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PC Game Sales Dropped In 2005
Gamasutra reports on the not-terribly-surprising news that PC game sales were down in 2005. From the article: "Also doing excellently was EA's The Sims 2 and its two associated expansions, and The Sims franchise collectively took up four of the top ten spots. The rest of the top ten is made up of a mixture of the mass-market accessible games, such as Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, with the more 'hardcore' shooter and MMO titles such as Guild Wars and Battlefield 2."
Oh noes! Nasty, meany peer to peer! We need to make anti-piracy laws even stronger! Piracy is the only possible explanation for this drop in sales! What? What do you mean "no innovation, sequels and bugs are to blame" ? I bet YOU are a pirate! Show me your ID!
There's an obsession lately with better graphics. What I'd rather see is an obsession with interesting gameplay.
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
Who would have thought that PC game sales would drop off after a year seeing hyped up megasellers like Doom 3, Half-Life 2 and World of Warcraft? Especially after lacking any major hyped up titles (BF2 and GW weren't hyped nearly as much as those FPSes with flashier graphics)? Sure, there was Civ 4 but that's hardly going to make up for the lack of those hyped FPSes.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Okay, faster Internet can lead to increased downloading. That in conjunction with the continued use of copy protection can certainly make it more appealing to just download the game rather than purchase it out-right, particularly when downloading a game can take less time than running out and buying it. I do not put the blame for a decrease in sales on these factors, however. I think these are minor, although I'm sure that the developers would love to make faster downloading the scapegoat.
For me, the main reason (besides lack of time due the wife giving birth to another urchin) was that with few exceptions the games in 2005 sucked. Even games like Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, F.E.A.R, and Battlefield 2 really had nothing unique to them, but - damn - they're fun and I gladly bought all of them. Unfortunately, they're in the minority. The majority of PC games just were not worth putting down my money. That's all there is to that.
The skyrocketing popularity of games like World of Warcraft certainly would not have helped. Look at how many people are so engrossed by their favorite MMORPGs. Given the choice of playing another game or utilizing the MMORPG that often includes a monthly fee, I'm sure that most people figured that they might as well play the MMORPG that they're paying for rather than buy another game. Hell, I'm paying for it! I might as well just keep playing it!
The simple fact is that 2005 just didn't have a whole hell of a lot of PC games that were worth buying. History shows that if a game has mass appeal, it will sell and sell very well. The number of PC games that were released in 2005 is lackluster at best.
Funny thing about PC games and movies. Release crap and then be shocked when sales are down; so blame anything else other than the quality (or lack thereof) of the games and movies. Damn pirates! They prevented the gaming industry from releasing games worth buying -- apparently.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Or it could simply be the fact there were very, very few "must have" games released in 2005. I can't think of one game I wanted to rush out and purchase in the last twelve months (hard to think of any I wanted to download, either). But, of course, that can't be the reason. Nope, must be piracy.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060115-5983 .html
PC game sales are listed as being to the tune of $950+ million. Console sales figures are often quoted as being $10.5 billion in sales. But wait, that is not console software sales. That is the total sales volume for the physical consoles themselves, hand-held consoles, peripherals, and software. The home console system and peripheral sales account for $2.5 billion of that total (that's including a launch year numbers for the XBOX 360). The hand-held market accounted for $1.6 billion. Home console software sales accounted for $4.7 billion (a drop of 12% from last year) while portable system software rose 42% to $1.4 billion. Total unit sales of portables and consoles combined were down 6.3% from last year.
So looking at the raw NPD data (some of which appears to be suspect) the best way to sum up PC sales is to say that they fell marginally sharper than console sales. Effectively we are saying the proportion of console to PC sales has remained nearly the same from 2004 to 2005. And that isn't counting revenue generated by subscription services (for either consoles or PC's) or direct digital sales (which consoles are just starting to get into and PC's got into in a big way last year).
On top of that realize that the PC platform is really the equivalent to a single console platform. To really make a 1 to 1 comparisson you have to compare PC game sales figures to PS2, XBOX, XBOX 360, and Gamecube sales figures. By that measuring stick, the PC is the second largest after the Playstation 2.
To sum up, the sky isn't falling, but the market is changing. Cling to the old ways and sales figures from channels becoming increasingly less relevant to your industry and you are going to make the wrong decisions and miss the next wave.
BTW Personal computer sales rose 15.6% by volume (worldwide) over last year to a staggering $202 billion while PC video card/chipset sales (for NVIDIA and ATI only) rose to $4 billion (up 12.9% over last year).
Once more unto the breach dear friends...
The only interesting game relased in 2005, and the only I bought in last year was Civilization IV.
There is really nothing new in new FPSes, things planned for first Doom (like "not just hit ctrl to shot" or "monsters morphing") are still not implemented in any!
So called "strategy games" (RTSes) are just clones of Dune 2 with new units and multiplayer modes.
The Sims are nice idea (alife-like), they are popular, because girls can play them just like with dolls.
Stop bitching on p2p and start working you dumb game designers.