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."

Comments

Meanwhile, in the EA's headquarters

[Alarash]

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!

Better graphics only go so far

[dar]

There's an obsession lately with better graphics. What I'd rather see is an obsession with interesting gameplay.

Console Game Sales Down Nearly as Much

[Soulslayer]

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).