Consoles tend to have life cycles- the first 5 years or so its marketed towards the hardcore console fans, after that as the system's lifespan winds down it's increasingly targeted towards the younger and casual set, or maybe marketed in places like latin america that might be viable until the console is a little more affordable. IIRC, the Sega Master system did extremely well there long after it's traditional lifespan would have been up.
The NES was not $150 at launch. It took a couple years to drop down to this price. The SMB/Duck Hunt package didn't even appear for a year and a half or so after the console's debut, and it did so at $199. All console launches ever have been around the $3-400 mark, going as far back as the Atari 2600.
and this will be my last reply, because I thought I had made it clear. Samsung, RCA, what have you WILL be able to produce a Blu-Ray player cheaper than the Ps3, but NOT at launch...only when the manufacturing cost comes down, as it did with DVD players. At one point (circa 2000 or so) the Ps2 was considered a cheap DVD player at $300. Costs dropped over the years and budget models were developed, this is no longer the case. DVD players can be had for $50 while the ps2 is still $149 or so. But this process is not instantaneous and takes years to happen for EVERY new technology.
you seem to be intent on criticising me, and missing some rather obvious points. Don't forget to keep it civil, this is a discussion, not a personal attack.
There will likely not be any players costing less than the Ps3 AT LAUNCH because EARLY ADOPTER, BLEEDING EDGE TECHNOLOGY which blu-ray is, is typically expensive. Think of when DVD launched- Player prices were also in the $1000+ range and took years to come down. Same with VHS, CD burners, HDTV itself, AD Nauseum. As manufacturing costs lower you will EVENTUALLY see these players, but never at launch. I thought this was obvious, so I didn't address it.
Early adopters DO drive new technology. They're the opinion leaders that fund the R&D and spread positive word of mouth. Some things like DVDs, CDs, VHS catch fire and take off...other technologies like BetaMax, D-VHS, DVD-Audio, and Laserdisc fail to set the world on fire. The "reasonably priced" market you speak of typically doesn't catch wind of bleeding edge tech until after it's well established.
Maybe you misunderstood me. I didn't say only people with high end tastes are buying HDTV's, I said there are two VERY different types of buyers. The Ps3 with bare bones playback and terrible interface (assuming its like the ps2 DVD controls) targets one market..the market that's buying 27 inch Zenith HDTV's, while the much higher end and intuitive $1000 players will target a DIFFERENT market that is willing to pay a higher price for better looking, higher quality equipment, like Pioneer Elite Plasma TV's and expensive front end projectors.
Are the sub $100 DVD players out there killing the market for high end $500 DVD players? Or Surround sound systems? of course not. even on mature technologies like DVD and surround sound, these divisions still exist.
Maybe you have a poor understanding of how the market works. The companies building the higher end units aren't "getting hosed." They will make a profit on each unit sold, and the market for blue ray discs will only INCREASE as more ps3's are sold, guaranteeing that those customers who want to shell out $1000 for a player will have the content to justify the purchase. Come on now, companies like Pioneer aren't stupid. They knew what they were getting into a long time ago.
HDDVD is almost irrelevant here- It has a MUCH smaller backing from the studios..blu ray will probably kill it on content alone. In addition, it has lost any early lead it might have had. but that's neither here nor there.
Definitely not. The Ps3 is going to cater to the casual consumer electronics buyer,(say, the kind that actually buys the mid to low end SONY Audio and Video gear) while the $1000 standalone drives are geared more towards bleeding edge early adopters that are used to brands like Denon, Yamaha, Faroudja, etc.
These consumers consider style, quality, and ease of use of the unit a primary concern. Have you ever tried operating a Ps2 DVD player with the control pad? This kind of market would never consider it- they need something that looks good with their current audio/video setup, and works with the $200 LCD Learning remote they already own. It's two entirely different markets with two different needs.
you can't compare the "power" of a PC and a console directly because no matter how fast your killer rig is, you'll never get a game that really takes advantage of it. 90% of that is going to waste. there's also substantial differences in chip architectures, etc etc...
For instance: The PS2 is running absolutely gorgeous games like metal gear solid 3, Shadow of the Colossus, God of War, and Gran turismo 4 (in 1080i) on a 300mhz chip with 32 megs of RAM. Good luck getting a PC with those specs to come anywhere CLOSE to that performance.
the numbers are going up due to an influx of immigrants. For example- from 1980 to now, Hispanics became the largest minority in the country almost overnight. They'll be the majority in california within the decade.
also, a LARGE percentage of the population is rapidly approaching retirement age. As soon as the baby boomers start to die off, we'll see those population numbers decline if immigration doesn't keep up to prevent it.
I agree that all great ideas are built on the backs of giants, so to speak- but you're oversimplifying more than just a little bit.
Shadow of the colossus as "a vapid platformer?" That game is only a platformer in the VERY loosest sense of the word. Its more of an adventure game. You'd be hard pressed to find anything remotely like it on any system. It may not be your cup of tea but it WAS definitely an original concept done well.
Guitar hero is not a sequel to frequency or amplitude, and plays nothing like either. The Guitar controller they designed for that TOTALLY changes the game, and the way the levels play out is completely, totally different. They're in the same genre, but the similarities stop there. I own all three. At best, you could say it's closest to Konami's guitar freaks- but still, nothing like it has been done on this side of the atlantic and certainly not that well.
There is nothing remotely like Exit on the SNES.
you Dismissed Lumines as "just like tetris" and Trauma Center as "operation"- Yet Laud half life because it's an FPS...but with Physics! You also seem to like the final fantasy series, and claim it's innovative based on "more interesting ways to gain power." I like the Final Fantasy series myself, but with a few rare exceptions (say, from 6 to 7) the series has been more about small refinements to a successful formula than true innovation. Even the job system that you like in 11 had been done before and rather well in Final Fantasy 5 and final Fantasy Tactics.
What is SEEMS you're looking for is new innovations within established genres that you already have made up your mind that you enjoy. That's fine, but that's not innovation.
I agree with 99% of your post- if I was able to I'd mod you up. The only thing I take exception with is that the US, like most of the industrialized world has a NEGATIVE birthrate. It's recently at an all time low with 13.9 births per 1000 people, the lowest since such statistics have been kept, and has been in constant decline since 1991.
Japan is even worse. So the generation of gamers being born NOW is actually SMALLER than the generation of gamers born 20 years ago. So as time goes on, the gaming industry should have less potential customers, assuming they're aiming at the 8-33 year old demographic.
Immigration is offsetting this of course, but I don't know if its enough to make up for it. (especially since no one really has an accurate tally for illegal immigrants, not that they're likely to have much disposable income for gaming.)
I disagree- there are PLENTY of great new ideas out there. They just usually don't have the marketing dollars of Madden 200x, Half Life2, Or The next Final Fantasy.
Just off the top of my head- upcoming and recently released titles that are new and great ideas- Psychonauts, Guitar Hero, Shadow of the Colossus, Trauma Center: Under the Knife, Exit, Geometry Wars, Lumines, Okami (AWESOME Concept!)...and these are just in the last couple of months. And I didn't even mention Katamari, because that seems to be the trendy thing to mention when making an example for good ideas.
Don't forget that 50% figure is almost entirely composed of early adopter hardcore gamers, Xbox Live silver users who pay nothing (can't play games online, but can buy content and post scores) and trial users which are also currently paying nothing.
We'd have to wait a little longer to see if the actual, Live Gold user statistics are truly higher than the 10% who subscribed to Live on the Xbox1.
also worth mentioning is that sony is guaranteed to sell a couple million Ps3's out of the gate, so they have the ability to spread out the cost of development (which is a fixed cost) over the life of the console, lowering the price of the unit.
Pioneer, for instance, doesn't have a prayer of selling that many Blu-Ray units at launch so they have a mich higher price point to compensate for selling far fewer units.
Think of it this way- if my development/marketing cost for a blu-ray unit is say..10 million dollars, The cost per unit I have to charge the customer is a lot less if I can sell 3 or 4 million than if I can only expect to sell 3000.
combine that with the fact that Sony doesn't have to turn a profit on the unit, (generating revenue with first and third party games, in addition to every blu-ray DVD sold) and can sell it below cost, and that's where you end up with your $1000 price difference.
Yeah, Sony is part of the DVD forum, like Toshiba. The reason the PS2 is DVD enabled by default unlike the Xbox is because Sony, being a member, doesn't have to pay royalties on every system sold. On the flipside, Microsoft pays a percentage of the profits from the Xbox DVD kit to the forum.
Sony wasn't entirely happy with the AMOUNT of the royalties that they were receiving from DVD so along with phillips, they developed Blu-Ray as the successor to DVD.
You're also wrong about Blu-Ray being unproven- Standalone Drives have been available for sale in Japan for some time now.
I played BF2 on the PC a lot last year. I'd "get" a console if I could play multiplayer games on them using a mouse
Yes, because obviously all games are made better with a mouse and keyboard, regardless of whether or not the design warrants them.
and when the games stop being so expensive
expensive? the average game is 39.99, and best sellers are frequently granted greatest hits status and down to 19.99 or less within a year. combine that with the option to rent, which doesn't exist for PC games, and the strong used game market, and you're talking out of your ass here.
Single player games are tedious,
Opinion. Fans of Games of the year (depending on who you ask, of course) God of War, Ninja Gaiden, Zelda, Resident Evil 4, and Grand Theft Auto III/Vice City/San Andreas disagree with you.
the online experience whenever I've checked it out seemed pretty poor.
Again, Xbox Live and Live arcade are getting very positive reviews as one of the few things microsoft has done RIGHT with their console entry. Every game is live enabled and they've created a market for cheap but fun games that otherwise would never see the light of day, like geometry wars.
If you have a preference for PC games because that's your thing, then just say so, but the GP post is correct- you do seem like a bitter PC gamer that just doesn't "get" the console.
you're kidding yourself if you think the SIMS or Mario has outsold Madden Football As a Franchise. It's been the top selling game (or VERY close to it) almost every year since 1992, and gets released EVERY year, like clockwork.
yeah, the Powerglove and the U-Force both had motion sensor technology. So did Sega's Activator, IIRC- but that thing never worked well.
The intellivision had an 8 way D-pad (shaped like a disc) in 1979, long before the NES or the game & watch made use of one. The atari 5200 had analog sticks back in 1982. I've been playing simple but addictive touchscreen games at the bar for half a decade now.
Nintendo didn't innovate these things, but they DID take these things and adapt them WELL for console use.
Re:will it be open to amature developers?
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Mario All Grown Up?
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· Score: 1
Third party development is a way for console manufacturers to make money hand over fist. think of it this way- Square enix has to sink money into development and marketing of the game before they see any revenue. if the game sells poorly, (for instance like psychonauts, beyond good and evil, or advent rising did) they take a loss. in addition, a good chunk of that $50 game is going to retailers and middlemen. Square Enix will *maybe* see 10 dollars of actual profit per game sold after everyone else gets their cut, IF the game does well.
Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft however- generate revenue on every disc pressed (I forget the exact amount, sorry, but its substantial enough that they can reduce their take on the game, drop it to 19.99 as a greatest hit and still make a profit) without having to do any of this, and make money on the title regardless of how well the game actually sells without spending a dime.
In addition, even nintendo only has the resources to make 1-3 AAA titles on their platform per year-(excluding the DS/GBA, where development is obviously much cheaper) contrast this with the flood of 3rd party titles available for Ps2/Xbox, and you'll begin to see why strong 3rd party support is a very big deal.
The console industry is not the PC industry. The Dot Com boom had nothing to do with the sales of the Ps2. Take a look at console sales over the past 10 years. its a steady incline- there is no "boom" or "bust" associated with the dot com bubble.
The cost of the console went down in price because production was refined to the point where they could produce the console at that cost and maintain a profit. The Emotion Engine and Graphics synthesizers were originally 2 separate chips, they scaled them down in size to reduce cost, then eventually engineered a single chip to do the work of both.
Crack open 5 random Ps2's produced anywhere from 2000-2005 and they'll all look different. The console was under constant revision to improve the manufacturing process and make it cheaper to make.
All consoles drop in price given a long enough timeline, without exception. There has NEVER been a playstation.5, an NES.5, A SNES.5, A Genesis.5 or any other console revision produced "to push the price back up" because the console industry does not work that way.
The only hole in your argument is that $200 is *not* the magic price point for consoles. The Ps2 Launched at $299 and stayed that way, selling like mad, until May 2002 almost 2 YEARS later. It's all about the software and if compelling titles are available.
Of course console games appeal to the non technical. The non technical comprise the VAST majority of the people out there. These people, the same ones that make madden and GTA the top selling games every year by a long shot, just want their games to work.
Reading slashdot all day with likeminded individuals its easy to lose sight of the fact that we (the technically minded) are vastly outnumbered. Piracy is more of a concern on PC's than consoles, but as of 2004 Console titles generated about 6.6 billion in sales vs 1.1 Billion on the PC. (source: NPD) Piracy is a problem but not enough to make a significant difference here.
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I hear solitaire plays best using, you know...cards. ;)
Consoles tend to have life cycles- the first 5 years or so its marketed towards the hardcore console fans, after that as the system's lifespan winds down it's increasingly targeted towards the younger and casual set, or maybe marketed in places like latin america that might be viable until the console is a little more affordable. IIRC, the Sega Master system did extremely well there long after it's traditional lifespan would have been up.
The launch version of the NES with R.O.B. retailed for $249. Adjusted for inflation, thats at least as much as an Xbox360 premium.
the panasonic version of the 3DO retailed for around $600 at launch, also.
The NES was not $150 at launch. It took a couple years to drop down to this price. The SMB/Duck Hunt package didn't even appear for a year and a half or so after the console's debut, and it did so at $199. All console launches ever have been around the $3-400 mark, going as far back as the Atari 2600.
and this will be my last reply, because I thought I had made it clear. Samsung, RCA, what have you WILL be able to produce a Blu-Ray player cheaper than the Ps3, but NOT at launch...only when the manufacturing cost comes down, as it did with DVD players. At one point (circa 2000 or so) the Ps2 was considered a cheap DVD player at $300. Costs dropped over the years and budget models were developed, this is no longer the case. DVD players can be had for $50 while the ps2 is still $149 or so. But this process is not instantaneous and takes years to happen for EVERY new technology.
you seem to be intent on criticising me, and missing some rather obvious points. Don't forget to keep it civil, this is a discussion, not a personal attack.
There will likely not be any players costing less than the Ps3 AT LAUNCH because EARLY ADOPTER, BLEEDING EDGE TECHNOLOGY which blu-ray is, is typically expensive. Think of when DVD launched- Player prices were also in the $1000+ range and took years to come down. Same with VHS, CD burners, HDTV itself, AD Nauseum. As manufacturing costs lower you will EVENTUALLY see these players, but never at launch. I thought this was obvious, so I didn't address it.
Early adopters DO drive new technology. They're the opinion leaders that fund the R&D and spread positive word of mouth. Some things like DVDs, CDs, VHS catch fire and take off...other technologies like BetaMax, D-VHS, DVD-Audio, and Laserdisc fail to set the world on fire. The "reasonably priced" market you speak of typically doesn't catch wind of bleeding edge tech until after it's well established.
Maybe you misunderstood me. I didn't say only people with high end tastes are buying HDTV's, I said there are two VERY different types of buyers. The Ps3 with bare bones playback and terrible interface (assuming its like the ps2 DVD controls) targets one market..the market that's buying 27 inch Zenith HDTV's, while the much higher end and intuitive $1000 players will target a DIFFERENT market that is willing to pay a higher price for better looking, higher quality equipment, like Pioneer Elite Plasma TV's and expensive front end projectors.
Are the sub $100 DVD players out there killing the market for high end $500 DVD players? Or Surround sound systems? of course not. even on mature technologies like DVD and surround sound, these divisions still exist.
Maybe you have a poor understanding of how the market works. The companies building the higher end units aren't "getting hosed." They will make a profit on each unit sold, and the market for blue ray discs will only INCREASE as more ps3's are sold, guaranteeing that those customers who want to shell out $1000 for a player will have the content to justify the purchase. Come on now, companies like Pioneer aren't stupid. They knew what they were getting into a long time ago.
HDDVD is almost irrelevant here- It has a MUCH smaller backing from the studios..blu ray will probably kill it on content alone. In addition, it has lost any early lead it might have had. but that's neither here nor there.
Definitely not. The Ps3 is going to cater to the casual consumer electronics buyer,(say, the kind that actually buys the mid to low end SONY Audio and Video gear) while the $1000 standalone drives are geared more towards bleeding edge early adopters that are used to brands like Denon, Yamaha, Faroudja, etc.
These consumers consider style, quality, and ease of use of the unit a primary concern. Have you ever tried operating a Ps2 DVD player with the control pad? This kind of market would never consider it- they need something that looks good with their current audio/video setup, and works with the $200 LCD Learning remote they already own. It's two entirely different markets with two different needs.
you can't compare the "power" of a PC and a console directly because no matter how fast your killer rig is, you'll never get a game that really takes advantage of it. 90% of that is going to waste. there's also substantial differences in chip architectures, etc etc...
For instance: The PS2 is running absolutely gorgeous games like metal gear solid 3, Shadow of the Colossus, God of War, and Gran turismo 4 (in 1080i) on a 300mhz chip with 32 megs of RAM. Good luck getting a PC with those specs to come anywhere CLOSE to that performance.
the numbers are going up due to an influx of immigrants. For example- from 1980 to now, Hispanics became the largest minority in the country almost overnight. They'll be the majority in california within the decade.
also, a LARGE percentage of the population is rapidly approaching retirement age. As soon as the baby boomers start to die off, we'll see those population numbers decline if immigration doesn't keep up to prevent it.
I agree that all great ideas are built on the backs of giants, so to speak- but you're oversimplifying more than just a little bit.
Shadow of the colossus as "a vapid platformer?" That game is only a platformer in the VERY loosest sense of the word. Its more of an adventure game. You'd be hard pressed to find anything remotely like it on any system. It may not be your cup of tea but it WAS definitely an original concept done well.
Guitar hero is not a sequel to frequency or amplitude, and plays nothing like either. The Guitar controller they designed for that TOTALLY changes the game, and the way the levels play out is completely, totally different. They're in the same genre, but the similarities stop there. I own all three. At best, you could say it's closest to Konami's guitar freaks- but still, nothing like it has been done on this side of the atlantic and certainly not that well.
There is nothing remotely like Exit on the SNES.
you Dismissed Lumines as "just like tetris" and Trauma Center as "operation"- Yet Laud half life because it's an FPS...but with Physics! You also seem to like the final fantasy series, and claim it's innovative based on "more interesting ways to gain power." I like the Final Fantasy series myself, but with a few rare exceptions (say, from 6 to 7) the series has been more about small refinements to a successful formula than true innovation. Even the job system that you like in 11 had been done before and rather well in Final Fantasy 5 and final Fantasy Tactics.What is SEEMS you're looking for is new innovations within established genres that you already have made up your mind that you enjoy. That's fine, but that's not innovation.
I agree with 99% of your post- if I was able to I'd mod you up. The only thing I take exception with is that the US, like most of the industrialized world has a NEGATIVE birthrate. It's recently at an all time low with 13.9 births per 1000 people, the lowest since such statistics have been kept, and has been in constant decline since 1991. Japan is even worse. So the generation of gamers being born NOW is actually SMALLER than the generation of gamers born 20 years ago. So as time goes on, the gaming industry should have less potential customers, assuming they're aiming at the 8-33 year old demographic. Immigration is offsetting this of course, but I don't know if its enough to make up for it. (especially since no one really has an accurate tally for illegal immigrants, not that they're likely to have much disposable income for gaming.)
I disagree- there are PLENTY of great new ideas out there. They just usually don't have the marketing dollars of Madden 200x, Half Life2, Or The next Final Fantasy.
Just off the top of my head- upcoming and recently released titles that are new and great ideas- Psychonauts, Guitar Hero, Shadow of the Colossus, Trauma Center: Under the Knife, Exit, Geometry Wars, Lumines, Okami (AWESOME Concept!)...and these are just in the last couple of months. And I didn't even mention Katamari, because that seems to be the trendy thing to mention when making an example for good ideas.
Don't forget that 50% figure is almost entirely composed of early adopter hardcore gamers, Xbox Live silver users who pay nothing (can't play games online, but can buy content and post scores) and trial users which are also currently paying nothing.
We'd have to wait a little longer to see if the actual, Live Gold user statistics are truly higher than the 10% who subscribed to Live on the Xbox1.
also worth mentioning is that sony is guaranteed to sell a couple million Ps3's out of the gate, so they have the ability to spread out the cost of development (which is a fixed cost) over the life of the console, lowering the price of the unit.
Pioneer, for instance, doesn't have a prayer of selling that many Blu-Ray units at launch so they have a mich higher price point to compensate for selling far fewer units.
Think of it this way- if my development/marketing cost for a blu-ray unit is say..10 million dollars, The cost per unit I have to charge the customer is a lot less if I can sell 3 or 4 million than if I can only expect to sell 3000.
combine that with the fact that Sony doesn't have to turn a profit on the unit, (generating revenue with first and third party games, in addition to every blu-ray DVD sold) and can sell it below cost, and that's where you end up with your $1000 price difference.
Yeah, Sony is part of the DVD forum, like Toshiba. The reason the PS2 is DVD enabled by default unlike the Xbox is because Sony, being a member, doesn't have to pay royalties on every system sold. On the flipside, Microsoft pays a percentage of the profits from the Xbox DVD kit to the forum.
Sony wasn't entirely happy with the AMOUNT of the royalties that they were receiving from DVD so along with phillips, they developed Blu-Ray as the successor to DVD.
You're also wrong about Blu-Ray being unproven- Standalone Drives have been available for sale in Japan for some time now.
you're kidding yourself if you think the SIMS or Mario has outsold Madden Football As a Franchise. It's been the top selling game (or VERY close to it) almost every year since 1992, and gets released EVERY year, like clockwork.
yeah, the Powerglove and the U-Force both had motion sensor technology. So did Sega's Activator, IIRC- but that thing never worked well.
The intellivision had an 8 way D-pad (shaped like a disc) in 1979, long before the NES or the game & watch made use of one. The atari 5200 had analog sticks back in 1982. I've been playing simple but addictive touchscreen games at the bar for half a decade now.
Nintendo didn't innovate these things, but they DID take these things and adapt them WELL for console use.
Third party development is a way for console manufacturers to make money hand over fist. think of it this way- Square enix has to sink money into development and marketing of the game before they see any revenue. if the game sells poorly, (for instance like psychonauts, beyond good and evil, or advent rising did) they take a loss. in addition, a good chunk of that $50 game is going to retailers and middlemen. Square Enix will *maybe* see 10 dollars of actual profit per game sold after everyone else gets their cut, IF the game does well.
Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft however- generate revenue on every disc pressed (I forget the exact amount, sorry, but its substantial enough that they can reduce their take on the game, drop it to 19.99 as a greatest hit and still make a profit) without having to do any of this, and make money on the title regardless of how well the game actually sells without spending a dime.
In addition, even nintendo only has the resources to make 1-3 AAA titles on their platform per year-(excluding the DS/GBA, where development is obviously much cheaper) contrast this with the flood of 3rd party titles available for Ps2/Xbox, and you'll begin to see why strong 3rd party support is a very big deal.
He said it was the first FPS on a console that came out half a decade before Halo, not the first FPS on a console, ever.
Faceball 2000 was much earlier, as was the asstastic Wolfenstein 3D for SNES, and Super Noah's Ark 3D.
The console industry is not the PC industry. The Dot Com boom had nothing to do with the sales of the Ps2. Take a look at console sales over the past 10 years. its a steady incline- there is no "boom" or "bust" associated with the dot com bubble.
The cost of the console went down in price because production was refined to the point where they could produce the console at that cost and maintain a profit. The Emotion Engine and Graphics synthesizers were originally 2 separate chips, they scaled them down in size to reduce cost, then eventually engineered a single chip to do the work of both.
Crack open 5 random Ps2's produced anywhere from 2000-2005 and they'll all look different. The console was under constant revision to improve the manufacturing process and make it cheaper to make.
All consoles drop in price given a long enough timeline, without exception. There has NEVER been a playstation.5, an NES.5, A SNES.5, A Genesis.5 or any other console revision produced "to push the price back up" because the console industry does not work that way.
The only hole in your argument is that $200 is *not* the magic price point for consoles. The Ps2 Launched at $299 and stayed that way, selling like mad, until May 2002 almost 2 YEARS later. It's all about the software and if compelling titles are available.
Of course console games appeal to the non technical. The non technical comprise the VAST majority of the people out there. These people, the same ones that make madden and GTA the top selling games every year by a long shot, just want their games to work.
Reading slashdot all day with likeminded individuals its easy to lose sight of the fact that we (the technically minded) are vastly outnumbered. Piracy is more of a concern on PC's than consoles, but as of 2004 Console titles generated about 6.6 billion in sales vs 1.1 Billion on the PC. (source: NPD) Piracy is a problem but not enough to make a significant difference here.