Digital Distribution Numbers Speak To Health of PC Game Industry

An anonymous reader writes with this quote from PC Authority: "Over the years many voices have declared PC gaming dead. We have seen developers abandon the platform for consoles, citing piracy as the cause. Game stores have slowly relegated PC games from prime shelf position to one tucked away in the back corner — even Microsoft dumped AAA PC game developers from the company. It seems, though, that the demise of the PC as a games platform has been exaggerated, because until very recently sales data ignored digital distribution, with the latest data released by US company NPD revealing that 48% of PC unit sales in the US in 2009 were digital. That translates to 21.3 million games downloaded in the US. Interestingly, although 48% of games were sold online, it only worked out as 36% of the revenue. This highlights the fact that it isn't just convenience that has PC gamers shopping online; it is also that games are generally cheaper than in stores."

Comments

Of course.

[bbqsrc]

Who would have thought $99 wasn't due to the cost of packaging? The eyes, how they roll!

Re:Of course.

[NibbleG]

Are we the only ones up right now?

Re:Of course.

[NibbleG]

"Well Yeah, all that cardboard, plastic, unicorn meat is cheaper than the IP so we aren't spending much compared to what we have already invested..."

Re:Of course.

[Shanrak]

You can also attribute some of the big difference to Steam's great sales. Only a couple of my games list I purchased at full price some because I didn't want to wait otehrs because I wanted to contribute since it is such a good game: DAO, X3:TC, Sins of a Solar Empire, and a few others, almost all the rest of my games I bought in those sales where they were anywhere from 50-90% off and big game packs(THQ complete pack for 49.99, that comes out to be about 3-4$ per game).

Re:Of course.

[Pharmboy]

Steam has done more than offer great prices, they have increased sales. There are several games that I never would have bought if I had to pay full price. I bought Bioshock 1 when it went on sale for $15, which led me to buy Bioshock 2, once it went on sale for $25. Actually, I was going to pay the full $50 and just got lucky that it went on sale. But I have a couple dozen games that I would not have paid $50 for, simply because Steam had a reasonable price on them. A few I have seldom played, but don't feel bad because they only cost $10.

I know I'm not the only one, so it is pretty reasonable to assume that the lower prices drastically increase sales.

Re:Of course.

[stewbacca]

Steam makes it possible to buy 3-5 year old games for cheap. Best Buy doesn't designate any shelf space to games more than a couple years old. Some of us older gamers (cough, 40, cough) have lives, so we can't always get to the latest/greatest game until it has been out a couple of years. I just finished HL2, for example, and I'm halfway through Dragon Age. No rush to finish it before Dragon Age II, because I won't have time to play that one for a couple of years. By then, it'll be $19 on Steam.

Re:Of course.

[VGPowerlord]

A few I have seldom played, but don't feel bad because they only cost $10.

I can't access steamcommunity.com here, but I know I have more than 100 games on my Steam account. A lot were bought through various sales, some in packs with other games. Quite a few I wouldn't have bought otherwise.

Heck I can think of one game I've bought twice: Overlord... once standalone, once as part of the Overlord Complete Pack after the Raising Hell expansion was released on Steam. After I priced it out, it was cheaper to buy the complete pack than to buy Overlord: Raising Hell and Overlord II separately.

The kicker here is: I've never finished Overlord. I've never even started Overlord II.

I've probably played half the games on my Steam list once or never.

Re:Of course.

[gorzek]

This is my philosophy, too. Who needs to spend $50 to $60 on the latest and greatest games when you can pluck plenty of gems in the $10-20 range from a few years ago? Being able to play the latest game right now is just not worth the premium to me, and I suspect many gamers feel the same way.

There will always be the die-hards who have to have the new, hot game on release day, and are willing to pay big bucks for it. But it's nice to have options such as Steam and GOG.com for those oldies but goldies.

Re:Of course.

[stewbacca]

It used to be the latest/greatest game was really the, well, latest and greatest. Now days, the technology doesn't really change fast enough, and the market is flooded with bad games, so there's no harm in cherry-picking some quality games from a year ago.

For example, when Uncharted 2 came out, I went and bought Uncharted for $19. I finished it in a week or so. Maybe I'll go get the sequel, but I'll wait until it drops in price. In the meantime, I've got more 2-year old games to chose from than I have time to play.

Re:Of course.

[Pharmboy]

That is the point: Some people (teens) want the latest, greatest NOW, and will pay 50-60 bucks. Those of us in our 40s still love to game but won't pay that much for new games that might not run that great on our 3 year old computers anyway. By offering older games at a great price, they are *definitely* expanding their base and keeping gamers for life. Actually, I bought Bioshock 2 for about $25 and it is highly acclaimed and has been out only 6 months. It was on sale, normally $50, and honestly worth it but I am more patient, usually.

Now that I look at it, I actually spend MORE per month buying less expensive games than I did when I had no choice but to buy newer games only. Obviously, there is a limit to this, and you can't sell new blockbusters for $9.99 and make money. More so, I still buy 2 or 3 $50 games a year, about the same as I always have, so getting other games for cheap is certainly NOT keeping me from buying the big games from time to time. If anything, it is keeping gaming as my past time of choice because it offers a great value overall.

Re:Of course.

[RsG]

Gonna chime in here and second (or third?) the sentiment that Steam is a good platform for older games. I've picked up at least three games there that I missed in stores, and that were on my bargain bin list. Couple others I probably wouldn't have considered at all if they either hadn't been cheap or on sale. And at least two games I only got after trying the demo on steam (hear that game companies? Demos work. Make them more often).

Apart from the older games, I've also taken a liking to some of the indie titles they have up, which is a habit I'd definitely recommend to anyone feeling a bit sick of the current crop of same-y titles offered by the majors.

Re:Of course.

[WhiteDragon]

This is my philosophy, too. Who needs to spend $50 to $60 on the latest and greatest games when you can pluck plenty of gems in the $10-20 range from a few years ago? Being able to play the latest game right now is just not worth the premium to me, and I suspect many gamers feel the same way.

Obligatory XKCD

History repeats itself

[zr-rifle]

The demise of the PC has been called for for at least 20 years now. I remember similar headlines in the early nineties, claiming that home computer gaming industry would be beaten to pulp by japanese consoles like the Sega Genesis or the Super Famicom, mainly because it would be impossible to pirate a cartridge.

Nowadays, we have a massive user base connected to a cheap digital distribution network, the Internet, with no vendor lock on. You need the right technology and strong commitment to take advantage of such a powerful platform: that's what Valve did with Steam and, seven years later, it's still a great success.

Re:History repeats itself

[SharpFang]

The idea that better protection means guaranteed market dominance is inherently flawed.

People quite often choose a platform strictly for its being hackable, for its flawed protection scheme. And they will buy some games while pirating more others, generating some revenue for the flawed-protection market and none for the perfect-protection one. The other will get much better revenue per customer, but much less customers. And of course they will never get the idea just WHY does their console sell worse?

Re:History repeats itself

[Dencrypt]

I guess they never heard of the Super Wild Card Backup Station back then.

Re:History repeats itself

[Xest]

The problem is, I'm not convinced that the prediction is actually wrong, and this article despite what it says, seems to fail to demonstrate that.

To put the statistic they gave as an example into context, 21.3 million total PC games sold online in the largest market for games purchases is roughly around the same amount of units sold as for an individual game in roughly the same period- Super Mario Kart wii.

That figure doesn't help their case, if a single console game can outsell every PC game distributed online in a similar period in the largest market for games then I'd say PC gaming does in fact have a problem still.

Even if it's not declining, it's clearly a relatively small market, it doesn't look good when you factor in console sales of games beyond Super Mario Kart Wii like New Super Mario Brothers, Wii Fit, Call of Duty MW2, Uncharted 2 and all the rest.

I'm sure some people will jump on me for hating the PC, but that's stupid I don't, particularly right now as I'm sat like a kid at Christmas hoping my collectors edition of Starcraft II arrives tommorrow and I don't have to wait until next week, but I'm not convinced that pretending there isn't a problem, when there is clearly at least one problem- that the PC is, relatively, an extremely small market is the best way forward. As for whether there's a decline, it's hard to tell, but as I've pointed out previously, this list is a little disconcerting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_video_games

Most of the top selling PC games are years, many over a decade old now, newer PC games just aren't even breaking their way onto the list. If the PC games market is healthy then why aren't many modern games managing to do this? Particularly as there are more PCs in the world than there have ever been nowadays.

It's a sad state of affairs, but for whatever reason it's pretty easy to see why many companies focus on console platforms nowadays from a commercial perspective. Personally I wish I knew what the answer was, I don't really know how the state of PC gaming can be improved as much as I'd like it to be- I'd love nothing more than to have the glory days of PC gaming back when we saw the likes of Doom, Quake, Syndicate, Theme Park, Magic Carpet, the early C&C games and so forth, undoubtedly the PC has the most varied and innovative gaming history of any platform IMHO.

Re:History repeats itself

[Zironic]

Seriously, you can't compare games sold during 2009 in the US to games sold from 2008 to 2010 worldwide, that's silly. Mario Kart Wii sold a million copies in the US in 2009, in the entire 2008 to 2010 period it sold 5 million copies in the US. The other 16 million were worldwide.

Re:History repeats itself

[Xest]

But we're talking about a single game vs. the entire US games market. Even if you look at US only for the exact same period then you only require literally a handful of console games in the US to outsell the entire PC market. That's a big deal and no amount of disputing the relevance of a particular example metric will change that. I'll even give you another example that you simply can't dispute with complaints about invalid comparisons, Modern Warfare 2 in the US sold more (~14mill) on the 360 and PS3 in just a few months of 2009 than quarter of what the PC shifted of every game both digital and hard copy for the entire year, factor in sales of the likes of New Super Mario Brothers for a couple of months and you'll be at about a half- in less than 10 titles over just a few months consoles outsell the PC's entire years units, how bad do you think it looks when you take every console game across the entire year? It looks even worse when you factor in the much lower average price of PC games too.

At the end of the day however you cut it, the PC market is absolutely dwarfed by the console market and that's the fundamental problem with discussions about the health of the PC market- it's certainly a fair size yes, but also it's still absolutely dwarfed by the console market, and as such that is why it gets largely neglected by developers still. More importantly, it's why saying "things are fine and dandy in the PC gaming world" is akin to simply burying your head in the sand, and doing so will only make the problem much worse, ignoring it or pretending the problem doesn't exist wont make things better.

Re:History repeats itself

[smallfries]

Wrong, wrong, wrong wrong. In fact you are so wrong that I'm undoing mods to reply to you.

You take the figures from the summary and then produce some figures from your arse, claim they are bigger and therefore the article is wrong? Who says that Super Mario Kart wii sold 21.3 units in the US in 2009? Your claims are at odds with wikipedia which claims that 22 million copies have been sold world-wide in the two years since launch.

Although I can't find annual sales figures for consoles in 2009 I have at least looked a bit harder than you to find some real figures: NPD sales figures for the US in 2009 show 22.6 million units sold for the Wii, 20.4 million units for the xbox360 and 8.7 million for the PS3.

So the PC market for digital downloads is the same size as the most popular platforms, and the total PC games market is twice the size. Quite the opposite of your conclusions, but then I used real numbers instead of those stored up my arse.

Re:History repeats itself

[Zironic]

I'm not sure where you're getting that number from since NPD says the total US sales up to march 2010 is 10 million, the first month it sold 6 millionish.

If you take the top games of 2009, you have:

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Activision 8.82mil
Wii Sports Resort Nintendo 4.54mil
New Super Mario Bros. Wii Nintendo 4.23mil
Wii Fit Plus Nintendo 3.53mil
Wii Fit Nintendo 3.60mil
Add them all up: 24.72 million.

While that shows that the console market is bigger then the PC market it shows that it's not nearly as dwarfed as you seem to think it is. You seem to keep stumbling over wildly inaccurate numbers which causes your conclusions to be off. You also have to take into account from the publishers perspective it's rather expensive to develop separate versions for the PS3 and XBOX360 and that the higher price on Consoles doesn't go to the publisher, it goes to the console maker as their publishing fee.

Re:History repeats itself

[Zironic]

Nice, you managed to find the totals. NPD isn't very friendly to people that want to get data for free since they're in the business of selling it so I just managed to find the top 5 games.

It's interesting that the PS3 sells so abysmally, that explains why Activision said they're about ready to stop developing for the PS3 all together.

Re:History repeats itself

[Xest]

Apologies, I did get the MW2 number wrong, I took the worldwide figure. Despite that, even with a handful of titles for just the US market top 5 you've showed a disparity but factor in all titles, and then look at the disparity grow as you look at the global stats also then it's a bit of a stretch to say my original assertion that the PC marked is dwarfed by the console market was in any way off the mark, it really is, and by quite a large amount.

Regarding extra costs of console games going to manufacturers, what percentage of digital PC sales goes to the digital distributor in comparison?

Developing a PS3/360 version is in no way more costly than developing for the PC, particularly as most companies use middleware like the Unreal engine that handles the majority of this for them. Developing and testing for the PC is inherently more expensive due to the massive amount of ever changing hardware and software combinations devs may face. This is in fact one of the advantage of developing for fixed platforms.

Even though I made a mistake with the MW2 numbers, this doesn't mean my conclusions were off, even your own figures show a noticable disparity, and that's with a mere 5 titles.

Re:History repeats itself

[Xest]

"Although I can't find annual sales figures for consoles in 2009 I have at least looked a bit harder than you to find some real figures: NPD sales figures for the US in 2009 show 22.6 million units sold for the Wii, 20.4 million units for the xbox360 and 8.7 million for the PS3."

Units of what exactly? I'm a little puzzled, you're suggesting you can't find annual sales figures, and then suggesting you have some annual sales figures and then separating them out and suggesting the PC sells more? This makes very little sense. Here's some real figures:

http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly.php?date=2010&reg=America&date=2009

The right hand column contains the total software sales, as you can see, these destroy your assertion that PC sales are in any way close to console sales.

Re:History repeats itself

[Zironic]

Using your numbers we're looking at 45 million for the PC, 46.6 million for the PS3 and 75.5 million for the XBox 360. That does not look like a dead or dying PC market to me.

If we ignore the Wii for a moment since it seems to sell a completely different breed of games then the other platforms, then the PC has 25% of the market, PS3 25% and XBox 360 50% of the market which makes the PC competitive. I think you should wait with exclaiming it's dying until people stop making AAA titles for it and it's market share drops below 5%.

Re:History repeats itself

[VGPowerlord]

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Activision 8.82mil

I hope you remembered to pull out the PC sales figures for this game, since they wouldn't be part of this total.

Re:History repeats itself

[tibman]

You really shouldn't leave out PC MMO games. An MMO with a mere 100k subscribers is around $15mil a year. And if the game continously expands, you can keep that user base for years and years. EVE-Online has been around for over six years?

There are probably a lot of accountability problems too. It might be difficult to tally all the console sales but pc sales are impossible. What about flash games that rely on ad revenue? (AHHH!) What about game developers that don't go through publishers.. you can buy straight from their site like World of Goo? Open Source games like freeciv? game mods?

I think PC games are just as popular as they ever were and the games are far far better than Doom/Quake/Duke/C&C. The best part about PC gaming is anyone can make and sell a game! I feel bad for console gamers.. they get the same crap over and over. I atleast get RTSs like TA, SC2, Majesty 2, DOW2, CoH. Hack n slash games like Dungeon Seige, Hinterland, Spell Force 2, Alien Swarm. City builders like Dawn of Discovery, Settlers 7 (haven't played it yet though). MMOs like WoW, Warhammer, EVE-Online, Gekkeiju. Oddballs like Spore and M&B: Warband.

The state of PC gaming right now is fantastic.

Don't be too alarmed that Doom is way up on that list.. because you can STILL buy it today and play it today. It's at the steam store for only a few bucks. Also, not sure if it's for a similar reason.. but the books with the most copies in circulation are some of the oldest, like the Bible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books

Re:History repeats itself

[Xest]

See, this is what I meant why I talk about people burying their heads in the sand.

Things like resorting to completely ignoring the statistics for the largest sellers of all with some obscure justification that it covers a different market. Or things like splitting the consoles apart and infering that somehow makes things better- it doesn't, the fact is the PC is competing with all these systems for games sales.

Many companies actually have stopped making AAA titles for the PC, that's precisely the point. Of those AAA titles that are still produced for it, how many are anything more than quickly made, poorly tested ports of the console versions?

Why are next to no new PC titles managing to break onto the list of top selling PC titles, why is it still full of games that are close to 10 years or more old often failing to break even 1 mill? Why is this true even for games that are ports of multi-million selling console titles?

You can discount the Wii, split the figures in any way you want, but it simply doesn't change these facts, and it certainly does nothing to try and improve the situation.

Re:History repeats itself

[Zironic]

Because you're looking at a list on wikipedia that noone bothers to update?

I mean if you look at Activision, the third biggest publisher in the world, out of the 7 franchies they plan to make hundreds of millions from each, 3 are PC exclusive (WoW, Diablo and Starcraft).

While there are many PC games that are ports from Console, there are also many Console games that are ports from PC, like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Supreme Commander 2 etc. The fact that the Xbox 360 is just a glorified underpowered PC makes the conversions pretty trivial in both directions.

Re:History repeats itself

[smallfries]

Are you really so hard of thinking? I criticized you for pulling figures out of your arse. Your response is even worse. Let me explain it to you in small pieces to increase your chance of understanding.

Units of what exactly? I'm a little puzzled, you're suggesting you can't find annual sales figures, and then suggesting you have some annual sales figures

I don't have access to actual sales figures. But I provided estimates from a reliable source (NPD is recognised as an industry standard for estimates of units sold in the games market and they have access to a lot of figures that the public do not).

So then you provide some figures instead of pulling them out of your own arse. Let's see where they come from shall we:

* Polling end users to find out what games they are currently purchasing and playing
* Polling retail partners to find out what games and hardware they are selling
* Using statistical trend fitting and historical data for similar games
* Studying resell prices to determine consumer demand and inventory level

That taken from http://www.vgchartz.com/methodology.php. Or in other words they pull them out of their ass. So which do I trust more: a market research company trusted by the industry who estimates sales at 20 million based on access to non-public info, or somebody with a fucking Z in their name who ran a phone poll and estimated 100 million units......

Hmmmmm. Keep trying, you may actually find a source to back up your imaginary figures you look hard enough.

Re:History repeats itself

[blahplusplus]

"The problem is, I'm not convinced that the prediction is actually wrong, and this article despite what it says, seems to fail to demonstrate that."

Unfortunately for you, not being a PC gamer never noticed that the game quality of many PC developers games declined. Epic's unreal 3 was not better then UT2004 and they had the balls to complain about sales when they had been releasing the same game for years on end. There is something called franchise fatigue. With Unreal 3 they moved to consoles and released gears and then had the nerve to blame the lack of sales on piracy? Many game developers and publishers are run by incredibly inane and stupid people.

To put it another way - if you can't compete on the PC you go to console where anyone will buy your pap. Many console games have been getting worse over time. I used to buy and play final fantasy series religiously but over time they kept taking more and more of the fun aspects out of it and just making it all cinema and flash.

The real issue is the game industries technolust drove their costs for development up. Game developers business sense is almost non existent. Look at the lack of market research by Psychonauts developer or Planescape torment. Both of these developers wanted to blame gamers for why their games were flops, the truth is they were developing "art" games - games for themselves rather then what gamers wanted.

Being a game developer means that you're developing games _for others_ not for yourself, and too many developers never get this through their heads and wonder why they are such failures at the business end.

Re:History repeats itself

[Zironic]

To be fair, that's the same methodology that NPD uses, it's just that NPD is generally considered better at it.

Re:History repeats itself

[cgenman]

How about this one: on its opening month, Modern Warfare 2 moved an impressive 6 million combined on 360 and PS3 in North America, but only 170,000 on PC. If we presume that there is an additional %50 for digital sales, the PC is still seeing less than 10% of the sales of the 360 and PS3 averaged together.

As someone who deals with publishers regularly, you expect a PC title to sell about %10 of what an identical console title will move. Breaking 150k on a PC is a strong achievement. 150k on a console would be beyond a failure.

There are some complicating factors in PC, though. For one, per-unit sales do not map nearly as cleanly with money spent or profitability. There are a lot of titles in the $5 clearance aisle that move on impulse, and buffer up the raw number sold without actually helping developers to eat. There are titles that move better on PC than on console due to interface and other questions. Flight Simulators, RTS, and MMO's, while the floor fell out of all of them a while back, they still do better on PC's than consoles. Sadly, though, the upper end a PC-only game can realistically expect to move these days is about 500k units, which is a break-even point for a moderately conservatively budgeted title.

World of Warcraft also sucks up a genuinely stupid amount of user dollars every year. It is in and of itself 1 Billion dollars per year. But it's really not fair to assess the income potential of future games on that particularly freakishly large nugget (many companies have gone broke trying). And when you're talking about the overall "health" of the PC gaming industry, it is hindering development rather than helping.

Also, PC as a gaming platform is permeated by flash and other downloadable mini titles, many ad-or-microtransaction supported. These do not bridge over to consoles well, which is where developers actually pay the rent. It takes a very different title, development methodology, and mindset to even survive on the PC side of things.

Overall though, it's difficult to make a giant blockbuster-sized game on the PC and expect to make your money back. Blizzard is one of the last developers trying it, with Starcraft and Diablo rehashes coming out soon. But, again, Blizzard is raking in 1 BILLION dollars a year from WoW. They can afford to take risks like that. Other than them, there is an updated Civilization soon, and then nothing but console ports as far as the eye can see. And even those are becoming thinner, as chasing the last 100k in sales might not offset the additional development and supply chain costs.

Poke around http://www.vgchartz.com/ for a while and see how a PC release generally does against a console release. Their numbers aren't thorough, and sometimes they're off by a lot, but they're usually in the right ballpark. I don't see anything released in the past few years that broke 2 million units on the PC.

Re:History repeats itself

[Zironic]

Well, when you make games purely for the money you end up where EA and Activision are. The most profitable way to make money is to first make a good game in a popular genre (FPS, Rythm games, Sports etc) then you keep releasing that game each year with a slight upgrade and a new title so instead of making $50 you can get a single consumer to pay upwards to $250 for what's basically the same game. (Technically they're not shafting their customers since they do generate a fair bit of new content for each upgrade)

However the problem is that it's really hard to tell if that first game will be successful, that's where all the other developers come in, even though the majority of innovative developers will go bankrupt a number of them will find new and interesting game mechanics that the business developers will use to make better games, if noone did that the game industry as a whole would be worse off.

Re:History repeats itself

[blahplusplus]

"However the problem is that it's really hard to tell if that first game will be successful, that's where all the other developers come in, even though the majority of innovative developers will go bankrupt a number of them will find new and interesting game mechanics that the business developers will use to make better games, if noone did that the game industry as a whole would be worse off."

I agree with some of what you say no doubt about it, but the real issue is game developers have created more work and more cost because of their technolust. This means they lack business sense. It's not "just making money" it's - the lack of asking hard questions like - is what we're doing going to make the game better vs the time invested? Most of the gaming market today focuses on graphics and that is where the majority of their costs come from so too much money is spent developing shallow forgettable games that don't last. Can anyone really name a game in the last 5 years that has the gameplay staying power of civilization? Probably not.

The game industries model is fundamentally broken. You have console companies forcing new hardware products out the door in order to create pseudo-monopolies. The PS2 had a very long lifespan and decent chunk of good games on inferior hardware to the xbox and Gamecube. The lesson was not learned though - that costs matter game quality matter. Much of the PS2's game library was utter garbage, the real issue is that many developers simply have made their costs so high in certain aspects of development, not enough money goes into the meat and potatoes of the game.

I'd say right now gaming as a whole is pretty mediocre and it's going to take decades to trim development costs to a point where they can focus on gameplay again.

We're seeing really high quality graphics but shallow games. Transformers : War for cybertron comes to mind, a game that could have been been a true classic but didn't bake long enough in development, so it just ended up feeling like a gears of war reskin minus gears fully implemented cover system.

Re:History repeats itself

[smallfries]

Some interesting tidbits and annecdotes in there, thanks for that. While most of what you say does paint the same picture that Xest had in mind there is still a lack of definite figures. The issue that I had with Xest wasn't really his opinion that PC gaming is dead, it was his statements of fact that were just hot air, and then his second worse attempt to cover it. I'd be quite happy to admit that consoles are killing PC games in term of sales.... but for once I would like to see some definite evidence rather than inflated opinion (on his part) and interesting annecdote (on yours).

That 170k sales figure for MW2 in November is taken from NPD. Yet it was NPDs figures that I quoted as placing the non-digital download part of the PC games market as being on par with each of the major console platforms.

Obviously something is wonky as the same numbers don't simultaneously prove that the PC market is both on par with a major console and a fraction of the size. Do you thinking that picking one months sales for one title might introduce a teeny weeny bit of skew into the data?

Re:History repeats itself

[cgenman]

The numbers I'm quoting are for an individual title (most titles follow the same path, but don't get coverage). When you're looking at the possibility of developing an individual title for the PC, Those are the numbers you care about. The NPD numbers you are quoting are for every title in the industry. Those include a LOT of deep discount titles on clearance, which are more of a sign of decay than health.

Also, I try not to compare NPD numbers from different articles. They're a precise enough organization that one may include accessory sales, another may include handheld or iPhone sales, etc. But journalists tend to blur those important distinctions away and present them as just "total sales!" Sourcing with NPD, I've found, is important. Comparing across different sources of NPD numbers (or different organization's numbers) will just lead to madness.

Also, the NPD is not always right. I'd put their normal margin of error at +- %20. At least they tend to be consistent in the direction which they're off in.

Here's an NPD figure. The US retail console games market was 10 billion dollars in 2009. The retail software game market was 500 million. That pegs the retail pc market at 5% of the overall retail market. Taking into account digital download, and you're still shy of 1 billion. That's still less than %10 of the console market. Add in WoW, and you're up to %20 of the console market. But again, you'll go broke chasing WoW.

While NPD is struggling to categorize digital download sales on consoles, their estimates put retail to digital sales at 9 to 1. Numerically then, digital downloads on consoles are even bigger than digital downloads on PC's. We'll have to see if they're financially as such if those numbers are released (6 grand for a report from NPD is a little pricey to just satisfy some curiosity).

I can't get into as many hard figures as I would like, since I've been privy to figures that aren't public. But the public figures are bad enough on their own.

You can survive on the PC market with some creativity, luck, and timing. But the PC market is quickly becoming like the Arcade market in the 90's: second string.

And it wasn't always this way. Before the release of this generation of systems, PC gaming was the reputation to beat. Like Arcades, for a while nothing could touch PC gaming for visuals, flexibility, and raw power. It had been in a little decline since RTS's and FPS's had fadded away, but online was definitely driving adoption. And, of course, who wouldn't want the mature development tools of a PC? Then this swath of networked online consoles came along, and you could play games in high definition that beat out 1,000 PC's for visuals, and you could play with all of your friends. Also, people moved on from gaming friendly desktops to laptops that took a huge power hit for convenience and durability. And the 360's dev tools are pretty much based directly on PC dev tools, so there wasn't much loss there. If anything, not having to target many different configurations has made this generation of consoles actually easier to develop on than PC's, for once.

Nobody wants to see PC's fading from prominence. But for the moment, that's where things are headed.

Re:History repeats itself

[Zironic]

Well, the problem that the gamers are silly, if someone makes a good game with 5 year old graphics everyone boycotts it. It's sorta irrational because we used to play games 20 years ago and still have a ton of fun, but if you tried to sell any of those games now everyone would be "naah, that game looks crap".

Re:History repeats itself

[cheesybagel]

To me this seems a rather disingenuous way of analyzing the market. I have heard similar claims to these many times in the past and the PC game platform kept chugging along just fine as consoles imploded. Remember Atari, 3DO and Sega?

Many of today's games are "console ports" because there is little difference between doing a Xbox360 title and a DirectX PC title. To reach a wider audience the developers often target older hardware specifications, which means there is little visual difference between console and PC titles.

As for the playability of Flash games, it is usually not that dissimilar from that of other causal gaming platforms including consoles. What is different is the distribution method, and less often the business model.

I also find it interesting that people chide Blizzard for hogging the PC gamer market with World of Warcraft, when Nintendo has much more of a chokehold on software in their games platforms, yet I see much less complaints. What I do notice is that I more often see small publishers succeeding with PC titles (which they might port to a console later) than titles done for the console first, although things like the Xbox Live Marketplace were a step in the right direction.

Often well known console titles are the equivalent of Hollywood blockbuster movies done using a similar business model. i.e. the developer gets a huge cash advance from the publisher to produce a game (a process which takes several years and dozens of people). Then the game goes for sale and the "profits" evaporate as marketing and distribution fees. Developing studios are perennially either on the verge of going bankrupt (most common event) or awash with cash (which is promptly spent on hookers and booze). The publishers get so risk adverse you start seeing Hollywood like malaise such as brainless sequelitis. EA was well known for this at a time (EA Sports series natch) and got on the verge of bankruptcy themselves because of it.

I do not remember a single developer who got rich, or well known, developing for consoles first and foremost. Unless they work as employees (not founders) of one of the console manufacturers themselves.

Re:History repeats itself

[Xest]

Can you provide a link please to where exactly you got those NPD estimates? You say you don't have a link to actual sales figures again, but that you got them from an NPD estimate- tell me, is that an estimate by them, or by yourself?

The point about VG Chartz figures is that they are at least based on a number of metrics that can give a rough impression of that market, but they're not going to be so wildly out that they're about 5x to high which is what you're suggesting.

However, again, it really doesn't matter at the end of the day, because the fact is PC game sales aren't doing well, and if you want to pretend otherwise fine, but it wont change that fact.

Re:History repeats itself

[Xest]

"I mean if you look at Activision, the third biggest publisher in the world, out of the 7 franchies they plan to make hundreds of millions from each, 3 are PC exclusive (WoW, Diablo and Starcraft)."

Oh come now, you're referring specifically to Blizzard here, who have always been a primary PC developer, but they're unique in that stance, id Software and Valve are two of the other few remaining major studios that also still does this, but even they're heavily console focussed as well now with Valve putting effort itself into working with consoles now.

The sad thing is you were attacking my posts for using problematic statistics, of which I admitted I got wrong, and yet here you are in your last couple of posts picking and choosing- you cut the Wii out of your previous post, and then tried to split the consoles up, now you're cherry picking the publisher that only relatively recently picked up the largest PC house remaining. Don't you see why that's a bit hypocritical?

I'm not sure why you're suggesting Mass Effect is a PC port, do you have any evidence for that? I'm also pretty sure you're not correct about Dragon Age being a mere port too. By port I'm referring to the likes of Gears of War, The Saboteur, and GTA which were ported to the PC after the console versions were done and were clearly of much lower quality- if they're released for console and PC at the same time then that's rarely a port, because they've been developed specifically for both platforms at release. Mass Effect at least has always been been one of the 360's flagship titles hence why it was originally a 360 exclusive.

I'm not sure what you mean by classing the 360 as an underpowered PC, this is a little short sighted. Whilst spec-wise it might be lower than some people's PCs this ignores the fact that it's a unified architecture dedicated to gaming and doesn't suffer some of the inherent slow downs that the generic PC architecture causes. This is why despite being lower spec towards the end of their life, consoles still often manage to outperform PCs in terms of visuals and performance. Having to optimise on the PC is a nightmare too because there are so many different hardware combinations you have to optimise for, this often leads to PC games being generally much less optimised for the platform compared to the PS3/360 where optimisations are easy and effective as they're done for a specific fixed hardware set.

Re:History repeats itself

[Xest]

"Unfortunately for you, not being a PC gamer never noticed that the game quality of many PC developers games declined."

Actually, as I mentioned later in my post I've always been very much a PC gamer. I was heavily involved in the mod scene from Quake 1 through to Quake 3 including Half-Life but dropped away from it after that, partly because even then I felt the games coming out were deteriorating- even in id's games. Modding for the likes of Doom 3 for example was just a complete and utter waste of time IMO compared to Quake 1 which was absolutely fantastic to mod for. Regarding UT, that was actually a big deal for me, it's been so long since I played UT I can't remember much about it but I do remember the original UT or whatever being rather awesome, but then a later version was basically a complete rehash of it that dropped one of the game modes I liked most where you had to push forward- I think it was Assault or something. IIRC they even dropped some of the weapons, so effectively it was just a poor man's version of the original albeit with slightly shinier graphics.

I also agree that many console franchises are a waste of time now- perhaps the prime example that comes to mind is Need for Speed, it was pretty good for a while but after Most Wanted it just got utterly stupid, a yearly cash cow that was simply not fun. As I understand it the problem with the FF series was that the original developers went elsewhere and created Mistwalker studios- I played Blue Dragon and such and it was pretty fun but I was never a massive JRPG fan anyway so couldn't judge it against much of the rest.

But I still think there's a lot of worthy titles on consoles, and more so than on the PC. I made the mistake of purchasing Arma II on the PC thinking hey look a nice PC only military game this could be fun, but what a load of utter wank, it was just horrendous. Really the only PC games I've particularly enjoyed in recent years are Dawn of War II (but even then I hated having to deal with issues caused by Steam DRM shit), and some smaller indie games that were fun to play around with for a little while like Crayon Physics. I just find it easier nowadays to find a fun console game than a fun PC game by quite a long stretch. I'm not sure why we don't see games anything like some of the older classics now either- why aren't there any real games like Syndicate, Theme Park, Desert Strike, Cannon Fodder or that sort of thing? Those type of games seemed to just completely vanish and there's just nothing like them anymore- about the closest I saw to Theme Park was Thrillville but that's not the same thing, and Syndicate? Desert Strike? Cannon Fodder? There's not even anything close.

I think as you say it's partly because developers are failing to develop for others, but also I think perhaps a bigger issue is that modern publishers are so shit scared of trying anything new- apparently the Modern Warfare team had a hell of a struggle trying to convince Activision to let them try and build a CoD game that wasn't World War 2, to me that was a no brainer, and I said Vietnam too, and guess what? the new CoD is going to 'nam, but the execs at the studios apparently just can't see there are people crying out for these sorts of things.

It's just madness, if anything I think the most hope for decent new games is in fact with indies nowadays, and perhaps moving on from my original post that is a way forward for the PC industry? Indie led innovation.

Re:History repeats itself

[Zironic]

"The sad thing is you were attacking my posts for using problematic statistics, of which I admitted I got wrong, and yet here you are in your last couple of posts picking and choosing- you cut the Wii out of your previous post, and then tried to split the consoles up, now you're cherry picking the publisher that only relatively recently picked up the largest PC house remaining. Don't you see why that's a bit hypocritical?"

Electronic Arts the other major publisher also has a fair number of PC properties, I've just read a lot less of their press releases then Activision. Anyhow the reason for splitting the consoles up is obvious. When you make a game you don't decide "Do I want to release this game on consoles or do I want to release this game on PC?, the decision is platform by platform. The PC is an individual platform just like the Xbox, Playstation, DS and PSP is individual platforms.

"I'm not sure why you're suggesting Mass Effect is a PC port, do you have any evidence for that? I'm also pretty sure you're not correct about Dragon Age being a mere port too. By port I'm referring to the likes of Gears of War, The Saboteur, and GTA which were ported to the PC after the console versions were done and were clearly of much lower quality- if they're released for console and PC at the same time then that's rarely a port, because they've been developed specifically for both platforms at release. Mass Effect at least has always been been one of the 360's flagship titles hence why it was originally a 360 exclusive."

Well, if you're ever tried playing those games on the Xbox, then tried to play those games on the PC you'll see why they're considered PC centric though it applies more to Mass Effect 2 then the first.

"I'm not sure what you mean by classing the 360 as an underpowered PC, this is a little short sighted. Whilst spec-wise it might be lower than some people's PCs this ignores the fact that it's a unified architecture dedicated to gaming and doesn't suffer some of the inherent slow downs that the generic PC architecture causes. This is why despite being lower spec towards the end of their life, consoles still often manage to outperform PCs in terms of visuals and performance. Having to optimise on the PC is a nightmare too because there are so many different hardware combinations you have to optimise for, this often leads to PC games being generally much less optimised for the platform compared to the PS3/360 where optimisations are easy and effective as they're done for a specific fixed hardware set."

What I mean is what I said. The Xbox is basically a PC, it runs direct X and .Net. This means that if you can get a game to run on the Xbox it's pretty trivial to get the game to run on most peoples PC's aswell, the only thing you have to do is remap the controls (which for some games is trivial, for some games a bit harder). This is why almost all Xbox 360 games are released on PC aswell, it's just so easy. (And why a lot of PC developers try to make their games more console friendly, I mean why not?).

Re:History repeats itself

[smallfries]

However, again, it really doesn't matter at the end of the day, because the fact is PC game sales aren't doing well, and if you want to pretend otherwise fine, but it wont change that fact.

I didn't really make this clear at the beginning, although I've mentioned in in a reply to another poster on this thread: I don't disagree with you that PC sales are poor. My only disagreement was that you pulled some figures from your arse and presented them as fact. You're not the only one that does it. Far from it. But I find it strange that so many people accept the impending death of PC games as a solid fact without any solid evidence.

Just to be really clear: I'm not arguing that PC gaming is alive and healthy - just that no evidence (other than anecdote and opinion) has been presented to prove it. One thing that I do find interesting though is that the impended doom of the PC gaming industry was forecast at this point in the console life-cycle last time and it didn't come to pass. Over the life of that cycle I would expect industry focus to shift between consoles and PCs relative to which provides the best eye-candy as that point.

As far the NPD figures go, apologies as I thought I had put a link in the post but I clearly cocked that up. I can't find the page in my history and it was a serious pain in the ass to find the first time. Edit: middle of this page between the pie charts. Also, I should have pointed out the first time that this is the units sold for the top ten games on each platform, so it is not the total but I would not expect the total to be much higher given that the distribution of sales is almost winner-takes-all.

Re:History repeats itself

[Xest]

"Well, if you're ever tried playing those games on the Xbox, then tried to play those games on the PC you'll see why they're considered PC centric though it applies more to Mass Effect 2 then the first."

ME2 was even more focussed towards consoles than the first, hence why everything was that much more dumbed down. It was also primarily a 360 development, hence why pretty much every media release such as trailers demonstrated the 360 version rather than the PC version. Again, I wont disagree with Supreme Commander 2 though, although I see no real evidenec that Dragon Age was primarily PC focussed and then ported, it plays like any console exclusive game.

"What I mean is what I said. The Xbox is basically a PC, it runs direct X and .Net. This means that if you can get a game to run on the Xbox it's pretty trivial to get the game to run on most peoples PC's aswell, the only thing you have to do is remap the controls (which for some games is trivial, for some games a bit harder). This is why almost all Xbox 360 games are released on PC aswell, it's just so easy. (And why a lot of PC developers try to make their games more console friendly, I mean why not?)."

No, there's far more to it than that, optimisation is still a big deal and on the PC you still have to do far more optimisation. What you say is certainly true for XNA games, and the handful of XBox Live Arcade games that are built with XNA + the achievement extensions and so on for full XBLA release, but in general there's still far more to do than mere control remapping. For starters, you have to make sure everything is going to render okay on nVidia cards on the PC, but also none of the 360, Wii, or PS3 even use x86 or x64- the 360 has a 64 bit PPC CPU for example and there in itself is another problem- you can't really ignore 32bit on the PC, and so you have to ensure you cater for that too. This is of course to even get the games working, and before you start having to even cater to the different optimisation requirements of the PC- slower communication between communications due to the less game-focussed nature of x86/x64 hardware and the fact that PC users will expect to be able to install to disk (although this has improved since there is more of a burden to support this properly on the 360 too now).

As you can see, porting a game from even the 360- the console with the most easily portable APIs (the 360 is largely DX9 based) is a major deal. It gets even worse when you have to port from/to the PS3 and support a completely different processing paradigm (Cell).

Suggesting almost all 360 games are released on the PC is a long shot, this simply isn't true. Even major titles aren't - Halo games since Halo 2, Crackdown, Alan Wake I believe have not and will never have PC ports to give a few examples. That's not to say things aren't true the other way around of course, but again, the PC games that could be but aren't ported to consoles nearly always have vastly lower sales figures than console games that aren't ported to the PC, I suspect Starcraft II will be one of those exceptions though.

Re:History repeats itself

[freedom_india]

No PC can have the "Error: 003 Unauthorized device detected" unfixed for long.

Re:History repeats itself

[mjwx]

Quite the opposite of your conclusions, but then I used real numbers instead of those stored up my arse.

Such large numbers, did it hurt when you pulled them out.

Joking aside, you didn't compare like to like.

Comparing Mario Kart Wii (22 odd million) to Starcraft (11 odd million) is not an equal comparison. 1, Starcraft has been out way longer and 2. they are completely different games with completely different audiences.

The Wii is kicking arse because the wii is a casual console and being casual is what consoles excel at. Obviously Mario Kart Wii is not a hardcore game and Starcraft is not a casual game. Now comparing like to like, lets compare Halo 2 (8 million) and Halo 3 (8.1 million) to Starcraft (11 million) and Half life (9.3 million) and these numbers do not include Steam sales. The thing is that only a few console games have sold over 5 million, in fact only 3 on the Xbox 360 have sold over 5 million whilst 9 PC games have sold over 9 million.

Casual games are a much larger audience then hardcore games which is why they sell much better. The Wii can sell 10 million units of Mario Game x but on the PC, how many people have loaded up a flash game to waste time, that's really the only casual market on the PC (well apart from the Sims). Numbers pulled from Wikipedia.

Re:History repeats itself

[smallfries]

I'm guessing that you replied to the post you intended to because you posted part of it. But seriously, did you reply to the right post?

I didn't mention Starcraft, or compare anything to it so I've got no idea what you are talking about.

Re:History repeats itself

[mjwx]

I'm guessing that you replied to the post you intended to because you posted part of it. But seriously, did you reply to the right post?

That part was a joke, perhaps you need a sense of humour.

My point was, however you need to compare like to like.

Comparing the Wii to the Xbox and PS of this generation is not comparing like to like. The Xbox360 and PS3 are trying to be PC's (for dedicated, in depth gaming) where as the Wii is trying to be a console (casual, fun, accessible gaming). So comparing the top selling Wii game which has far wider audience appeal then the top selling Xbox game is pointless as they have a massive difference in audience appeal. Now comparing the Xbox360 to what it's trying to be, a cheap PC then you see how badly most Xbox games sell.

In Other News...

[Inschato]

Software box companies continue to dislike digital distribution, oil companies lobby away from nuclear power, and the middle east is still a warzone.

Im buying solely online.

[unity100]

digital download. permanent. always there. nothing less.

gamersgate.com works great. i have a hoard of games there. no client, no strings attached, you download, install, play. then you may delete the game. if you later on want to play it again, you just download it again. no client, no strings attached, dl, install, play. rinse and repeat. all games permanently stay in your account as accessible.

also very cheap. they make huge sales. apparently online distributors can afford to sell prime time titles from $3 (with loyalty discount - depends on member status, it hits in between $3-10 for prime games).

what this has over steam is, it doesnt need a client, hence no mods etc will have issues, and difference with direct2drive is, gamersgate is much cheaper.

as you see, i counted 3 major online digital distributors... didnt even need to mention countless smaller ones. so, digital downloads can be said to come at last.

Re:Im buying solely online.

[IBBoard]

digital download. permanent. always there. nothing less.

Until it is DRMed by a Steam-like system, the owner vanishes and your game is gone. Granted, some boxed games these days have bad DRM (EA), but the old-school copy protection is as good as not existing. I've got 15 year old games I can still play. I doubt the same would be true of most modern digital downloads in 15 years.

That said, there are some sensible digital download sites (gog.com and, from the sounds of it, gamersgate.com) that do give you the discount and the freedom/fair use.

Re:Im buying solely online.

[unity100]

they arent drmed. majority of the titles. even in drmed ones i have had no issues, their drms are rather mild compared to what ea, ubisoft tries to push. of course these brand's titles are still drmed as their originals.

Re:Im buying solely online.

[IBBoard]

You've not had any issues...yet. That's the biggest problem of DRM - people don't have problems at the moment and so assume that all will be rosy in the future. Granted, most media-based 'copy-protection' DRM is trivial to defeat, but it's the phone-home ones that are especially likely to bite you later.

Re:Im buying solely online.

[Canazza]

The only games I've found on Steam that have any DRM are Source-based games, in that you can't run them without running Steam (though you can run them in offline mode). Everything else can just be launched from the .exe like normal, all Steam provides is a Library system (like Media players do for music and video)

Hell, some games you can buy WONT run from Steam, especially if they have a launcher programme that needs admin rights (like Fallen Earth or APB)

Re:Im buying solely online.

[segin]

All heil the Grammar Fuhrer!

Re:Im buying solely online.

[Skuto]

>Everything else can just be launched from the .exe like normal, all Steam provides is a Library system (like Media players do for music and
>video)

The .exes are still wrapped in Steam DRM. It will be obvious if you try to apply patches. Offline mode stops working if Steam is down >30 days.

Re:Im buying solely online.

[Pharmboy]

Actually, the Source based games have the LEAST offensive DRM. Almost everything else I have bought on Steam has more restrictive DRM. Bioshock 2, while a great game, pissed me off that I had to have a microsoft gamer's account to save games, and I am FORCED to log in each time, or I can't save game. The others had serials that I had to copy/paste from the steam client, and register online. Source games, on the other hand, simply work. Then again, Gabe (owner of Steam) has made it clear that piracy is not at the top of his list of things to worry about.

Re:Im buying solely online.

[dave420]

Gabe Newell, the CEO of Valve, said that in the event of the company going bust, they'd disable authentication (which they have apparently successfully tested), allowing people to play the games without Valve's servers being there.

Re:Im buying solely online.

[dave420]

If Steam goes down due to bankruptcy, or simply being closed down, Gabe Newell (Valve's CEO) said they'd turn off authentication for all games. They've tested it, apparently, and it works a charm. So nothing would need to be done. Your downloaded games would still work just as they did before.

Re:Im buying solely online.

[wjousts]

Your naivety is positively charming. Well I guess if Gabe said it, it must be true. Never mind that the TOS of Steam mentions nothing of the sort and nowhere have Valve said anything that could be construed as a legally binding pledge.

Re:Im buying solely online.

[tepples]

If Steam goes down due to bankruptcy, or simply being closed down, Gabe Newell (Valve's CEO) said they'd turn off authentication for all games.

Is this patch in escrow? If not, the company that buys Valve's assets at auction might disagree with the plan to turn off authentication.

Re:Im buying solely online.

[Monkeedude1212]

I agree, Steam is not the best system for getting digital games, but I'm one of the few who prefer it FOR the client. The way its built lets you socially network with gamers you know personally or ones you just meet rather easily. Great Matchmaking system, Great chat tools, achievements, etc. Digital Distribution plays its part but its not the selling point of Steam for Me. Because as you've stated, there are lots of digital distributors out there, you just have to find the one that works for you.

Re:Im buying solely online.

[kalirion]

Gabe Newell, the CEO of Valve, said that in the event of the company going bust, they'd disable authentication (which they have apparently successfully tested), allowing people to play the games without Valve's servers being there.

They might be able to do this for Valve (single player) games, but I doubt other publishers will let it slide for their stuff.

Re:Im buying solely online.

[IBBoard]

Not only that but it assumes that they get a chance and have the inclination at the time and, possibly, that the gamer goes online in the right time frame. If not with the last point then how does a system that *has* to authenticate online know that it now doesn't need to? It can't go "oh well, no server, let them play" because that'd mean you could game without authenticating now, so it needs something to tell it that the lack of server isn't a blocker.

Re:Im buying solely online.

[Lord Ender]

He has no financial obligation to do so. If they enter bankruptcy court, the creditors call the shots--not the former employees. And if EA (or whomever) buys Valve, they new owners have no obligation to honor his comments.

Re:Im buying solely online.

[unity100]

you can also keep your games. it downloads to a bare directory to install. it asks you whether it should delete the directory, or let it stay after installation. you can choose to zip it into a dvd. it doesnt require any kind of internet connection while installing.

Re:Im buying solely online.

[GrumblyStuff]

Sounds like they should put that in the EULA or ToS or whatever bunch of legalese is thrown at Steam users. Making it official and all that.

We've know this since the 80's

[Anonymous Coward]

Marty McFly: [showing the two boys how to play the shoot 'em up video game] I'll show you, kid. I'm a crack shot at this.
[shoots a perfect score with the electronic gun]
Video Game Boy #1: You mean you have to use your hands?
Video Game Boy #2: That's like a baby's toy!

So, how does it translate...

[SharpFang]

So could anyone give the adjusted graph of market distribution, consoles vs PC?

PC's will always be a popular platform

[pinkushun]

Despite the curve involved to maintain, it's highly customizable, and handles a multitude of tasks and games. You can run emulators for different platforms, network PC's together (without needing an online gaming subscription), and hack someone's port... until quantum computers come out, that is.

pc games from the 1990s

[wakim1618]

Old games can still be played on today's pc's (starcraft comes to mind). If you bought an older game for the previous generations of gaming consoles, it will not probably play on the latest generation of consoles.

I still buy pc games that I don't have time to play today in the expectation that I will be able to play them in the future when I have more time. That said, I am buying almost exclusively stand-alone games that don't need to connect to a server with thousands of other players.

Re:pc games from the 1990s

[pandrijeczko]

Old games can still be played on today's pc's (starcraft comes to mind).

It does vary from title to title. Starcraft is obviously well written but it does beg the question as to whether or not it would be worth Blizzard updating the engine a little so it can support higher screen resolutions - although I already own the game and the expansion, I would certainly pay, say. £5-£10 for an updated version that did this.

And if we're talking about classic RTS games, don't fail to mention Total Annihilation. I've not upgraded beyond Windows XP but TA runs well on XP and seems to still support higher resolutions well.

I still buy pc games that I don't have time to play today in the expectation that I will be able to play them in the future when I have more time. That said, I am buying almost exclusively stand-alone games that don't need to connect to a server with thousands of other play.

I tried WoW after continual badgering from my friends to give it a try but couldn't see the appeal of it personally and gave up after a month. Good luck to those that do enjoy it but I thought it was a lot less sociable then logging into an Internet server for a quick Quake deathmatch or, even better, a LAN party with a few friends.

I did use to "hoard games for later use" but these days I realise it's just a waste of money - if you really feel like playing an old game, you can always find a legal copy somewhere on Amazon or eBay. And hopefully sites like GOG.com mean that older titles will be always available for download if you want them at a later date.

Re:pc games from the 1990s

[Zironic]

"It does vary from title to title. Starcraft is obviously well written but it does beg the question as to whether or not it would be worth Blizzard updating the engine a little so it can support higher screen resolutions - although I already own the game and the expansion, I would certainly pay, say. £5-£10 for an updated version that did this."

They've said they won't, but it's going to be relatively trivial to make a Starcraft 1 mod for Starcraft 2 so I suspect someone will do that for you shortly after release.

Re:pc games from the 1990s

[pandrijeczko]

I'm prepared to wait for the initial response to SC2 because SC1 was so good, but I'm not holding out much hope if I'm honest.

I really haven't been enthused with RTS games since they went from sprites to 3D, I think changeable camera views & zooming in & out just adds unnecessary useless features to that type of game.

Re:pc games from the 1990s

[stewbacca]

Why wouldn't you just wait until you have time to play the game before buying it? Chances are it will be cheaper in a year or two.

Re:pc games from the 1990s

[VGPowerlord]

Old games can still be played on today's pc's (starcraft comes to mind).

It does vary from title to title. Starcraft is obviously well written but it does beg the question as to whether or not it would be worth Blizzard updating the engine a little so it can support higher screen resolutions - although I already own the game and the expansion, I would certainly pay, say. £5-£10 for an updated version that did this.

Playing StarCraft on Windows Vista/7 requires you to turn on a bunch of compatibility settings if you don't want the main menu to look like rainbow-colored puke. This doesn't occur in versions prior to 1.14 iirc, so this is something Blizzard screwed up after Vista launched.

It also requires you to run it as Administrator to play online, including a UAC prompt if you didn't disable them.

I wouldn't exactly call it well written.

Re:pc games from the 1990s

[TheLink]

> the main menu to look like rainbow-colored puke.
> It also requires you to run it as Administrator to play online, including a UAC prompt if you didn't disable them.

Huh, did it turn into malware in recent versions? Why should a game nowadays need admin rights to play?

I can understand needing admin rights if you are going to install it for all users on the computer. But if you aren't doing that, I see no good reason.

Re:pc games from the 1990s

[delinear]

He probably, like me, bought it with every intention of playing it until real life got in the way and then he suddenly realises he's got a (virtual) shelf full of unplayed stuff. Still, it's quite nice to have unplayed games for when you do happen to unexpectedly find yourself with some free time.

Re:pc games from the 1990s

[Runefox]

I can't be 100% sure, but things in the Program Files directory tend to be off-limits by default under UAC IIRC. Since StarCraft stores settings, save files, etc in its game directory rather than in the user profile like modern games, it would need admin rights to do that. As for the rainbow-coloured thing, it's because it's running full-screen at 256 colours; You need to specify that mode in the compatibility options (and maybe Win98SE mode; Can't remember now).

Re:pc games from the 1990s

[VGPowerlord]

> the main menu to look like rainbow-colored puke.
> It also requires you to run it as Administrator to play online, including a UAC prompt if you didn't disable them.

Huh, did it turn into malware in recent versions? Why should a game nowadays need admin rights to play?

I can understand needing admin rights if you are going to install it for all users on the computer. But if you aren't doing that, I see no good reason.

I don't know exactly why. Single player (and presumably) LAN work fine without it, but unless you're running as Administrator, the game fails when you try to connect to Battle.NET.

Re:pc games from the 1990s

[VGPowerlord]

As for the rainbow-coloured thing, it's because it's running full-screen at 256 colours; You need to specify that mode in the compatibility options (and maybe Win98SE mode; Can't remember now).

I would say "Yeah" but this worked fine for StarCraft 1.14 and earlier on Vista/7 (and yes, I mentioned that). 1.15 or 1.15.1 broke this.

Re:pc games from the 1990s

[TheLink]

> the game fails when you try to connect to Battle.NET.

Then maybe it's checking some hardware (and/or software) info and sending it or a hash of it to Battle.Net. Admin rights are required to get certain info.

Re:pc games from the 1990s

[TheLink]

I think programs are not supposed to write to Program Files directory under normal circumstances.

If they want to write stuff there's "%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings" and "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data".

And if you install the game as a normal user into that user's own home directory/profile there should be no problem writing to it (under the current security model).

Anyway my current guess is the newer versions are gathering machine/software information for identification purposes. e.g. motherboard/bios/baseboard/harddrive serial numbers. You'd probably need admin access for that.

Even on Linux, stuff like dmidecode often require root privileges.

For how long after release?

[Beardydog]

Borderlands:
Amazon.com from a shifty third-party seller - $28 ( before shipping )
Steam - $30
Onlive, which charges you $5 per month AND eats your games when you quit, $40, if I recall correctly.

Mind=Blown

Re:For how long after release?

[Anonymous Coward]

With the added advantage of Steam deals which saw me pickup Borderlands for ~£7 the other day, PC wins.

Re:For how long after release?

[icebraining]

Also, TF2 for 15E, and I got Portal and Alien Swarm for free.

Re:For how long after release?

[aj50]

It varies hugely from game to game.

Borderlands was £20 on shop.to at release while it was £27 on Steam.

Digital stores only tend to be cheaper when games are on sale or when a game has mostly sold out at physical retailers.

This is what happens when you let publishers dictate prices.

Re:For how long after release?

[powerspike]

That's funny, when borderlands came out, i got it off steam for $30. Just checked steam again, and yup, it's $79.99, It's obvious that they are charging different amounts for different countries now as well. (in australia for reference) It's cheaper in EB games down at the local mall (even when not on special). go figure..

Re:For how long after release?

[omglolbah]

And it is so bloody convenient it is costing me a fortune....

When it has become faster and easier to buy it than pirate it... I'm sold!

Damnit steam and your abilty to entice me to pay for things I would have pirated 2-3 years ago :p

Re:For how long after release?

[Inda]

No. No. No.

<p>I paid &pound;12 for Borderlands a few days ago off eBay (hoping its on the doormat whern I get home).

<p>I will end up selling it for &pound;6 or &pound;7 in a few months time.

<p>Secondhand on the Xbox wins.

Re:For how long after release?

[Inda]

Bollox.

Re:For how long after release?

[Dudibob]

Borderlands was a whole £10 though a week or two ago, now it's gone back up to £30

Re:For how long after release?

[Dudibob]

Through Steam that is >.

Re:For how long after release?

[slyrat]

Also, borderlands on steam was the only version you could get the non-securom version of base game and the last dlc. I skipped the other two dlc just because of the crappy double drm that would have been required.

Breaking news: People like cheap stuff!

[IBBoard]

This highlights the fact that it isn't just convenience that has PC gamers shopping online; it is also that games are generally cheaper than in stores.

Who'da thunked it - if people can get a game cheaper and quicker without leaving their house then they will! Next thing you know they'll be telling us that people go shopping in sales...

Re:Breaking news: People like cheap stuff!

[delinear]

The irony is we've been telling them this for years while they've been droning on about piracy - now if only they'd go the final distance and remove the ridiculous DRM hoops we have to jump through we could rejoice at cheap, quick, convenient gaming.

the PC will never really die as a games platform

[johnhp]

I know I could be wrong, but I think there's almost no chance that the PC will ever die as a gaming platform. The reason it won't die is the console + TV and PC + monitor distinction will become less defined over the years. They're not that different conceptually as it is.

There was another story on Slashdot recently about centralizing graphics processing into a single graphics server per household, with the output from that server being displayed on client devices. Once you reach that point, consoles and PCs, monitors and TVs, all become the same devices.

Equation to describe why the PC will live on...

[BenJCarter]

World of Warcraft > all console games combined.

Low(er) Prices + Convenience = no-brainer

[TheMadScot]

Most of my game catalogue is on Steam these days

I remember when I signed up for the Steam service and paid for my first game - it was Half-Life 2, naturally

At the time, I thought it vastly different to the conventional model (and psychological security) of buying your games on CD / DVD at retail. I actually paused before committing to the order.... weighing up the pros and cons of online only distribution when I could just wander down to the store instead

Fast forward to today and, given the choice, I'll elect to buy a game via Steam over any other method. No expanding collection of physical media, no waiting in queues at retail stores where pushy assistants are trying to sell me wares I don't want and - one of my favourite points - no laborious installation processes and/or the need for a disc to be present in the drive to play the game.

I haven't even touched on the low price aspect of Steam which, except for some AAA new releases, sees software available for quite a bit less than in retail stores. I don't think I'm alone in seeing single games or multi-title packs priced at what could be said to be impulse buy pricing.

One thing I would like to know is how the revenue from a purchase via Steam is divided up. Knowing how small a percentage goes to the developer / publisher from conventional sales, I wonder how platforms such as Steam fare by comparison.

Re:Low(er) Prices + Convenience = no-brainer

[Bert64]

Piracy has given you all that convenience for many years, while also giving you no DRM so no risk the game will become unplayable when the distributor decides to stop maintaining drm servers.

Re:Low(er) Prices + Convenience = no-brainer

[Skuto]

>I haven't even touched on the low price aspect of Steam which, except for some AAA new releases, sees software available for quite a bit less than in retail stores.
>I don't think I'm alone in seeing single games or multi-title packs priced at what could be said to be impulse buy pricing.

Only if you're in the USA. In Europe, Steam games are ludicrously expensive compaired to retail.

That said, the convience is huge. So if there are sales (which undo most of the price differential), I'm buying.

Re:Low(er) Prices + Convenience = no-brainer

[RogueyWon]

I'm in a similar position. I own pretty much every gaming platform around, with the exception of the new revisions of the handhelds (the DSi and PSP Go), and when there's a multi-platform game I want, I generally look at a number of factors before deciding which platform I go for. But if I go for the PC (or if the game is PC-exclusive), then I want to know that I can get it on Steam.

Why?

First reason (and one that applies to other download services) - I don't need to put any CD/DVD/Blu-Ray in my machine to fire up the game. This is actually a fairly major point for me; yes, I really am that lazy. When I get home from work late in an evening and want a quick bout of gaming before bed, I do not want to have to faff about looking for discs. So 9 times out of 10, I go to Steam, or an Xbox Live Arcade / Playstation Network game.

The other reason, which is particular to Steam, is that I like the convenience of being able to manage which games I have installed, and redownload previously-uninstalled games at will with just 2 clicks.

However, there are a couple of things I would like to see Valve do to further improve the service. First of all, I would love it if they could make it easier to relocate your cache folder, or split it between multiple drives. I have 3x 500GB drives in my desktop and it irritates the hell out of me that Steam games always have to fit onto one of those drives.

Second, it would be fantastic if Valve could start to shamelessly abuse their currently dominant position to throw their weight around and lay down some laws regarding DRM to the publishers that sell over Steam. It does annoy me that many games are allowed to add DRM controls above and beyond Steam's own protection.

Re:Low(er) Prices + Convenience = no-brainer

[Skuto]

Piracy

1) Hunt for suitable p2p client that isn't taken down or adware infested yet
2) Hunt for suitable download that is not a translated version or fake and has a proper crack
3) Wait hours to leech from people with unreliable connections
4) Start over again when an important patch appears
5) Get trojans off the PC that came with the crack

Digital sale

1) Shell out $$$
2) Download at line speed
3) Play (if Steam is not overloaded)

I admit, this is hearsay experience. I've obviously never pirated a game, that would be illegal.

Re:Low(er) Prices + Convenience = no-brainer

[Issarlk]

Risks with piracy:
- slow download
- darn, you just downloaded a virus/trojan/keylogger with your game
- you have to download patches from the editor's website, just like with physical media
- No online multiplayer for some games

Steam is a no-brainer, click, buy, get the up-to-date game. Unless one is broke I can't see why one would dowload pirated games.

Re:Low(er) Prices + Convenience = no-brainer

[Anonymous Coward]

Piracy is more like...

1) Find torrent tracker, preferably reputable with an invite only system.
2) Find game
3) Download
4)???
5) Profit

If you aren't stupid you shouldn't have to worry about any sort of Trojan or virus of another kind. And if you look for a game, say, one week after it is released. Then you'll have no trouble getting it at the same speed that steam would download at. Sometimes even faster.

Piracy can easily be a problem but, in my experience, A good number of people only pirate things to see if its worth a damn, if so then they shell out the money to buy the game from steam or another store.

Re:Low(er) Prices + Convenience = no-brainer

[pandrijeczko]

This is actually a fairly major point for me; yes, I really am that lazy.

This isn't just about laziness, it's more about expecting some common sense from gaming companies.

If I buy a laptop then common sense says I'm doing so because I will probably be moving around a lot with the computer & maybe even using it while I am travelling... in which case, why the f*** do I need to carry around the game disk as well? Especially as the whole purpose of a hard disk is to deliver the capability of storing everything that might be on the game disk!

If Microsoft insisted that you inserted the MS Office CD/DVD everytime you fired up Excel, there would be a public outcry & people would be telling MS to shove their Office disks where the sun doesn't shine. So why we gamers have allowed ourselves to be treated this way is beyond my comprehension - and as someone who has bought many games over the years, I'm equally to blame.

Re:Low(er) Prices + Convenience = no-brainer

[Skuto]

>1) Find torrent tracker, preferably reputable with an invite only system.

"Invite only" => Great ease of use there.

>If you aren't stupid you shouldn't have to worry about any sort of Trojan or virus of another kind.

I'm not stupid, which is why I do worry :-)

Re:Low(er) Prices + Convenience = no-brainer

[Bert64]

- Slow download is also a risk from a legit supplier, depending where you are, where the download servers are etc...
- Trojans, well not from any remotely reputable site... legit items have been known to have trojans too.
- patches - there are pirate bundles which include preinstalled cracks and patches

But you don't mention the potential risks with non piracy:

DRM may not let you play the game if you are without an internet connection...
DRM may not let you play the game if the service is shut down...
With Steam you are effectively renting the games, if the service is shut down you lose the ability to download anything and might not be able to play all of the games you already downloaded.

Re:Low(er) Prices + Convenience = no-brainer

[VGPowerlord]

Don't underestimate the ability to install your Steam games on different machines.

I have different parts of my Steam library installed on my real computer, the XP VM I keep around for old games, and my laptop.

The catch is that I can only be logged on to one of them at a time.

Re:Low(er) Prices + Convenience = no-brainer

[SpeZek]

I have 3x 500GB drives in my desktop and it irritates the hell out of me that Steam games always have to fit onto one of those drives.

Why not make a partition that spans the three drives and stick Steam in there?

Re:Low(er) Prices + Convenience = no-brainer

[delinear]

The sales still offer some great deals though - although the last time I used it they demanded CC payment only and I didn't have a credit card - I think they possibly accept paypal now?

Re:Low(er) Prices + Convenience = no-brainer

[Mike610544]

First of all, I would love it if they could make it easier to relocate your cache folder,

I haven't tried it, but on Vista/Windows 7 I've read reports from people who used symlinks successfully to link to Steam game data on other drives.

Valve Financials

[DMalic]

Does anyone have reasonably current figures for Valve's revenue and income? A 2005 Forbes story claimed that Valve had an income of 70 million with an operating profit of 55 million. Other sources say that Gabe never accepted venture capital funding and bought out the company's cofounder... Given the relatively few number of employees, Gabe must be loaded.

Re:Valve Financials

[w00tsauce]

Maybe you should get maddox to hack into valve again.

The only people who want PC gaming dead..

[Anonymous Coward]

is the industry itself.

All the reasons that it's "dying" are reasons the big players make. The pc is open, anyone can make a game, and don't need publishers. Publishers hate this. Much how the RIAA hates P2P and the internet in general because Artists can just bypass their robber baron horseshit.

1, Piracy. aka, "we dont control the hardware and software, and cannot fully exploit the people who buy our crap"
2, Forced obsolescence. Many big companies are trying to make PC games a second rate citizen, Microsoft gives bigger perks to those who develop games using the "games for windows" moniker, which essentially makes them develop it for the 360 first. The big development houses are pushing for consoles to make console makers happy.
3, see number one

Re:The only people who want PC gaming dead..

[Anonymous Coward]

Piracy occurs on consoles too...

The complexities of gaming on a PC are beyond many people's technical abilities... Having to apply patches, deal with video driver updates or incompatibilities put a lot of people off.

Re:The only people who want PC gaming dead..

[delinear]

Microsoft gives bigger perks to those who develop games using the "games for windows" moniker, which essentially makes them develop it for the 360 first.

Games for Windows are certainly not always developed for the 360 first - sometimes not at all. I enjoyed Dawn of War II immensely (and really have to pick up the expansion when I have time) and that was both a "Games for Windows" game and PC exclusive.

Making Older Titles Available Again

[pandrijeczko]

I don't necessarily agree with the comment about digital distribution always being cheaper than stores - for example, because I don't usually hurry to buy new games, I picked up Fallout 3 about 6 months after release for £12.50 new (=$18.00) & then the Game Of The Year Edition (with all 5 DLCs) for £19.99 new (=$30.00). That was from my local Game game store here in the UK, a national chain, and they constantly have similar pricing offers on.

However, especially as I've noticed how the PC games shelf space has shrunk in Game stores over the past couple of years (in favour of console games), this is where digital distribution comes into its own - namely for the range of stuff that's available on-line but not in stores.

I don't buy that many new games but I've bought from Steam & GOG.com - in both cases it's good to have the ability to get hold of a few older classics again.

I don't think PC gaming is dying as such but I do think the whole PC market with respect to games is changing dramatically for the following reasons:

1. PC and graphics hardware development is slowing down for desktop gaming PCs & focus moving to lower-powered netbooks & portable devices. Presumably people still want to play games on those devices which means smaller & less complicated games - one reason for the success of selling older titles online.

2. Most Windows users still seem happy enough with Windows XP even though I have no reason to doubt Windows 7 may be a better OS. This brings into question as to just how many people have the capability to run (or even care about running) DirectX 11 and therefore how much development games companies are prepared to do on it - when all said and done, this list of DirectX 11 games is very small.

3. I don't personally care about "mass migrations to Linux", I use it because it's there and because it does what I need an OS to do. But whilst Windows 7 may have fared better than Vista, it's still not the raging success for Microsoft that XP was & Linux has matured greatly since XP was released to the point where there's a far greater chance of running older Windows games in WINE on Linux than on Windows 7 or XP. Again, this fact alone must influence older game sales & the forums on GOG.com have lots of threads discussing whether or not certain GOG-released titles will run under WINE. (I don't go on the Steam forums much but the fact that there's soon to be a Steam client for Linux says a lot to me).

4. Modern games are huge development projects with huge up-front costs. Developing games for a fixed console platform *MUST* be much easier than developing for PCs with their plethora of different hardware. Plus games companies make their money from making sequels of established titles, it's the younger, less cynical gamers that rush to buy (or get their parents to buy) those titles & the youngsters like their consoles. All of this leads to the conclusion that there will be a continued slowdown in new PC game releases.

5. MMORPGs & online gaming - if people are spending more money on monthly subscription games then they're spending less on boxed games, especially during an economic slowdown.

As a PC gamer, what I'm really looking forward to is a lot more resolution of petty licensing squabbles of older games so that more of them get released, maybe even with some commitment to allow those games to be updated to run on more modern Windows OSes or even natively on Linux. It make sense that if the games companies are no longer getting as much revenue from new PC games than they used to, then they should look at opening up the revenue streams from re-selling older games.

Re:Making Older Titles Available Again

[Skuto]

>1. PC and graphics hardware development is slowing down for desktop gaming PCs & focus moving to lower-powered netbooks & portable devices. Presumably
>people still want to play games on those devices which means smaller & less complicated games - one reason for the success of selling older titles online

This is a good point. My main system right now is a laptop instead of a desktop. I understand this is a common transition. Laptops have worse video hardware than desktops, even the high end ones. If I'm shopping for games, I have to take hardware requirements strongly into account. And this often means preferring slightly older titles.

Something like Battlefield Bad Company 2 may be a great game of the kind I like, with the HW requirements it shuts out all but the very highest end laptops, and by it, a sizeable proportion of potential PC gamers. (Funnily MW2 is very different)

If you look at the HW statistics on Steam, there's a large portion of games who do NOT have top of the line hardware. What are the most popular games? MW2, CounterStrike, CounterStrike:Source, TF2, Football Manager and L4D2. All games which run fine on older machines. Being able to run a game at all is a strong prerequisite to buying it.

>I don't go on the Steam forums much but the fact that there's soon to be a Steam client for Linux says a lot to me

You have been misinformed. Probably by catchy, but badly-researched headline stories from untrustable websites.

Re:Making Older Titles Available Again

[DingerX]

It's more complex than that:
1. Games are getting simpler because the hardware is no longer hi-spec.

___A. Hardware development is not only related to PCs, and it follows market demand. If only a few games exist that require high-end cards, why make an even more powerful one.

___B. the most recent console on the market (the PS3) dates from 2006. That is, we are at the cosmic minimum in the console dev cycle: no replacement has been announced, and so big developers are producing games for the 4-year-old graphics cards.

___C. The visual quality (in terms of number and sophistication of art assets) of games used to be limited by the quality of hardware. Now it's also limited by the projected sales. That is, if you plot the size of development teams for AAA titles against the hardware available, you'd see a pretty stable relationship until recently, when the market no longer increases to cover additional costs. That's also why the current generation of consoles isn't going anywhere.

__2. The XP Ghetto. I quite disagree. While I still run XP, Windows 7 has done good things for gaming. Since the first DOS machines in the early eighties, there's been a split between general computing machines and PCs that can do games. At some points, the gap between an office computer and a gaming PC has been wider than others: in 1992, for example, there was little difference between a 486x33 with a fancy VGA card and Gravis Ultrasound and a 486x25 with a normal VGA card and a Soundblaster compatible; in 1998, on the other hand, a 500-MHz PII (or even a legendary 300->450 OC'd Celery) with a TNT 3D card and 16-bit audio would blow the doors off of a stock processor and a VGA card. Now, with Windows 7, there's finally the requirement that cards actually be capable of doing 3D operations. And that means that a bunch of Windows-7-ready machines can play some games, even if their owners put XP on them.

3. Mass Migrations to Linux and old games. I don't know about any of that. Online sales, however, are not always driven by the latest games, and, where retail shelf-space is expensive, online sales can make cheaper products (casual games, old games that are still extremely engaging) a worthwhile proposition. Also, when they say 36% of the revenue comes from online sales, retail revenue has much higher overhead, in terms of what the retailer and even the distributor get, with respect to the developer.

4. PCs: the configuration nightmare vs. Consoles. Well, yes and know. Yes, PCs with all their flexibility, are a challenge for developers. On the other hand, developers don't have to resolve every single difficulty in releasing a title. Development for Consoles require an expensive and time-consuming process of validation and verification by the console maker. Spending the time and money to go through these products makes a far superior product, but for PCs, it's an option, not an obligation.

5. WoW is still one of the hugest sources of online sales: WoW and Blizzard are listed separately, and both factor into the top five online distributors.

Re:Making Older Titles Available Again

[pandrijeczko]

__2. The XP Ghetto. I quite disagree. While I still run XP, Windows 7 has done good things for gaming. Since the first DOS machines in the early eighties, there's been a split between general computing machines and PCs that can do games. At some points, the gap between an office computer and a gaming PC has been wider than others: in 1992, for example, there was little difference between a 486x33 with a fancy VGA card and Gravis Ultrasound and a 486x25 with a normal VGA card and a Soundblaster compatible; in 1998, on the other hand, a 500-MHz PII (or even a legendary 300->450 OC'd Celery) with a TNT 3D card and 16-bit audio would blow the doors off of a stock processor and a VGA card. Now, with Windows 7, there's finally the requirement that cards actually be capable of doing 3D operations. And that means that a bunch of Windows-7-ready machines can play some games, even if their owners put XP on them.

I think you're talking about a "chicken and egg" situation.

I don't use Windows 7 so cannot claim to be an expert on it but as I understand it you do need some degree of graphics acceleration on it because the UI has effects built on those requirements. But most desktop and laptop PCs have had some degree of graphics acceleration for years now & whilst I don't credit Microsoft with much, I'm sure the last thing they'd want to do is stop people upgrading to Windows 7 if the hardware requirements were so high that it locked most of them out from doing so.

So what I'm really saying is that Windows 7 needs graphics acceleration because most PC owners probably already had it anyway.

And has Windows 7 *REALLY* done much for gaming? The list of games that support DirectX 11 is very small and I'm sure most of those games also run on Windows XP and DirectX 9. I can remember one PC game in about the past 3 or 4 years that was DirectX 10 only and that was "Shadowrun" although I accept there could be a couple of others - however, judging by how quickly I saw copies of Shadowrun appear in game store bargain bins, I'm not sure it did that well.

4. PCs: the configuration nightmare vs. Consoles. Well, yes and know. Yes, PCs with all their flexibility, are a challenge for developers. On the other hand, developers don't have to resolve every single difficulty in releasing a title. Development for Consoles require an expensive and time-consuming process of validation and verification by the console maker. Spending the time and money to go through these products makes a far superior product, but for PCs, it's an option, not an obligation.

Agreed, but going on from what I said previously, do you not think it's equally as difficult for a games company to make PC games that currently have to be able to potentially support up to three versions of DirectX (9-11), based on the fact there are large numbers of gamers running XP, Vista and Windows 7? At least with consoles they are developing for systems that have fixed specification.

Re:Making Older Titles Available Again

[HopefulIntern]

That was from my local Game game store here in the UK, a national chain, and they constantly have similar pricing offers on.

Now, by that do you mean the generic term "game store" or do you mean the chain of stores called GAME? Because I have always found that GAME is ridiculously overpriced. When MW2 came out I had a look round at whom was cheapest. GAME was selling it for £35 (earlier on it was £39.99), but I picked it up at Tesco for £29.99

Re:Making Older Titles Available Again

[pandrijeczko]

Yes, I am talking about GAME and you are correct - most of their stuff is overpriced.

But I do pop into them or HMV if I am passing - it's very rare I buy anything from either but occasionally there is a bargain to be had.

Most of the time, I just end up seeing that something new & interesting has been released, then just pull out my smartphone and order it for 2/3 of the price online.

Re:Making Older Titles Available Again

[Pharmboy]

I don't personally care about "mass migrations to Linux"

To Steam's credit, they are in the middle of porting Steam and their Source games to Linux, which is a very small but growing market. They have supported Linux for dedicated servers for over 10 years. They seem pretty determined to support Linux as much as possible, even if it isn't particularly profitable. Now that Steam supports OSX and Linux soon, they are certainly positioning themselves for the future. The question is whether other games producers on Steam will port to Linux as well. So far, that has been hit and miss, but having Source support it puts them in the lead and gives other companies a trail to follow.

Re:Making Older Titles Available Again

[pandrijeczko]

DirectX isn't a moving target, once released it does not change which is why games made for DX6/7 still run on DX11 video cards. Each new version of DirectX is essentially "everything that was in the previous versions plus this extra stuff".

Yes, I accept & understand that part but that isn't the whole story is it? I don't claim to be either a game or graphics programmer by any stretch of the imagination (I'm more a shell & PERL monkey) but an older game's functionality is not just dependent on DirectX, it is also dependent on the graphics driver and card being able to continue to support features that may be in older graphics cards but not in new ones.

My case in point are games like Aliens vs Predator (from around 1998 IIRC) which will run (of a fashion) in Windows XP but suffer major graphical problems because the graphics driver no longer supports some of the features that the game wants - from what I remember, some people manage to play it by using really old NVIDIA driver versions.

Windows 7 has better DirectX performance then previous versions. As annoying as it was when MS blew up the WDM driver system and created the new fangled one that broke compatibility with XP drivers when Vista first came out, it seems to have payed off. Vista/7 video drivers are faster and more reliable then the XP ones - at least, nVidia's are. The minimum requirements to run Win7 are pretty much DX9 compatibility so if the system runs Win7 you can be reasonably sure that most of DX9's optional features will be implemented even if it is a crappy Intel chipset.

That's not just limited to Windows, you know - I myself swapped out an ATI 4850 card for an NVIDIA GTS250 (very little difference in benchmark between the two cards) but got over 4x framerate improvement in games on Linux, simply because the NVIDIA drivers are better than the ATI ones - and that has nothing to do with DirectX, for obvious reasons. :-)

As far as DX10/11 exclusives that didn't include a DX9 fallback, I'm pretty sure most of those were from Microsoft's own studios or partners. Microsoft were being colossal dicks during Vista's heyday and were not above attempting to 'extort' gamers onto Vista with that sort of bullshit. MS' behavior during that time did more harm then anything else (when they were really hyping the 360 -- coincidence? I think not. Don't get me started on Games For Windows either, basically XboX Live for PCs with crappy UI and a truckload of poorly implemented unnecessary garbage emulating the 360 environment)

The only game I own that uses Games For Windows is Fallout 3 - I registered on it a while ago, bought a couple of DLCs from it but other than that I've never bothered with it. I'll just have to take your word on that one. :-)

Re:Making Older Titles Available Again

[pandrijeczko]

As I said already, how many other people use Linux really doesn't bother me & I don't believe any company anywhere undertakes anything unless they think there's profit to be made from it.

But Steam for Linux is a good thing & I'll be interested to see what impact it does have on desktop Linux take-up.

Sure Windows 7 may be better than XP, I don't use it & cannot comment on it. And, yes, it's more popular than Vista, enough so that it's being hailed a success - again, cannot argue with that.

But the fact is that Windows XP is still the most popular Windows desktop OS and good enough for most people until they get a new PC with Windows 7 on it or go buy the Windows 7 boxed version as an upgrade. So any PC games that are released in the near future are certainly not going to be incompatible with Windows XP because that would be commercial suicide for any games company.

So faced with the fact that most people have no reason to upgrade from XP to 7, Microsoft's only course of action would be to some how try to force them to upgrade - but then, with Steam on Linux and more games running on Linux, are they more likely to pay for Windows 7 or give Ubuntu a try because it's free?

Definitely interesting times...

Re:Making Older Titles Available Again

[elrous0]

I buy most of my games used for $10-$30. Even the hottest title will often be down to around $20 just a year after release. But I can only do that with console games now. Digital distribution and DRM is killing the used market for PC games (intentionally). So digital copies certainly don't mean a good price for me. It means paying close to retail for something I would have been able to buy a lot cheaper used if it weren't for all the DRM.

Re:Making Older Titles Available Again

[VGPowerlord]

XP Mode has no OpenGL/Direct3D support. You're going to need VMWare or VirtualBox (with some extra setup, and is limited to DX8/9) for that.

Second Hand Market

[im just cannonfodder]

sony and co (all the large game corps) have all got together and are simply trying to destroy the second hand market which is why they are trying to force us to only accept digital distribution laden with DRM like steam where all your purchases are not allowed to be resold.

they simply want to force everyone to have to purchase new which is why they have continually tried to get us to stop using the PC and move onto the kiddie toy consoles.

but now they are not happy with the consoles and are trying to block second hand games being traded on them.

i hate scum bag anti consumer corporations.

Re:Second Hand Market

[pandrijeczko]

sony and co (all the large game corps) have all got together and are simply trying to destroy the second hand market which is why they are trying to force us to only accept digital distribution laden with DRM like steam where all your purchases are not allowed to be resold.

I accept that Steam is a form of DRM control but it's the best of a bad bunch. The stuff you've bought already is always available to you to download onto any PC you own plus it's very easy to backup your Steam folder to an external hard disk - this means that if you rebuild your OS or upgrade your PC, you just have to copy the Steam folder back rather than having to reinstall and re-update each game one-by-one.

As for re-selling old games, have you checked prices on eBay recently? Unless the used games being sold are highly collectible or only a few months old, the prices of used PC games are peanuts. I have a stack of old PC games from about 3-5 years ago that I no longer play but are just not worth listing on eBay & will go to the local charity shop instead. I'm afraid that this idea that you can re-sell oldish games for anything near their original value is a myth.

but now they are not happy with the consoles and are trying to block second hand games being traded on them.

I'm not defending this behaviour by any means but if, as a gamer, it's important to you to be able to re-sell a game once you've finished with it, then maybe the only option is to factor it into your original purchasing decisions. The fact is that a lot of people appear to be mindless enough to queue at midnight with their kids to be the first to have a computer game suggests that most of them don't care about reselling them. Besides which, have you seen what happens to the condition of optical disks after a few weeks of kids putting them in consoles? :-)

i hate scum bag anti consumer corporations.

I agree - but the best way to hurt them is in their wallets. If you don't agree with the expected terms & conditions around something you plan on buying then just don't buy it. Corporations have got so powerful because too many mindless consumers have been sucked in by too many marketing lies - if you stop handing money over to them, they wither and die overnight.

Re:Second Hand Market

[stewbacca]

I have so many old games laying around that I never got around to reselling, nor do I ever play. I'm pretty sure I'm the norm.

Re:Second Hand Market

[LordVader717]

Who can blame them? They don't owe it to anybody to supply people with games. They have a business to run. Most projects struggle to make a profit the way it is. If they see a new and emerging business model, they're not going to wait around for someone to beat them to it.
And judging by the success of subscription based models and digital distribution, it appears that most gamers aren't tremendously concerned about reselling their games.

If anybody is to blame for this development it's the large chain retailers who actively discourage customers from buying their products and push their used games on which they make windfall profits.
When your main distributor is doing this, you have a problem. Believe me when I tell you that the relationship between retailers like Gamestop and publishers is pretty tense.

With any market there is a balance between used and new, but thanks to Gamestop it has been shifted to one side. Publishers have simply reacted to the unbalanced situation. Of course you're free to not buy into this new distribution method.

Personally I would also like boxed games to stay. In the end though, I don't think consumers are worse off. Thanks to digital distribution Games are cheaper than ever and they no longer go out of print. There's two advantage of used games alsready dealt with.

Re:Second Hand Market

[CaseM]

Digital Distribution is one way to kill the second-hand market, yes, but they don't need to go digital to do it - just include activation keys with new copies of the game like PC games do. It's the quickest way to kill the second-hand market next gen (and, in my opinion, would ultimately stunt the growth of the industry).

Re:and

[pandrijeczko]

I'm a fan of Stardock's Galactic Civilizations II and the expansions, all of which I own on CD.

Not long after the original game was released about 5 years ago, Stardock changed the license key format (I think due to piracy issues) so that the key printed on the instruction manual no longer worked. However, they informed everyone about this & getting a new key issued was straightforward & quick.

I hadn't played the game for about two years & had rebuilt my PC since I'd last played it but decided to dig it out again recently. When I installed the game & connected to Stardock via their Impulse application (think of it as a simpler version of Steam), I remembered the old key didn't work, had the lost the new key & realised that the registered email address Stardock had for me was an ISP-based one from an ISP I no longer use or have access to.

I emailed Stardock, asking them to either send the key to my new email address or to update my records to that I could send myself the key from Impulse. This was on a Friday evening and I had been looking forward to playing GC II over the weekend.

To give Stardock credit, they were very helpful and by the following Tuesday they had sorted it all out - but I did need to send out about three emails to them and they appeared to have nobody on duty over the weekend, which is when I had really fancied having the gaming session.

So, yes, this is one specific reason why too much reliance on the game creator servers can be a problem for legitimate purchasers.

whining

[Tom]

It is always the same whining. "piracy is killing us", "the VHS is killing us", "bootlegs are killing us" - no matter if it's games, movies, music, the main expertise of the content industry has for at least 40 years been whining.

Unfortunately, they're not laughed out the door as they deserve to.

Re:whining

[LordVader717]

Some people like to whine and exaggerate. But it would be ignorant deny that these developments don't change the way people do business. For better or for worse.

Games developers have already shifted the majority of their efforts to consoles, so have in that sense been "laughed out the door". Some people are perfectly happy with that. Others complain about the publishers and write angry posts on forums.

9/10 people agree that most stats are full of shit

[nataflux]

And let's not forget about the subscription based mmo market, as well as the mostly korean freetoplay mmo market, both of these markets being mostly pirate proof, and coincidentally massive.

Contested Numbers

[Tridus]

According to Stardock's CEO, these numbers are wrong. Going by raw sales numbers, he says the digital number is actually closer to 25%.
Why the discrepency? Well, he has actual numbers for retail and Impulse (which he happens to own). He doesn't have numbers for Steam. Of course, neither does NPD. Their digital numbers are based on an online survey. These are not real sales numbers by any measure of the word, they're the sales equivalent of a biased online public opinion poll.
If I stood in the electronics aisle of Walmart and did a survey there, I'd find shockingly different numbers too. Unfortunately since we don't have accurate sales data for anybody, we're left with this kind of guess work.

new definition of consoles

[Tei]

What define the consoles now, is that the console games hare created for people playing in a coach, with a pad on the hand. this sets limits and expectations. Then, after that, you have the effects of the owner of the console, setting rules, and maybe his idea of quality.

The PC is defined by the high and medium graphic cards, memory availability, mouse and keyboard. And people use it on a desktop.

This may change on the future,but is like that today.

Re:new definition of consoles

[cgenman]

I wonder about that. With Flash titles, low-ball graphics in WoW, 20 year-old-games still being played, web games, facebook games, etc... It seems like PC gaming might actually be defined by laptops, no barrier to entry, mouse and keyboard, and online. The enthusiast desktops are just becoming a niche compared to Zingya at work.

Au contraire

[Moraelin]

I don't think any publisher ever hated the idea of digital distribution (if only it could be made pirate-proof enough for their taste.)

See, ever since the 90's or so, most of the profit has been made by the retailers. Those make money both from the few games that are a success, and from the complete flops. Even games like Daikatana or Aiken's Artefact (which got great reviews, but IIRC sold a total of 800 copies and nobody knowns why) actually made a bunch of retailers a bunch of money.

See, some of us learned a 17'th century version of capitalism (which is also the version in the game called Capitalism) where the merchant buys a barrel of wine in France for price X and tries to sell it in England for 10% more. (Or 50% or whatever.) And if it doesn't work, hey, the producer got his money anyway. Most of retail in today's post-scarcity economy doesn't work that way. Producing stuff is easy, selling it is hard, and basically as a producer you pay the retailers for shelf space to even carry your product at all. If you made an Aiken's Artefact and sold 800 copies total, congrats, you still pay all those retailers to have it on the shelves.

Worse yet, basically the retailers know how important they are and often get to directly or indirectly got to set the rules for you.

The most trivial example is the current brouhaha over ESRB ratings, which exists because of one single retailer: Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart doesn't carry Adults Only game, 'cause god forbid someone may think that means porn, and that would ruin their BS corporate image. Dumbly enough it's also the biggest retailer. Which left the industry in the pickle of simultaneously arguing (A) not all games are for kids, so fuck off, we can make a game with tits and gutting people like sardines because it's for adults, (B) but this particular set of tits and gutted people is good for 17 years old (or sometimes even 13) because otherwise Wal-Mart won't carry it and we'd, like, not make as much money. (And of course making money overrides and moral considerations. What are you, some kinda commie?)

But, heck, even the E3 exists only because at some point the industry figured out they need a way to woo the retailers. That's right. It never was meant to be a place where nerds get their photos taken with booth-babes, except as a further way to show the retailers "look how many people are interested in our next game."

But generally, you have an industry which for a long while has been squeezed by the balls by the retailers. It had to keep brown-nosing them and paying them for the privilege.

I believe that most publishers would have sold their soul to the devil to get out of that, not just tried digital distribution.

Of course, it also had to be enough of a market share, and give some reassurance that it won't get pirated right off your own servers. Piracy, now _that's_ a bigger scare than the retailers.

Like I keep saying everywhere these come up...

[Mystery00]

PC gaming was never dying/dead in the first place, these are all non-stories.

Ask Nvidia or AMD/ATi....

[DickeyP]

I highly doubt those in the GPU business would invest so much time, effort, and money into something that is "bound to fail". Sure, the PC isn't their only market, but it's a damn big one.

Re:Ask Nvidia or AMD/ATi....

[Skuto]

Well, they *are* diversifying into the HPC market...

Re:For the last time

[Skuto]

>1. Computers don't go obsolete like consoles do

No, they obsolete faster. A 5 year old PC is not going to run all the new games. A 5 year old console does.

>2. A keyboard & mouse > controller

There are other games besides FPS (for which a controller is better). Racing games, for example.

Genesis, NES,SNES,Dreamcast,xbox 360 and PS3

[orateam]

All of those consoles were thought to be the end of the PC Gaming scene of which i've been a part of since the Zork days. PC gaming was and still is the innovator of gaming. Here is my recollection of the PC game wars. When the PC moved to better grahpical games on CGA and EVGA, the NES was already at its max limits. So when the SNES came out shortly after EVGA games in the early 90's, the PC gaming industry was declared dead. As PC's regained market share, the SONY playstation came out (1995?) and again the death of the PC gaming was declared. PC's fought back with 3dFX, the Voodoo card. I'll never forget seeing tomb raider with that beautiful 3d glide version of the game and just thinking "how could this ever be topped"? Then in the late 90's when PC gaming was at its near peak, the best PC game ever to come to PC's got bought by the biggest PC backing company. We thought PC's had won the war when Microsoft bought Bungie. Who would have thought that it was nearly the nail in the coffin. Between Xbox and PS2, PC gamers had a new system not only to look at but for the first time, but truly hack. Then came NVIDIA. The PC gamer's savior. Producing the RIVA TNT, PC gamers finally were revived. This led to 10 years of very expensive graphic cards where PC gamers would briefly lose their edge while a new console like the PS3 or 360 took the lead. The fight still goes on, although the PC is now clearly in the drivers seat, behind ridiculous video cards like Geforce 400 series. PC gaming is 7 or 8 generations ahead of the best consoles out there. But i'll admit, i play now 50% of my games on the PS3/360. But when i want to be fully immersed and get lost, nothing beats playing a game on a high end gaming rig with a supersharp large monitor 2 feet from your eyes.

Re:For the last time

[night_flyer]

> There are other games besides FPS (for which a controller is better). Racing games, for example.

RTS & Puzzle Games are better using a Keyboard/Mouse, basically any game where you have to click on an area on the screen a KB/M combo is superior. the only games that gamepads "might" be better are arcade games, but even then a keyboard mouse combo is just as effective

Re:For the last time

[VGPowerlord]

>1. Computers don't go obsolete like consoles do

No, they obsolete faster. A 5 year old PC is not going to run all the new games. A 5 year old console does.

That depends on how you classify "all the new games."

The PS2 is still being sold. I could buy it and play "all the new [PS2] games," but that's like saying I can drink all the water in a desert... there may be some there, but extremely little. Prior to this generation, a console's lifetime was 5-6 years before it was considered obsolete and its manufacturer released a new system.

New consoles are generally considered new platforms. They may play games for older systems, but it's not guaranteed (Sony, this means you). Windows, on the other hand, will play a good deal of older games, even if they were released 15 years ago. This is slowly changing; 64-bit Windows won't run 16-bit Windows programs. Even then, I can set up VMWare with an older Windows installation and continue playing older games... something you can't do on consoles.

Re:For the last time

[Skuto]

At the very least, racing games, flightsims and platformers are not something you want mouse+keyboard for. The people who buy controllers for PC games surely don't do that because they like taking a step backwards.

geeee

[unity100]

out of the approx 15 games i have on gg now, only 2 has drm. and they are simple securom and shit. nothing that anyone cant handle.

Re:and

[Zalbik]

I hadn't played the game for about two years & had rebuilt my PC since I'd last played it but decided to dig it out again recently. When I installed the game & connected to Stardock via their Impulse application (think of it as a simpler version of Steam), I remembered the old key didn't work, had the lost the new key & realised that the registered email address Stardock had for me was an ISP-based one from an ISP I no longer use or have access to.

That totally reminds me of this one time that I wanted to drive my car, but then I realized that I had left my keys in a pair of pants I'd thrown out. I had also lost my car registration and my drivers license.

So, yes, this is one specific reason why too much reliance on the game creator servers can be a problem for legitimate purchasers.

No, this gives one specific reason for why you should keep backups of important data.

Re:For the last time

[night_flyer]

I play racing games on my PC, the keyboard works just fine... its as good as a gamepad on a console

Coincidence

[pgn674]

Bit of a coincidence that the website (The Customer Is) Not Always Right posted this humorous excerpt today: Not Always Right | Funny & Stupid Customer Quotes Not Down Low On The Download

Re:Coincidence

[pgn674]

Oh wait, huh, 'downloading' could refer to buying it online, or pirating it. Didn't think of that.

With lower costs, revenue is a bad comparison.

[wilson_c]

48% of the games might represent only 36% of the revenue, but what percent of the profit are they?

Without the expenses of duplication, packaging, shipping, warehousing, distributor's cut, retailer's cut, and in-store marketing costs (to say nothing of returns on damaged and unpurchased stock) I imaging that digital distribution is much more profitable for the developers and publishers than brick and mortar even if it represents less gross revenue.

Re:the PC will never really die as a games platfor

[johnhp]

Actually I'm a PC game developer...

My local used game store used to do that...

[rsilvergun]

Until DRM made it so a boxed copy of a game wouldn't 'activate' on any computer but mine (I'm lookin' at you, Chronicles of Riddick). So much for right of first sale.

Digital?

[siriuskase]

Does this you can buy games that are analog? Analog computers are cool, but I don't know of any in mass production.

What about the cool things in the box?

[jimnorcal]

Beautiful artwork laced manuals. Fun maps (sometimes even made of cloth). The occasional action figure. Other entertaining inserts. The disks themselves which are nice to look at. It's all these reasons which would prevent me from ever buying online digital downloads only. It just makes no sense to me to do so even if I'm saving five or so bucks and, honestly, I don't think I've seen such an advantage for any title. So, I will always be a hard copy game buyer and hope such things never go away.

Re:For the last time

[mjwx]

>1. Computers don't go obsolete like consoles do

No, they obsolete faster. A 5 year old PC is not going to run all the new games. A 5 year old console does.

But my 1 yr old PC can play 10 yr old games. In fact I just started replaying Starcraft this weekend.

Also gaming PC's dont deteriorate that fast, depending on the kind of games you play. My housemates 5 yr old PC will play Starcraft 2 (AMD 64 X2, 2 GB RAM, Geforce 7300).

>2. A keyboard & mouse > controller

There are other games besides FPS (for which a controller is better). Racing games, for example.

Both inferior to the steering wheel controller. Also for flight sims, mouse is crap but I have a $30 joystick to play a few flying games (X3, ARMA) which is far superior to both the mouse and control pad and I've once used a HOTAS setup but cant justify the outlay for a few games.