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

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: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.