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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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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".