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.

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 ;-)

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.

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.

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.