Welcome aboard, but I have to disagree. I do buy games, but if I'm going to spend $50, it's got to be somthing worthwhile. For me that means an innvotive story, and somthing different in gameplay. The only games i expect to buy this year are the orange box, bioshock, and Stalker (yeah, i'm a little behind). The rest of the offerings seems lik the same old crap and so the developers aren't getting any of my money.
As I said in another thread, I think the piracy arguement is bogus. Sure, lots and lots of people pirate games. Guess what, if they couldn't pirate the games they would do somthing else with their time, but i think it is highly unlikley that they would ever pay for them. The fundamental flaw in that arguement is that it sees pirates as potential customers otherwise. They are not. If anything, I think piracy works to the advantage of the industry because a lot of people pdownload games and then go on to buy them. If they couldn't try them first they wouldn't take the risk with thewir money that the game may suck and they can't get a refund.
I think the biggest threat to gaming is the lack of innovation. People are willing to pay for good quality, but there seems to be relatively little of that to be had.
Originally Posted by Cthippo I think piracy works to the advantage of the industry because a lot of people download games and then go on to buy them. If they couldn't try them first they wouldn't take the risk with thewir money that the game may suck and they can't get a refund.
Originally Posted by Lepermessiah Are you actually saying NDP sales figures, and reports of PC gaming dying are ture, despite obvious evidence against it? Your post is so long, I don't think I have read a longer pile of crap in my life. No one is saying it is someone elses fault, it is no ones fault, there is no problem, PC gaming is doing fine.
He's or she's saying NPD is true... but the conclusion is false. PC sales may be low but PCs are also not dying.
Originally Posted by DXR_13KE If prices in making games are so high then how do indie devs make such amazing games as "infinity" in their free time? game cost is overrated IMHO, if indie game makers can do it for cheap and have such amazing titles then why cant the "giants" do the same?
Multiple reasons - indie developers may very well be holding second jobs to help pay for development, for instance, or do more than just develop games. StraDock for instance doesn't just make games... they make home office utilities. Alternatively, they may very well be happy making money from a niche audience and so their talent and costs are already very low. As well, the money goes to different things. An indie will probably be building their own engine or using one of the cheaper ones such as Torque. Indies may self publish nd self market. The scope also tends to be different - indies usually are not so much trying to be ambitious so much as focus on a single thing and do it very very well. Large companies tend to focus on grand epics.where everything is good; but those that work more like indies and focus on something very specific tend to come across much like a smaller developer. CoD4 for instance. So while there is true, some of it is just this different perception we have of indie and big developer.
Originally Posted by Cthippo I think piracy works to the advantage of the industry because a lot of people download games and then go on to buy them. If they couldn't try them first they wouldn't take the risk with thewir money that the game may suck and they can't get a refund.
and gets people addicted to the games.......
That may be true but it's also one of many reasons, all of which have an effect. Some download it because they lack money. Some may download it out of curiosity, play for five minutes, and forget about it. Some may go through games so quickly, buying it may not be a good investment. Some may get it because they want it and don't feel like they should pay. And many other reasons that are some shades of the above. Piracy is good, bad, and neither - the real question is encouraging people to buy the game while ignoring the people that would have never brought the game.
Firstly apologies for the crap text formatting, when I realised I was going to write an opus I did it in Word and of course there's no edit functionality here...
Lepermessiah, you're kind of under my worth-replying to threshold sorry.
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Originally Posted by DXR_13KE If prices in making games are so high then how do indie devs make such amazing games as "infinity" in their free time? game cost is overrated IMHO, if indie game makers can do it for cheap and have such amazing titles then why cant the "giants" do the same?
To develop games that actually sell in actual quantity, you need to make a game of the same kind of things as you see on the shelves in game retailers. Not kooky little MMO games which you're quite keen on. This requires teams of dozens of staff working for 18 month months beyond two years even. No one makes up the costs of game development, there's a heck of a lot of work, frightening amounts of work - a whole mini industry if you like - involved in basically cutting the costs of game development through middleware. But the fact is people want to play games like Burnout, Call of Duty 4, Assassin's Creed etc.
Sure you can make less sophisticated games with lots less content but as a rule that's not the PC gaming market. The PC gaming market wants highly sophisticated games to use the expensive hardware they enjoy tinkering with.
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Originally Posted by DXR_13KE ...slow selling of a game in the first months is also overrated, a game, if it is good enough, will sell for a long time,
Well, this is a finance issue I don't think you understand. A game needs to pay back the development costs and return a profit in a short order. If it doesn't sell pretty darn well when it first comes out then no amount of trickle sales will eventually lead it into profitability. The publisher simply wont do that again.
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Originally Posted by DXR_13KE look at Crysis and UT3, some say they sold like crap, other say they sold very well, i have to say that they will sell a lot more in the next year or so, there are mod teams taking the games to new levels, transforming FPS into RTS/FPS/RPG hybrids......
Those games emphatically sold disasterously. They were a real eye opener to the industry at large. People will keep buying them in dribs and drabs sure but when you needed to sell 500,000 to make back a three year development cycle that is of no use whatsoever. Interesting how the games you cite like this are exactly the highly sophisticated very expensive games which are the polar opposite of what you were talking about above.
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Originally Posted by DXR_13KE the biggest problem i see is the blatant difference in price around the world in games, Games in the US cost almost half what they cost here, their prices lower sooner, they get the games sooner and they get bundles sooner... no wonder piracy is so "rampant" around these parts......
If that was the 'biggest' problem then piracy would be lower in the US, would it not? That's what you're saying. But that's not true. In fact Germany is the world's best market for PC gaming.
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Originally Posted by DXR_13KE so lets see, i will not lash "out stupid sums of money on outrageous PC hardware", get a middle range computer in the US (or for the same price a low range computer around here) and try to play the "handful of amazing games that came out in 2007" with the money i saved..... that logic is amazing,.
That logic would be 'amazing' if that's what I was saying, but I wasn't. I never said you shouldn't buy high-end PCs. I'd be pretty shagged if you didn't because it's my job to do just that. I just find it a paradox that the PC gaming crowd complains about price (as you just did) when in fact they buy a £300 graphics card every year more or less at the same cost as buying EVERY AAA title on the platform in the same year.
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Originally Posted by DXR_13KE Instead of publishers crying that "game sales are low, piracy is killing us" why don't they lower the prices of the games
The reason they don't drop the prices is because it doesn't help. There's mountains of evidence on this front. Pricing analysis is one of the very core tennents of the business. Game shops are rammed to the gills with bargain basement software. Much of it only just came out. I think Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance is the finest RTS game to have graced the planet. It's now £17 quid bundled with the original. It was released in November. It sold bugger all, it's still selling bugger all.
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Originally Posted by Cthippo I think the biggest threat to gaming is the lack of innovation. People are willing to pay for good quality, but there seems to be relatively little of that to be had.
Thanks for the welcome. I'm sorry you disagree but I think I it can be clearly demonstrated that this simply isn't the case. There were some really truly great games released last year. Many of which sold depressingly low quantities.
Sure I agree, there's a lot of rubbish around. The thing is the rubbish isn't really aimed at us (the collective audience) it's aimed at the folks who go into Game/HMV etc and buy something off the shelf because they like the look of it. Movie licenses, endless sports sequels etc. The casual crowd.
That crowd essentially vanished because they were first to push off to consoles and retailers devoted a much more space to non-PC titles because they were/are being paid better for that placement than PC game publishers are paying. That's why I have to take issue with this whole line that the issue with people buying games on PC is because the games aren't good enough. The games are great. They sell by the truckload on consoles when they're on console as well.
So what are we saying exactly? That it's just the really savvy people with high standards in the PC gaming crowd that's the issue here because they recognise all PC games as being the crap that they are and therefore are too smart to spend their money? I don't think so. Because I know my friends are playing all the good games from last year, many just don't buy them. This can't be some revelation surely?
Perhaps I should add something positive anyway. I've got a gaming clan of pals and we're celebrating our 10th anniversary this year. \o/ Anyway, we have a few lan parties a year. One around my place next weekend. We've taken to basically picking a current good PC game with multiplayer (but not always) and putting in a bulk order for a game for everyone. In fact several games for everyone late last year, with the glut of fantastic games.
Alright we're older and we can afford it but this is pretty concious decision that if we aren't actually going to help the PC gaming industry at least we wont be the cause of further harm. I feel pretty good about putting in that big order of games and I think it's bloody great value for money. Sure I haven't (yet) got around to playing them all but this is a platform I'd desperately rather did not go belly up. But it takes more than just ragging on publishers about it at the end of the day.
Quick question...the PC games are being compared to all consoles...how about comparing the PC games to the games of each individual console? Let's look at the facts, there are not multiple PC platforms, but there are multiple console platforms; therefore it makes sense that the consoles AS A WHOLE would generate more gaming attention. Instead, if you examine each INDIVIDUAL platform (PC included) you will find some interesting information. I'm not putting down PC gaming in any way, it's my gaming platform of choice, but the "facts" in this article are misleading and need to be re-examined.
Originally Posted by Sebbo wow brett, just wow. amazing article. no wonder i always look forward to your next column/article
Sebbo, just because you like a writer doesn't mean that his/her stories don't have holes in them. Try doing some thinking and research for yourself...you might learn something.
First of all, thanks for all the great comments. I am glad to see that I've provoked some discussion on the issue, especially enough to generate someone who states that s/he is from the industry at large.
Speaking of...Welcome, Lurks! I hope you'll find our community to be a bit more open-minded and less offensive than the angle you've taken towards me personally. Deciding that I should 'let go of the self-delusion' or even bringing my age into this at all really does not help bolster your point, nor does it earn my respect. In fact, it turns things personal and erodes your presence - so I hope that from now on, we can speak like qualified individuals who are properly affiliated with this industry.
So, let's talk about those qualifications on my end. You pose points that simply because they 'won't tell [me], that assume' that these figures are not released (pronouns changed for reference). In fact, your general tone reads as if you feel I put very little effort into the determination of these figures that I seem to so carelessly bandy about.
However, that's pretty far from the truth. The truth is that I've been a respected journalist with a respected professional publication for a few years now. The truth is that I (and Bit-tech proper) have a very good working relationship with Valve Software, and have even written an article on digital distribution specifically before [i]with the help of Valve. The truth is, there is a wall - and nobody except a potential publisher on Steam gets the figures of Steam's sales. Period. Not me, not Wired (who also wrote on the issue), not anyone.
You pose that this is because of weak sales, and I cannot argue for or against that point - which I specifically state. You can't account for figures you don't have, you just know that they're not there. You say 4%, I would appreciate it if you could please walk me through where you deduced those figures. If you have information on this, I'd love to talk to you either here or on another medium (drop me a PM!), because if I can get some proper figures it would make me a happy man.
However, my take on that study being incomplete is exactly that - my take. I feel that things defined properly per-unit on console do not translate to per-unit on PC. I feel that digital distribution not being included whatsoever needs to be clearly stated on the tin that the figures are incomplete. Not a footnote on the back page that nobody really reads - this includes the reporting on the issue, and does not absolve our own. I feel that what defines the inclusions should be clearly listed - are they all retail sales of everything, or just the biggest companies? What about all the indie designers that sell via the net? If we're talking about only the top 10 or so publishers, are we limiting the console sales to them only as well? Are they releasing equal numbers of games on each of the platforms in question? Are we looking at games only released across more than 2 platforms to remove statistical variables of choice not being an option? Shouldn't we?
There's SO much more I can write here - I haven't even touched on so many aspects of what you wrote and I want to get to the piracy section of it in another post. But there's only so much time at the moment, so we'll pause here to let more discussion ensue.
But along with it, you mention that you're a games designer - I would ask that you identify yourself and the company you work for. By all means, please drop me a PM or an email for this one. I think it's only fair - you know who I am, and you now know my credentials. :) I would appreciate knowing likewise, so that I can understand who it is that I'm talking to. That information will be kept confidential, I just think that when one speaks with authority, it's helpful to know what that authority is. Trust me, you'd be surprised how many people I've had tell me they're everything from games designers to marketers to electrical engineers working for AMD - and found out they're in high school or uni and were just trying to sound smart. ;)
Anyhow, thanks for joining and talking with us - I hope the conversation continues. I ALWAYS welcome challenges to my view, I know it's not the only one there is and that it may even be wrong. But it is researched and I levy my professional opinion very, very carefully. :)
Originally Posted by Vega-Atin Quick question...the PC games are being compared to all consoles...how about comparing the PC games to the games of each individual console? Let's look at the facts, there are not multiple PC platforms, but there are multiple console platforms; therefore it makes sense that the consoles AS A WHOLE would generate more gaming attention. Instead, if you examine each INDIVIDUAL platform (PC included) you will find some interesting information. I'm not putting down PC gaming in any way, it's my gaming platform of choice, but the "facts" in this article are misleading and need to be re-examined.
well there is multiple pc architectures, but only x86 and x86_64 are used for gaming
firstly i want to welcome you, i was thinking you were yet another quick flash, 1 post, no conversation, double posting, "i am right and you are all wrong" individual, thank God you are not the previous,
with that out of the way, "Bem-vindo".
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Originally Posted by Lurks Firstly apologies for the crap text formatting, when I realised I was going to write an opus I did it in Word and of course there's no edit functionality here...
there is an edit button on your post, if you can't see it then you are in the front page, go to the forums and on "bit-tech.net" chose the forum thread you wish, then you can edit your post or do other more advanced stuff, ;)
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Originally Posted by Lurks To develop games that actually sell in actual quantity, you need to make a game of the same kind of things as you see on the shelves in game retailers. Not kooky little MMO games which you're quite keen on. This requires teams of dozens of staff working for 18 month months beyond two years even. No one makes up the costs of game development, there's a heck of a lot of work, frightening amounts of work - a whole mini industry if you like - involved in basically cutting the costs of game development through middleware. But the fact is people want to play games like Burnout, Call of Duty 4, Assassin's Creed etc.
Sure you can make less sophisticated games with lots less content but as a rule that's not the PC gaming market. The PC gaming market wants highly sophisticated games to use the expensive hardware they enjoy tinkering with.
i don't really like MMOs...... i linked to infinity because what they are doing is beyond anything i have ever seen.... i could link to reborn, APB or a lot of other indie game makers that make games that rival big house games in about every area.... except the distribution part.... unless they are assimilated by a giant.
i really think there are ways to streamline the process, there are people that can be cut out (i call them parasites), there are steps that can be cut out, etc....
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Originally Posted by Lurks Well, this is a finance issue I don't think you understand. A game needs to pay back the development costs and return a profit in a short order. If it doesn't sell pretty darn well when it first comes out then no amount of trickle sales will eventually lead it into profitability. The publisher simply wont do that again.
i think i would prefer to sell a game at a constant rate of about 4000 copies during each month (when i need to sell 20000) rather than i would like to sell 15000 in the first month (the game is selling like mad because it is a great franchise), 5000 on the second (people see it is crap but the fans still buy it), and then 1000 on the next months (some fans that were late are buying it).......
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Originally Posted by Lurks Those games emphatically sold disasterously. They were a real eye opener to the industry at large. People will keep buying them in dribs and drabs sure but when you needed to sell 500,000 to make back a three year development cycle that is of no use whatsoever. Interesting how the games you cite like this are exactly the highly sophisticated very expensive games which are the polar opposite of what you were talking about above.
"Crysis has sold 1m copies in less than 3 months"
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Originally Posted by Lurks If that was the 'biggest' problem then piracy would be lower in the US, would it not? That's what you're saying. But that's not true. In fact Germany is the world's best market for PC gaming.
and also one of the European countries with higher life standards, higher access to technology and a nice high minimum wage.....
what about the other countries? what about the country were i live? do you have any statistics on that? if you have you will notice that piracy is higher here than in the US, that i am almost sure, there is no one i know that did not download at least one music from the internet or that does not have a copied cd/dvd, even old people pirate here. when your wage only permits you to eat and buy some clothes and almost nothing else it is a little hard to buy a 75$ game for your 3 year old computer that was mid range at the time...... "work harder!" you say, and i say that here almost everyone earns the minimum wage and it is hard to get another job when you work 40 hours a week and also have to go to the university and study.... "games are not a right" you say, i agree, so i buy them with money i save while not eating and wearing things i like, but i am sure as hell not going to spend my hard saved cash on malformed abortions like the ones EA is always giving birth..... if you think i am exaggerating ask the people from here..... "change your government" you say, i am 1 in 10 000 000 and have tried......
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Originally Posted by Lurks That logic would be 'amazing' if that's what I was saying, but I wasn't. I never said you shouldn't buy high-end PCs. I'd be pretty shagged if you didn't because it's my job to do just that. I just find it a paradox that the PC gaming crowd complains about price (as you just did) when in fact they buy a £300 graphics card every year more or less at the same cost as buying EVERY AAA title on the platform in the same year.
i think you will find that i am not one of the people that buy a £300 graphic card every year.... i am the type of person that buys a second hand 150€ graphic card every 3 years..... so yes... i think i have the right to say that the price of games is a little steep around here....
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Originally Posted by Lurks The reason they don't drop the prices is because it doesn't help. There's mountains of evidence on this front. Pricing analysis is one of the very core tennents of the business. Game shops are rammed to the gills with bargain basement software. Much of it only just came out. I think Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance is the finest RTS game to have graced the planet. It's now £17 quid bundled with the original. It was released in November. It sold bugger all, it's still selling bugger all.
here the same expansion costs £26 and comes alone (the expansion it self is a standalone game).... the pricing analysts are very smart to price this game higher in a place were people earn less[/sarcasm].... you want to compare prices?
Crysis: UK = £27.85 ; here = 37£
UT3: UK = £22.93 ; here = 33£
Supreme commander: UK = £9.95 - £24.90 ; here = 37£
those price analysts are really smart [/sarcasm]
you want to see for yourself?
throw a game into the search function and compare to the ones in bit-tech shopping http://www.fnac.pt/pt/Default.aspx
here the bargain bin is mostly covered with orange EA boxes full of crap, barbie games and other malformations inside non original boxes, if i want a game that came out last year i have to order it from the shop, it takes forever to get here and then i pay from the nose.... thank God i know ways around this or else i would be f***ed, but almost no one knows how to avoid this and end up paying about 40£ for a game that costs 10£ in the UK....
wow that is a big post, sorry for that, at the end i don't want this to look like a rant, it is not a rant, i am simply saying that Europe is not a country (as some people think) and that there are people in countries with very different situations that make piracy bloom and transform into other interesting and powerful markets.... look at China, because of the piracy there are other kinds of markets blooming, if you cut piracy there there would be lots of discontent people and a lot of unemployment...... and the government would not approve.....
edit: i have to add the next, because i feel the same way:
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Originally Posted by Da Dego I ALWAYS welcome challenges to my view, I know it's not the only one there is and that it may even be wrong.
Originally Posted by Lurks To develop games that actually sell in actual quantity, you need to make a game of the same kind of things as you see on the shelves in game retailers. Not kooky little MMO games which you're quite keen on. This requires teams of dozens of staff working for 18 month months beyond two years even. No one makes up the costs of game development, there's a heck of a lot of work, frightening amounts of work - a whole mini industry if you like - involved in basically cutting the costs of game development through middleware. But the fact is people want to play games like Burnout, Call of Duty 4, Assassin's Creed etc.
Sure you can make less sophisticated games with lots less content but as a rule that's not the PC gaming market. The PC gaming market wants highly sophisticated games to use the expensive hardware they enjoy tinkering with.
Well, this is a finance issue I don't think you understand. A game needs to pay back the development costs and return a profit in a short order. If it doesn't sell pretty darn well when it first comes out then no amount of trickle sales will eventually lead it into profitability. The publisher simply wont do that again.
So basically you're arguing that all people want is the same old crap. I read that as saying "we can't try anything innvative because the investment is too large to take a risk. The problem is that so much of gaming IS the same crap, and it's not somthing that as many poeple are willing to pay for. As I see it, if we have gotten to that point, then the industry IS dying because it cannot adapt. If all the industry can promise is more of the same with shinier graphics, then why bother spending the money?
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Originally Posted by Lurks Those games emphatically sold disasterously. They were a real eye opener to the industry at large. People will keep buying them in dribs and drabs sure but when you needed to sell 500,000 to make back a three year development cycle that is of no use whatsoever. Interesting how the games you cite like this are exactly the highly sophisticated very expensive games which are the polar opposite of what you were talking about above.
That logic would be 'amazing' if that's what I was saying, but I wasn't. I never said you shouldn't buy high-end PCs. I'd be pretty shagged if you didn't because it's my job to do just that. I just find it a paradox that the PC gaming crowd complains about price (as you just did) when in fact they buy a £300 graphics card every year more or less at the same cost as buying EVERY AAA title on the platform in the same year.
Same issue, if the industry only wants to make games that will sell 500,000 copies in the fiorst 3 monthst, then it's excluding a rather large customer base who want somthing different. Same response, if it's more of the same thn I will continue to pass.
As you point out, there are a lot of gamers out there who can afford new AAA games. You're coming to the conclusion that they are not buying them because they are pirating them. To some extent that may be true, but I think to a greater extent it's because people don't find them to be worth the money. If it's just a shinier version of last years game with nothing else really new, why buy it? Just to keep the industry in business? I don't think so.
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Originally Posted by Lurks Thanks for the welcome. I'm sorry you disagree but I think I it can be clearly demonstrated that this simply isn't the case. There were some really truly great games released last year. Many of which sold depressingly low quantities.
Some of which also sold very very well. If, according to your theory, the primary cause of low sales is piracy, why is this?
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Originally Posted by Lurks Alright we're older and we can afford it but this is pretty concious decision that if we aren't actually going to help the PC gaming industry at least we wont be the cause of further harm. I feel pretty good about putting in that big order of games and I think it's bloody great value for money. Sure I haven't (yet) got around to playing them all but this is a platform I'd desperately rather did not go belly up. But it takes more than just ragging on publishers about it at the end of the day.
Again, if you're willing to spend money just to support the industry, then more power to you. For me, and I think a lot of others, they will get my money only if the produce things that I want to play. I'll gladly keep plunking down money on HL2 expansions because I really enjoy them. They're innovative, story driven and very enjoyable. The other indistinguished crap? Not worth my time and money.
Originally Posted by Da Dego Speaking of...Welcome, Lurks! ... . In fact, it turns things personal and erodes your presence - so I hope that from now on, we can speak like qualified individuals who are properly affiliated with this industry.
Well I'm sorry you felt it was a personal attack. Perhaps on reflection I've been too argumentative. I wouldn't say I was enraged but I was certainly highly irritated so I apologise.
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Originally Posted by Da Dego The truth is that I've been a respected journalist with a respected professional publication for a few years now.
All due respect, but I can't find any mention of you on google on any publication other than this web site. Which was, until quite recently, basically a hobbyists enthusiast web site. A very good one, and one I know the founders/owners and appreciate the work
I've spent about 15 years in the games industry. About half of that as a journalist and I *do* appear on Google. If you want to push the issue I'll tell you via PM but I'd rather let my statements stand for themselves. I don't see why I should be subject to more scrutiny than the legions of other posters here. Or is it just because they agree with you? :)
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The truth is, there is a wall - and nobody except a potential publisher on Steam gets the figures of Steam's sales. Period. Not me, not Wired (who also wrote on the issue), not anyone.
Precisely. A potential publisher. Or are they not part of the games industry? Let me remind you about why that fact is or is not relevant. The threat to PC gaming is if games aren't selling. You're kind of saying that PC gaming is doing fine because that study doesn't cover digital distribution. Then later on you woe-is-me about PC gaming anyway which makes it a little hard to distill your point but ultimately if DD was doing really well, then publishers would be very keen to keep doing PC games. But that's not actually the case.
There's a very real feeling emerging that even if they broke even it would be better not to do the PC version because some people might just pirate on the PC rather than buy the console version.
The bottom line is that there's a lot of data for retail because that industry is well developed. Actual figures are generally kept secret also, depending on territory but again if you're in the industry you gain access to them. Take a look at the UK's all-format chart from Chart-Track. This is by SKU.
This tells you that in games retail in the UK the PC has one title in the entire top 40 best selling games at retail. This is a diabolical situation and unfortunately it's not elevated magically to some secret game selling utopia by the secret numbers of games sold via digital distribution.
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You pose that this is because of weak sales, and I cannot argue for or against that point - which I specifically state. You can't account for figures you don't have, you just know that they're not there.
Sure but you spent a lot of your time making conspiratorial conclusions just because these numbers aren't public. I fail to see how that is an important corner of the whole issue. I appreciate you'd like to know. And so would your readers. But the individual companies don't want to tell you and they have their reasons.
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You say 4%, I would appreciate it if you could please walk me through where you deduced those figures.
Digital distribution share of PC entertainment software sales, not Steam. It's an internal EA figure, I don't know how they got it but it's been leaked fairly widely. If you call up some actual journalists in the games industry who comment on such things they'll most likely also be familiar with that. Could EA's figure be wrong? Maybe, probably, but I expect it's in the ballpark. In a previous job I had access to some information on Steam sales. And in my current job I've spoken to publishers who have described how Steam is doing for them. No specifics but 'not significant' would be a reasonable summary.
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However, my take on that study being incomplete is exactly that - my take. I feel that digital distribution not being included whatsoever needs to be clearly stated on the tin that the figures are incomplete.
Well you know, this is pretty much journalist 101 stuff I have to say. NPD is a market research outfit specifically aimed at retail. You may as well take umbrance at the lack of <BLINK> tags saying "THIS DOESN'T INCLUDE STEAM" at the top of Chart-Trakc or "THIS DOESN'T INCLUDE DELL" in GfK's retail reports. These market research people cover a sector, that's what they talk about. It's only inexpert viewers coming in afterwards that decided to slam them because shacknews did a story about it.
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Trust me, you'd be surprised how many people I've had tell me they're everything from games designers to marketers to electrical engineers working for AMD - and found out they're in high school or uni and were just trying to sound smart. ;)
Conversely you'd be absolutely amazed at how many web writers tell me that they're respected journalists. :)
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Anyhow, thanks for joining and talking with us - I hope the conversation continues. I ALWAYS welcome challenges to my view, I know it's not the only one there is and that it may even be wrong. But it is researched and I levy my professional opinion very, very carefully. :)
Well that's my beef really, I don't think this is researched. You don't actually say much other than you couldn't find figures and then launch into a whole rhetoric about how this is symptomatic of the industry wanting to fail and then this orwellian stuff about giant conglomerates. Did you talk to any publishers? Those evil conglomerate types? You could maybe get a quote from them on how they view the PC games sector and what plans they have.
It'd be really *very* interesting if some of you journalists asked the hard questions which I cannot in my professional capacity, such as calling up Microsoft and asking them to clarify their support for PC gaming and/or the Xbox 360 and how they came to decide that Halo Wars would not end up being a PC game. I think that would be very enlightening if you pressed hard enough.
Anyway, you seem like a reasonable bloke. The reason I'm taking the time here is because I think you're essentially barking up the wrong tree. Writers like you, and sites like this, are places that the industry can come read columns and try understand the PC gaming market a bit better. And that needs to happen.
And, as your forums have so far demonstrated to me with frightening clarity, PC gamers could also do with understanding how the games industry works. So far I've seen everything from a elementary failure to comprehend the machanisms of capitalism through to the same sorts of extremist left 'information wants to be free' stuff in order to justify piracy as you see in the MP3 downloading crowd.
I just want to add to this chap Cthippo who incidentally claimed that some PC games sold very well. Very few games world wide on PC sell very well and pretty much none that you'd call 'core games'. In the UK the situation is disasterous. Nothing sells but Football Manager. There isn't a single PC AAA title from the boom season still in the all-formats top 40 chart now. Not one. Two years ago they'd be several in the top ten.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cthippo Again, if you're willing to spend money just to support the industry, then more power to you. For me, and I think a lot of others, they will get my money only if the produce things that I want to play.
Well, that's not entirely how I view it. We each bought SupCom:FA, CoD4, Crysis and some other game I forget. All leading lights of PC games. All great games. All fo which we intend to play and having bought a copy will kind of ensure that we do. And the industry being what it is there wont be any more decent PC games until the summer so we've got plenty of time eh?
I don't think you could say that it was foolish for us to buy those games. There is an element of concious support there but mostly just by ensuring we didn't go and pirate those games because it's oh so easy to do. That's my point.
Call of Duty 4 is the best game of last year.
Xbox 360, Wii, and soon PS3 all have options for indie developers to release games to the platforms.
I fear piracy is significantly more prominent than you allude.
And Crytek just announced a cross-platform version of the new Crysis engine.
So when did you write this article? 2004 and just decided to post it today?
I don't see why I should be subject to more scrutiny than the legions of other posters here. Or is it just because they agree with you?
The difference is, nobody here is stating a professional understanding of the market. :) You bet, that comes under scrutiny - it would be silly not to.
Quote:
Then later on you woe-is-me about PC gaming anyway which makes it a little hard to distill your point but ultimately if DD was doing really well, then publishers would be very keen to keep doing PC games. But that's not actually the case.
I can understand why you'd state that my point is cloudy. So allow me to clarify my position:
I do not consider Mark Rein to be any old guy. He releases a statement just a couple days after this study, using it as his backup that consoles are killing the PC industry. If the PC market wants to look for why there are flagging sales in the proper retail market, I think that they should look at the games they're releasing. It's much like the music industry: The labels say 'sales are declining' while people everywhere say 'We're sick of the same old teen-pop trash.' Even the teens. The labels changed the industry to suit a fickle but huge demographic, trying to exploit it for every quick dime it was worth - but in that, they earned the ire of the rest of the world. Now, their target demographic has changed, too - and they're out in the cold. But rather than say "Why?", they say "pirates."
Just like the recording industry, the software industry is now looking for scapegoats in my opinion. "The games aren't selling on PC." "But...consoles are selling." One could say that consoles are tapping into the PC - it's one way to read the figures, if you withhold certain info. But another view could and maybe should be 'The PC market has moved away from us. Why?'
Consoles have a barrier of entry. A huge one, at that. You can only buy in with significant investment - so the only games out there are produced by the same publishers that many PC gamers are saying "We're sick of this drivel." When it's the only option, people will buy it - they want to play in their living rooms. But if you want to know why the Wii is so damn red hot, or the Nintendo DS, it's because not every game out there is produced by EA, THQ, etc. The real figures don't lie - g
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Welcome aboard, but I have to disagree. I do buy games, but if I'm going to spend $50, it's got to be somthing worthwhile. For me that means an innvotive story, and somthing different in gameplay. The only games i expect to buy this year are the orange box, bioshock, and Stalker (yeah, i'm a little behind). The rest of the offerings seems lik the same old crap and so the developers aren't getting any of my money.
As I said in another thread, I think the piracy arguement is bogus. Sure, lots and lots of people pirate games. Guess what, if they couldn't pirate the games they would do somthing else with their time, but i think it is highly unlikley that they would ever pay for them. The fundamental flaw in that arguement is that it sees pirates as potential customers otherwise. They are not. If anything, I think piracy works to the advantage of the industry because a lot of people pdownload games and then go on to buy them. If they couldn't try them first they wouldn't take the risk with thewir money that the game may suck and they can't get a refund.
I think the biggest threat to gaming is the lack of innovation. People are willing to pay for good quality, but there seems to be relatively little of that to be had.
He's or she's saying NPD is true... but the conclusion is false. PC sales may be low but PCs are also not dying.
Multiple reasons - indie developers may very well be holding second jobs to help pay for development, for instance, or do more than just develop games. StraDock for instance doesn't just make games... they make home office utilities. Alternatively, they may very well be happy making money from a niche audience and so their talent and costs are already very low. As well, the money goes to different things. An indie will probably be building their own engine or using one of the cheaper ones such as Torque. Indies may self publish nd self market. The scope also tends to be different - indies usually are not so much trying to be ambitious so much as focus on a single thing and do it very very well. Large companies tend to focus on grand epics.where everything is good; but those that work more like indies and focus on something very specific tend to come across much like a smaller developer. CoD4 for instance. So while there is true, some of it is just this different perception we have of indie and big developer.
That may be true but it's also one of many reasons, all of which have an effect. Some download it because they lack money. Some may download it out of curiosity, play for five minutes, and forget about it. Some may go through games so quickly, buying it may not be a good investment. Some may get it because they want it and don't feel like they should pay. And many other reasons that are some shades of the above. Piracy is good, bad, and neither - the real question is encouraging people to buy the game while ignoring the people that would have never brought the game.
Lepermessiah, you're kind of under my worth-replying to threshold sorry.
To develop games that actually sell in actual quantity, you need to make a game of the same kind of things as you see on the shelves in game retailers. Not kooky little MMO games which you're quite keen on. This requires teams of dozens of staff working for 18 month months beyond two years even. No one makes up the costs of game development, there's a heck of a lot of work, frightening amounts of work - a whole mini industry if you like - involved in basically cutting the costs of game development through middleware. But the fact is people want to play games like Burnout, Call of Duty 4, Assassin's Creed etc.
Sure you can make less sophisticated games with lots less content but as a rule that's not the PC gaming market. The PC gaming market wants highly sophisticated games to use the expensive hardware they enjoy tinkering with.
Well, this is a finance issue I don't think you understand. A game needs to pay back the development costs and return a profit in a short order. If it doesn't sell pretty darn well when it first comes out then no amount of trickle sales will eventually lead it into profitability. The publisher simply wont do that again.
Those games emphatically sold disasterously. They were a real eye opener to the industry at large. People will keep buying them in dribs and drabs sure but when you needed to sell 500,000 to make back a three year development cycle that is of no use whatsoever. Interesting how the games you cite like this are exactly the highly sophisticated very expensive games which are the polar opposite of what you were talking about above.
If that was the 'biggest' problem then piracy would be lower in the US, would it not? That's what you're saying. But that's not true. In fact Germany is the world's best market for PC gaming.
That logic would be 'amazing' if that's what I was saying, but I wasn't. I never said you shouldn't buy high-end PCs. I'd be pretty shagged if you didn't because it's my job to do just that. I just find it a paradox that the PC gaming crowd complains about price (as you just did) when in fact they buy a £300 graphics card every year more or less at the same cost as buying EVERY AAA title on the platform in the same year.
The reason they don't drop the prices is because it doesn't help. There's mountains of evidence on this front. Pricing analysis is one of the very core tennents of the business. Game shops are rammed to the gills with bargain basement software. Much of it only just came out. I think Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance is the finest RTS game to have graced the planet. It's now £17 quid bundled with the original. It was released in November. It sold bugger all, it's still selling bugger all.
Thanks for the welcome. I'm sorry you disagree but I think I it can be clearly demonstrated that this simply isn't the case. There were some really truly great games released last year. Many of which sold depressingly low quantities.
Sure I agree, there's a lot of rubbish around. The thing is the rubbish isn't really aimed at us (the collective audience) it's aimed at the folks who go into Game/HMV etc and buy something off the shelf because they like the look of it. Movie licenses, endless sports sequels etc. The casual crowd.
That crowd essentially vanished because they were first to push off to consoles and retailers devoted a much more space to non-PC titles because they were/are being paid better for that placement than PC game publishers are paying. That's why I have to take issue with this whole line that the issue with people buying games on PC is because the games aren't good enough. The games are great. They sell by the truckload on consoles when they're on console as well.
So what are we saying exactly? That it's just the really savvy people with high standards in the PC gaming crowd that's the issue here because they recognise all PC games as being the crap that they are and therefore are too smart to spend their money? I don't think so. Because I know my friends are playing all the good games from last year, many just don't buy them. This can't be some revelation surely?
Perhaps I should add something positive anyway. I've got a gaming clan of pals and we're celebrating our 10th anniversary this year. \o/ Anyway, we have a few lan parties a year. One around my place next weekend. We've taken to basically picking a current good PC game with multiplayer (but not always) and putting in a bulk order for a game for everyone. In fact several games for everyone late last year, with the glut of fantastic games.
Alright we're older and we can afford it but this is pretty concious decision that if we aren't actually going to help the PC gaming industry at least we wont be the cause of further harm. I feel pretty good about putting in that big order of games and I think it's bloody great value for money. Sure I haven't (yet) got around to playing them all but this is a platform I'd desperately rather did not go belly up. But it takes more than just ragging on publishers about it at the end of the day.
Sebbo, just because you like a writer doesn't mean that his/her stories don't have holes in them. Try doing some thinking and research for yourself...you might learn something.
First of all, thanks for all the great comments. I am glad to see that I've provoked some discussion on the issue, especially enough to generate someone who states that s/he is from the industry at large.
Speaking of...Welcome, Lurks! I hope you'll find our community to be a bit more open-minded and less offensive than the angle you've taken towards me personally. Deciding that I should 'let go of the self-delusion' or even bringing my age into this at all really does not help bolster your point, nor does it earn my respect. In fact, it turns things personal and erodes your presence - so I hope that from now on, we can speak like qualified individuals who are properly affiliated with this industry.
So, let's talk about those qualifications on my end. You pose points that simply because they 'won't tell [me], that assume' that these figures are not released (pronouns changed for reference). In fact, your general tone reads as if you feel I put very little effort into the determination of these figures that I seem to so carelessly bandy about.
However, that's pretty far from the truth. The truth is that I've been a respected journalist with a respected professional publication for a few years now. The truth is that I (and Bit-tech proper) have a very good working relationship with Valve Software, and have even written an article on digital distribution specifically before [i]with the help of Valve. The truth is, there is a wall - and nobody except a potential publisher on Steam gets the figures of Steam's sales. Period. Not me, not Wired (who also wrote on the issue), not anyone.
You pose that this is because of weak sales, and I cannot argue for or against that point - which I specifically state. You can't account for figures you don't have, you just know that they're not there. You say 4%, I would appreciate it if you could please walk me through where you deduced those figures. If you have information on this, I'd love to talk to you either here or on another medium (drop me a PM!), because if I can get some proper figures it would make me a happy man.
However, my take on that study being incomplete is exactly that - my take. I feel that things defined properly per-unit on console do not translate to per-unit on PC. I feel that digital distribution not being included whatsoever needs to be clearly stated on the tin that the figures are incomplete. Not a footnote on the back page that nobody really reads - this includes the reporting on the issue, and does not absolve our own. I feel that what defines the inclusions should be clearly listed - are they all retail sales of everything, or just the biggest companies? What about all the indie designers that sell via the net? If we're talking about only the top 10 or so publishers, are we limiting the console sales to them only as well? Are they releasing equal numbers of games on each of the platforms in question? Are we looking at games only released across more than 2 platforms to remove statistical variables of choice not being an option? Shouldn't we?
There's SO much more I can write here - I haven't even touched on so many aspects of what you wrote and I want to get to the piracy section of it in another post. But there's only so much time at the moment, so we'll pause here to let more discussion ensue.
But along with it, you mention that you're a games designer - I would ask that you identify yourself and the company you work for. By all means, please drop me a PM or an email for this one. I think it's only fair - you know who I am, and you now know my credentials. :) I would appreciate knowing likewise, so that I can understand who it is that I'm talking to. That information will be kept confidential, I just think that when one speaks with authority, it's helpful to know what that authority is. Trust me, you'd be surprised how many people I've had tell me they're everything from games designers to marketers to electrical engineers working for AMD - and found out they're in high school or uni and were just trying to sound smart. ;)
Anyhow, thanks for joining and talking with us - I hope the conversation continues. I ALWAYS welcome challenges to my view, I know it's not the only one there is and that it may even be wrong. But it is researched and I levy my professional opinion very, very carefully. :)
well there is multiple pc architectures, but only x86 and x86_64 are used for gaming
Newsflash - NPD and it's 88,000 figure for Crysis is meaningless, just as NPD is meaningless for mostly all PC games.
Why? Because Crysis sold more than a million copies worldwide. That's why.
http://www.incrysis.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=612
with that out of the way, "Bem-vindo".
there is an edit button on your post, if you can't see it then you are in the front page, go to the forums and on "bit-tech.net" chose the forum thread you wish, then you can edit your post or do other more advanced stuff, ;)
i really think there are ways to streamline the process, there are people that can be cut out (i call them parasites), there are steps that can be cut out, etc....
i think i would prefer to sell a game at a constant rate of about 4000 copies during each month (when i need to sell 20000) rather than i would like to sell 15000 in the first month (the game is selling like mad because it is a great franchise), 5000 on the second (people see it is crap but the fans still buy it), and then 1000 on the next months (some fans that were late are buying it).......
"Crysis has sold 1m copies in less than 3 months"
what about the other countries? what about the country were i live? do you have any statistics on that? if you have you will notice that piracy is higher here than in the US, that i am almost sure, there is no one i know that did not download at least one music from the internet or that does not have a copied cd/dvd, even old people pirate here. when your wage only permits you to eat and buy some clothes and almost nothing else it is a little hard to buy a 75$ game for your 3 year old computer that was mid range at the time...... "work harder!" you say, and i say that here almost everyone earns the minimum wage and it is hard to get another job when you work 40 hours a week and also have to go to the university and study.... "games are not a right" you say, i agree, so i buy them with money i save while not eating and wearing things i like, but i am sure as hell not going to spend my hard saved cash on malformed abortions like the ones EA is always giving birth..... if you think i am exaggerating ask the people from here..... "change your government" you say, i am 1 in 10 000 000 and have tried......
here the same expansion costs £26 and comes alone (the expansion it self is a standalone game).... the pricing analysts are very smart to price this game higher in a place were people earn less[/sarcasm].... you want to compare prices?
Crysis: UK = £27.85 ; here = 37£
UT3: UK = £22.93 ; here = 33£
Supreme commander: UK = £9.95 - £24.90 ; here = 37£
those price analysts are really smart [/sarcasm]
you want to see for yourself?
throw a game into the search function and compare to the ones in bit-tech shopping
http://www.fnac.pt/pt/Default.aspx
here the bargain bin is mostly covered with orange EA boxes full of crap, barbie games and other malformations inside non original boxes, if i want a game that came out last year i have to order it from the shop, it takes forever to get here and then i pay from the nose.... thank God i know ways around this or else i would be f***ed, but almost no one knows how to avoid this and end up paying about 40£ for a game that costs 10£ in the UK....
wow that is a big post, sorry for that, at the end i don't want this to look like a rant, it is not a rant, i am simply saying that Europe is not a country (as some people think) and that there are people in countries with very different situations that make piracy bloom and transform into other interesting and powerful markets.... look at China, because of the piracy there are other kinds of markets blooming, if you cut piracy there there would be lots of discontent people and a lot of unemployment...... and the government would not approve.....
edit: i have to add the next, because i feel the same way:
BTW, I think I may be the only one who had Xenon as a visited link.
So basically you're arguing that all people want is the same old crap. I read that as saying "we can't try anything innvative because the investment is too large to take a risk. The problem is that so much of gaming IS the same crap, and it's not somthing that as many poeple are willing to pay for. As I see it, if we have gotten to that point, then the industry IS dying because it cannot adapt. If all the industry can promise is more of the same with shinier graphics, then why bother spending the money?
Same issue, if the industry only wants to make games that will sell 500,000 copies in the fiorst 3 monthst, then it's excluding a rather large customer base who want somthing different. Same response, if it's more of the same thn I will continue to pass.
As you point out, there are a lot of gamers out there who can afford new AAA games. You're coming to the conclusion that they are not buying them because they are pirating them. To some extent that may be true, but I think to a greater extent it's because people don't find them to be worth the money. If it's just a shinier version of last years game with nothing else really new, why buy it? Just to keep the industry in business? I don't think so.
Some of which also sold very very well. If, according to your theory, the primary cause of low sales is piracy, why is this?
Again, if you're willing to spend money just to support the industry, then more power to you. For me, and I think a lot of others, they will get my money only if the produce things that I want to play. I'll gladly keep plunking down money on HL2 expansions because I really enjoy them. They're innovative, story driven and very enjoyable. The other indistinguished crap? Not worth my time and money.
Just one thing, does Bret ever do a positive article?
Well I'm sorry you felt it was a personal attack. Perhaps on reflection I've been too argumentative. I wouldn't say I was enraged but I was certainly highly irritated so I apologise.
All due respect, but I can't find any mention of you on google on any publication other than this web site. Which was, until quite recently, basically a hobbyists enthusiast web site. A very good one, and one I know the founders/owners and appreciate the work
I've spent about 15 years in the games industry. About half of that as a journalist and I *do* appear on Google. If you want to push the issue I'll tell you via PM but I'd rather let my statements stand for themselves. I don't see why I should be subject to more scrutiny than the legions of other posters here. Or is it just because they agree with you? :)
Precisely. A potential publisher. Or are they not part of the games industry? Let me remind you about why that fact is or is not relevant. The threat to PC gaming is if games aren't selling. You're kind of saying that PC gaming is doing fine because that study doesn't cover digital distribution. Then later on you woe-is-me about PC gaming anyway which makes it a little hard to distill your point but ultimately if DD was doing really well, then publishers would be very keen to keep doing PC games. But that's not actually the case.
There's a very real feeling emerging that even if they broke even it would be better not to do the PC version because some people might just pirate on the PC rather than buy the console version.
The bottom line is that there's a lot of data for retail because that industry is well developed. Actual figures are generally kept secret also, depending on territory but again if you're in the industry you gain access to them. Take a look at the UK's all-format chart from Chart-Track. This is by SKU.
http://www.chart-track.co.uk/index.jsp?c=p/software/uk/latest/index_test.jsp&ct=110032
This tells you that in games retail in the UK the PC has one title in the entire top 40 best selling games at retail. This is a diabolical situation and unfortunately it's not elevated magically to some secret game selling utopia by the secret numbers of games sold via digital distribution.
Sure but you spent a lot of your time making conspiratorial conclusions just because these numbers aren't public. I fail to see how that is an important corner of the whole issue. I appreciate you'd like to know. And so would your readers. But the individual companies don't want to tell you and they have their reasons.
Digital distribution share of PC entertainment software sales, not Steam. It's an internal EA figure, I don't know how they got it but it's been leaked fairly widely. If you call up some actual journalists in the games industry who comment on such things they'll most likely also be familiar with that. Could EA's figure be wrong? Maybe, probably, but I expect it's in the ballpark. In a previous job I had access to some information on Steam sales. And in my current job I've spoken to publishers who have described how Steam is doing for them. No specifics but 'not significant' would be a reasonable summary.
Well you know, this is pretty much journalist 101 stuff I have to say. NPD is a market research outfit specifically aimed at retail. You may as well take umbrance at the lack of <BLINK> tags saying "THIS DOESN'T INCLUDE STEAM" at the top of Chart-Trakc or "THIS DOESN'T INCLUDE DELL" in GfK's retail reports. These market research people cover a sector, that's what they talk about. It's only inexpert viewers coming in afterwards that decided to slam them because shacknews did a story about it.
Conversely you'd be absolutely amazed at how many web writers tell me that they're respected journalists. :)
Well that's my beef really, I don't think this is researched. You don't actually say much other than you couldn't find figures and then launch into a whole rhetoric about how this is symptomatic of the industry wanting to fail and then this orwellian stuff about giant conglomerates. Did you talk to any publishers? Those evil conglomerate types? You could maybe get a quote from them on how they view the PC games sector and what plans they have.
It'd be really *very* interesting if some of you journalists asked the hard questions which I cannot in my professional capacity, such as calling up Microsoft and asking them to clarify their support for PC gaming and/or the Xbox 360 and how they came to decide that Halo Wars would not end up being a PC game. I think that would be very enlightening if you pressed hard enough.
Anyway, you seem like a reasonable bloke. The reason I'm taking the time here is because I think you're essentially barking up the wrong tree. Writers like you, and sites like this, are places that the industry can come read columns and try understand the PC gaming market a bit better. And that needs to happen.
And, as your forums have so far demonstrated to me with frightening clarity, PC gamers could also do with understanding how the games industry works. So far I've seen everything from a elementary failure to comprehend the machanisms of capitalism through to the same sorts of extremist left 'information wants to be free' stuff in order to justify piracy as you see in the MP3 downloading crowd.
I just want to add to this chap Cthippo who incidentally claimed that some PC games sold very well. Very few games world wide on PC sell very well and pretty much none that you'd call 'core games'. In the UK the situation is disasterous. Nothing sells but Football Manager. There isn't a single PC AAA title from the boom season still in the all-formats top 40 chart now. Not one. Two years ago they'd be several in the top ten.
Well, that's not entirely how I view it. We each bought SupCom:FA, CoD4, Crysis and some other game I forget. All leading lights of PC games. All great games. All fo which we intend to play and having bought a copy will kind of ensure that we do. And the industry being what it is there wont be any more decent PC games until the summer so we've got plenty of time eh?
I don't think you could say that it was foolish for us to buy those games. There is an element of concious support there but mostly just by ensuring we didn't go and pirate those games because it's oh so easy to do. That's my point.
Xbox 360, Wii, and soon PS3 all have options for indie developers to release games to the platforms.
I fear piracy is significantly more prominent than you allude.
And Crytek just announced a cross-platform version of the new Crysis engine.
So when did you write this article? 2004 and just decided to post it today?
I do not consider Mark Rein to be any old guy. He releases a statement just a couple days after this study, using it as his backup that consoles are killing the PC industry. If the PC market wants to look for why there are flagging sales in the proper retail market, I think that they should look at the games they're releasing. It's much like the music industry: The labels say 'sales are declining' while people everywhere say 'We're sick of the same old teen-pop trash.' Even the teens. The labels changed the industry to suit a fickle but huge demographic, trying to exploit it for every quick dime it was worth - but in that, they earned the ire of the rest of the world. Now, their target demographic has changed, too - and they're out in the cold. But rather than say "Why?", they say "pirates."
Just like the recording industry, the software industry is now looking for scapegoats in my opinion. "The games aren't selling on PC." "But...consoles are selling." One could say that consoles are tapping into the PC - it's one way to read the figures, if you withhold certain info. But another view could and maybe should be 'The PC market has moved away from us. Why?'
Consoles have a barrier of entry. A huge one, at that. You can only buy in with significant investment - so the only games out there are produced by the same publishers that many PC gamers are saying "We're sick of this drivel." When it's the only option, people will buy it - they want to play in their living rooms. But if you want to know why the Wii is so damn red hot, or the Nintendo DS, it's because not every game out there is produced by EA, THQ, etc. The real figures don't lie - g