

[garibald]

Actually Microsoft is trying to standardize the PC as a gaming platform. Also Microsoft has a great number of affliated studios that produce games for both the X-Box and the PC platforms.

I agree that most independent games are less than AAA quality, which is fairly analogous to the movie industry.

Anyway, I doubt that the commercial PC gaming industry will ever truly die; the industry is just currently in the nadir of the innovation. I mean how many different FPSs that add a single tiny feature, tweak the graphics and change the art assets to fit into a different themed environment can gamers really stand before they start looking elsewhere?

lack of good PC titles so far in '04

[kryptoknight]

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.

I've noticed my game purchases have slowed down

[harikiri]

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.

Maybe the floodgates will open?

[BenVis]

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.

Blame ATI and Nvidia

[superpulpsicle]

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.

that's not all...

[wookieemoose]

Though i do believe that the increase in the price of the newer games coming out is partially responsible for my lack of purchasing latley, i also think that recent lull in creativity has also helped out. I notice when i'm heading out to Best Buy and CompUSA that i'm not seeing a lot of "new" games for PC. I think that if the PC gaming industry wants to spur a major sales boost, they're going to have to come up with some original ideas instead of half-hearted remakes and sequels and expansions and the like and focus on creating new ideas. there are even a lot of currently existing features found in a lot of games that could easily be combined! I remember not too long ago somebody tried making a game that combined FPS and RTS attributes into one MMO, but they didn't follow through.

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.

Factors affecting a niche market?

[ScorpiusFan]

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.

Re:Bah!

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, I've noticed that computer game stores which used to devote at least half the store to PC Games, now only devote a small corner to PC games.

Year of the laptop

[fr0dicus]

Are we still in year of the laptop (or was that last year) ?

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?