Slashdot Mirror
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."
Who would have thought $99 wasn't due to the cost of packaging? The eyes, how they roll!
Disagree != mod troll.
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.
Hack your mind out of its sandbox.
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.
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.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
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.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
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