Digital Distribution Numbers Speak To Health of PC Game Industry 192
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Soulskill
from the i-demand-a-recount dept.
from the i-demand-a-recount dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this quote from PC Authority:
"Over the years many voices have declared PC gaming dead. We have seen developers abandon the platform for consoles, citing piracy as the cause. Game stores have slowly relegated PC games from prime shelf position to one tucked away in the back corner — even Microsoft dumped AAA PC game developers from the company. It seems, though, that the demise of the PC as a games platform has been exaggerated, because until very recently sales data ignored digital distribution, with the latest data released by US company NPD revealing that 48% of PC unit sales in the US in 2009 were digital. That translates to 21.3 million games downloaded in the US. Interestingly, although 48% of games were sold online, it only worked out as 36% of the revenue. This highlights the fact that it isn't just convenience that has PC gamers shopping online; it is also that games are generally cheaper than in stores."
Of course. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Of course. (Score:5, Insightful)
Steam has done more than offer great prices, they have increased sales. There are several games that I never would have bought if I had to pay full price. I bought Bioshock 1 when it went on sale for $15, which led me to buy Bioshock 2, once it went on sale for $25. Actually, I was going to pay the full $50 and just got lucky that it went on sale. But I have a couple dozen games that I would not have paid $50 for, simply because Steam had a reasonable price on them. A few I have seldom played, but don't feel bad because they only cost $10.
I know I'm not the only one, so it is pretty reasonable to assume that the lower prices drastically increase sales.
Re:Of course. (Score:4, Interesting)
Steam makes it possible to buy 3-5 year old games for cheap. Best Buy doesn't designate any shelf space to games more than a couple years old. Some of us older gamers (cough, 40, cough) have lives, so we can't always get to the latest/greatest game until it has been out a couple of years. I just finished HL2, for example, and I'm halfway through Dragon Age. No rush to finish it before Dragon Age II, because I won't have time to play that one for a couple of years. By then, it'll be $19 on Steam.
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This is my philosophy, too. Who needs to spend $50 to $60 on the latest and greatest games when you can pluck plenty of gems in the $10-20 range from a few years ago? Being able to play the latest game right now is just not worth the premium to me, and I suspect many gamers feel the same way.
There will always be the die-hards who have to have the new, hot game on release day, and are willing to pay big bucks for it. But it's nice to have options such as Steam and GOG.com for those oldies but goldies.
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It used to be the latest/greatest game was really the, well, latest and greatest. Now days, the technology doesn't really change fast enough, and the market is flooded with bad games, so there's no harm in cherry-picking some quality games from a year ago.
For example, when Uncharted 2 came out, I went and bought Uncharted for $19. I finished it in a week or so. Maybe I'll go get the sequel, but I'll wait until it drops in price. In the meantime, I've got more 2-year old games to chose from than I have time
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That is the point: Some people (teens) want the latest, greatest NOW, and will pay 50-60 bucks. Those of us in our 40s still love to game but won't pay that much for new games that might not run that great on our 3 year old computers anyway. By offering older games at a great price, they are *definitely* expanding their base and keeping gamers for life. Actually, I bought Bioshock 2 for about $25 and it is highly acclaimed and has been out only 6 months. It was on sale, normally $50, and honestly worth
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Gonna chime in here and second (or third?) the sentiment that Steam is a good platform for older games. I've picked up at least three games there that I missed in stores, and that were on my bargain bin list. Couple others I probably wouldn't have considered at all if they either hadn't been cheap or on sale. And at least two games I only got after trying the demo on steam (hear that game companies? Demos work. Make them more often).
Apart from the older games, I've also taken a liking to some of the ind
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I can't access steamcommunity.com here, but I know I have more than 100 games on my Steam account [steamcommunity.com]. A lot were bought through various sales, some in packs with other games. Quite a few I wouldn't have bought otherwise.
Heck I can think of one game I've bought twice: Overlord... once standalone, once as part of the Overlord Complete Pack [steampowered.com] after the Raising Hell expansion was released on Steam. After I priced it out, it was cheaper to b
History repeats itself (Score:5, Insightful)
Nowadays, we have a massive user base connected to a cheap digital distribution network, the Internet, with no vendor lock on. You need the right technology and strong commitment to take advantage of such a powerful platform: that's what Valve did with Steam and, seven years later, it's still a great success.
Re:History repeats itself (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that better protection means guaranteed market dominance is inherently flawed.
People quite often choose a platform strictly for its being hackable, for its flawed protection scheme. And they will buy some games while pirating more others, generating some revenue for the flawed-protection market and none for the perfect-protection one. The other will get much better revenue per customer, but much less customers. And of course they will never get the idea just WHY does their console sell worse?
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Seriously, you can't compare games sold during 2009 in the US to games sold from 2008 to 2010 worldwide, that's silly. Mario Kart Wii sold a million copies in the US in 2009, in the entire 2008 to 2010 period it sold 5 million copies in the US. The other 16 million were worldwide.
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But we're talking about a single game vs. the entire US games market. Even if you look at US only for the exact same period then you only require literally a handful of console games in the US to outsell the entire PC market. That's a big deal and no amount of disputing the relevance of a particular example metric will change that. I'll even give you another example that you simply can't dispute with complaints about invalid comparisons, Modern Warfare 2 in the US sold more (~14mill) on the 360 and PS3 in j
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I'm not sure where you're getting that number from since NPD says the total US sales up to march 2010 is 10 million, the first month it sold 6 millionish.
If you take the top games of 2009, you have:
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Activision 8.82mil
Wii Sports Resort Nintendo 4.54mil
New Super Mario Bros. Wii Nintendo 4.23mil
Wii Fit Plus Nintendo 3.53mil
Wii Fit Nintendo 3.60mil
Add them all up: 24.72 million.
While that show
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Apologies, I did get the MW2 number wrong, I took the worldwide figure. Despite that, even with a handful of titles for just the US market top 5 you've showed a disparity but factor in all titles, and then look at the disparity grow as you look at the global stats also then it's a bit of a stretch to say my original assertion that the PC marked is dwarfed by the console market was in any way off the mark, it really is, and by quite a large amount.
Regarding extra costs of console games going to manufacturers
Re:History repeats itself (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong, wrong, wrong wrong. In fact you are so wrong that I'm undoing mods to reply to you.
You take the figures from the summary and then produce some figures from your arse, claim they are bigger and therefore the article is wrong? Who says that Super Mario Kart wii sold 21.3 units in the US in 2009? Your claims are at odds with wikipedia which claims that 22 million copies have been sold world-wide in the two years since launch.
Although I can't find annual sales figures for consoles in 2009 I have at least looked a bit harder than you to find some real figures: NPD sales figures for the US in 2009 show 22.6 million units sold for the Wii, 20.4 million units for the xbox360 and 8.7 million for the PS3.
So the PC market for digital downloads is the same size as the most popular platforms, and the total PC games market is twice the size. Quite the opposite of your conclusions, but then I used real numbers instead of those stored up my arse.
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Nice, you managed to find the totals. NPD isn't very friendly to people that want to get data for free since they're in the business of selling it so I just managed to find the top 5 games.
It's interesting that the PS3 sells so abysmally, that explains why Activision said they're about ready to stop developing for the PS3 all together.
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"Although I can't find annual sales figures for consoles in 2009 I have at least looked a bit harder than you to find some real figures: NPD sales figures for the US in 2009 show 22.6 million units sold for the Wii, 20.4 million units for the xbox360 and 8.7 million for the PS3."
Units of what exactly? I'm a little puzzled, you're suggesting you can't find annual sales figures, and then suggesting you have some annual sales figures and then separating them out and suggesting the PC sells more? This makes ver
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Using your numbers we're looking at 45 million for the PC, 46.6 million for the PS3 and 75.5 million for the XBox 360. That does not look like a dead or dying PC market to me.
If we ignore the Wii for a moment since it seems to sell a completely different breed of games then the other platforms, then the PC has 25% of the market, PS3 25% and XBox 360 50% of the market which makes the PC competitive. I think you should wait with exclaiming it's dying until people stop making AAA titles for it and it's market
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See, this is what I meant why I talk about people burying their heads in the sand.
Things like resorting to completely ignoring the statistics for the largest sellers of all with some obscure justification that it covers a different market. Or things like splitting the consoles apart and infering that somehow makes things better- it doesn't, the fact is the PC is competing with all these systems for games sales.
Many companies actually have stopped making AAA titles for the PC, that's precisely the point. Of
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Because you're looking at a list on wikipedia that noone bothers to update?
I mean if you look at Activision, the third biggest publisher in the world, out of the 7 franchies they plan to make hundreds of millions from each, 3 are PC exclusive (WoW, Diablo and Starcraft).
While there are many PC games that are ports from Console, there are also many Console games that are ports from PC, like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Supreme Commander 2 etc. The fact that the Xbox 360 is just a glorified underpowered PC makes
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Are you really so hard of thinking? I criticized you for pulling figures out of your arse. Your response is even worse. Let me explain it to you in small pieces to increase your chance of understanding.
I don't have access to actual sales figures. But I provided estimates from a reliable source (NPD is recognised as an industry standard for estimates of uni
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How about this one: on its opening month, Modern Warfare 2 moved an impressive 6 million combined on 360 and PS3 in North America, but only 170,000 [kotaku.com] on PC. If we presume that there is an additional %50 for digital sales, the PC is still seeing less than 10% of the sales of the 360 and PS3 averaged together.
As someone who deals with publishers regularly, you expect a PC title to sell about %10 of what an identical console title will move. Breaking 150k on a PC is a strong achievement. 150k on a console wou
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You really shouldn't leave out PC MMO games. An MMO with a mere 100k subscribers is around $15mil a year. And if the game continously expands, you can keep that user base for years and years. EVE-Online has been around for over six years?
There are probably a lot of accountability problems too. It might be difficult to tally all the console sales but pc sales are impossible. What about flash games that rely on ad revenue? (AHHH!) What about game developers that don't go through publishers.. you can buy
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"The problem is, I'm not convinced that the prediction is actually wrong, and this article despite what it says, seems to fail to demonstrate that."
Unfortunately for you, not being a PC gamer never noticed that the game quality of many PC developers games declined. Epic's unreal 3 was not better then UT2004 and they had the balls to complain about sales when they had been releasing the same game for years on end. There is something called franchise fatigue. With Unreal 3 they moved to consoles and releas
In Other News... (Score:3, Informative)
Au contraire (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think any publisher ever hated the idea of digital distribution (if only it could be made pirate-proof enough for their taste.)
See, ever since the 90's or so, most of the profit has been made by the retailers. Those make money both from the few games that are a success, and from the complete flops. Even games like Daikatana or Aiken's Artefact (which got great reviews, but IIRC sold a total of 800 copies and nobody knowns why) actually made a bunch of retailers a bunch of money.
See, some of us learned a 17'th century version of capitalism (which is also the version in the game called Capitalism) where the merchant buys a barrel of wine in France for price X and tries to sell it in England for 10% more. (Or 50% or whatever.) And if it doesn't work, hey, the producer got his money anyway. Most of retail in today's post-scarcity economy doesn't work that way. Producing stuff is easy, selling it is hard, and basically as a producer you pay the retailers for shelf space to even carry your product at all. If you made an Aiken's Artefact and sold 800 copies total, congrats, you still pay all those retailers to have it on the shelves.
Worse yet, basically the retailers know how important they are and often get to directly or indirectly got to set the rules for you.
The most trivial example is the current brouhaha over ESRB ratings, which exists because of one single retailer: Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart doesn't carry Adults Only game, 'cause god forbid someone may think that means porn, and that would ruin their BS corporate image. Dumbly enough it's also the biggest retailer. Which left the industry in the pickle of simultaneously arguing (A) not all games are for kids, so fuck off, we can make a game with tits and gutting people like sardines because it's for adults, (B) but this particular set of tits and gutted people is good for 17 years old (or sometimes even 13) because otherwise Wal-Mart won't carry it and we'd, like, not make as much money. (And of course making money overrides and moral considerations. What are you, some kinda commie?)
But, heck, even the E3 exists only because at some point the industry figured out they need a way to woo the retailers. That's right. It never was meant to be a place where nerds get their photos taken with booth-babes, except as a further way to show the retailers "look how many people are interested in our next game."
But generally, you have an industry which for a long while has been squeezed by the balls by the retailers. It had to keep brown-nosing them and paying them for the privilege.
I believe that most publishers would have sold their soul to the devil to get out of that, not just tried digital distribution.
Of course, it also had to be enough of a market share, and give some reassurance that it won't get pirated right off your own servers. Piracy, now _that's_ a bigger scare than the retailers.
Im buying solely online. (Score:4, Informative)
gamersgate.com works great. i have a hoard of games there. no client, no strings attached, you download, install, play. then you may delete the game. if you later on want to play it again, you just download it again. no client, no strings attached, dl, install, play. rinse and repeat. all games permanently stay in your account as accessible.
also very cheap. they make huge sales. apparently online distributors can afford to sell prime time titles from $3 (with loyalty discount - depends on member status, it hits in between $3-10 for prime games).
what this has over steam is, it doesnt need a client, hence no mods etc will have issues, and difference with direct2drive is, gamersgate is much cheaper.
as you see, i counted 3 major online digital distributors... didnt even need to mention countless smaller ones. so, digital downloads can be said to come at last.
Re:Im buying solely online. (Score:4, Insightful)
Until it is DRMed by a Steam-like system, the owner vanishes and your game is gone. Granted, some boxed games these days have bad DRM (EA), but the old-school copy protection is as good as not existing. I've got 15 year old games I can still play. I doubt the same would be true of most modern digital downloads in 15 years.
That said, there are some sensible digital download sites (gog.com and, from the sounds of it, gamersgate.com) that do give you the discount and the freedom/fair use.
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You've not had any issues...yet. That's the biggest problem of DRM - people don't have problems at the moment and so assume that all will be rosy in the future. Granted, most media-based 'copy-protection' DRM is trivial to defeat, but it's the phone-home ones that are especially likely to bite you later.
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The only games I've found on Steam that have any DRM are Source-based games, in that you can't run them without running Steam (though you can run them in offline mode). Everything else can just be launched from the .exe like normal, all Steam provides is a Library system (like Media players do for music and video)
Hell, some games you can buy WONT run from Steam, especially if they have a launcher programme that needs admin rights (like Fallen Earth or APB)
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>Everything else can just be launched from the .exe like normal, all Steam provides is a Library system (like Media players do for music and
>video)
The .exes are still wrapped in Steam DRM. It will be obvious if you try to apply patches. Offline mode stops working if Steam is down >30 days.
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Actually, the Source based games have the LEAST offensive DRM. Almost everything else I have bought on Steam has more restrictive DRM. Bioshock 2, while a great game, pissed me off that I had to have a microsoft gamer's account to save games, and I am FORCED to log in each time, or I can't save game. The others had serials that I had to copy/paste from the steam client, and register online. Source games, on the other hand, simply work. Then again, Gabe (owner of Steam) has made it clear that piracy is
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If Steam goes down due to bankruptcy, or simply being closed down, Gabe Newell (Valve's CEO) said they'd turn off authentication for all games.
Is this patch in escrow? If not, the company that buys Valve's assets at auction might disagree with the plan to turn off authentication.
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He has no financial obligation to do so. If they enter bankruptcy court, the creditors call the shots--not the former employees. And if EA (or whomever) buys Valve, they new owners have no obligation to honor his comments.
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Gabe Newell, the CEO of Valve, said that in the event of the company going bust, they'd disable authentication (which they have apparently successfully tested), allowing people to play the games without Valve's servers being there.
They might be able to do this for Valve (single player) games, but I doubt other publishers will let it slide for their stuff.
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Not only that but it assumes that they get a chance and have the inclination at the time and, possibly, that the gamer goes online in the right time frame. If not with the last point then how does a system that *has* to authenticate online know that it now doesn't need to? It can't go "oh well, no server, let them play" because that'd mean you could game without authenticating now, so it needs something to tell it that the lack of server isn't a blocker.
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I agree, Steam is not the best system for getting digital games, but I'm one of the few who prefer it FOR the client. The way its built lets you socially network with gamers you know personally or ones you just meet rather easily. Great Matchmaking system, Great chat tools, achievements, etc. Digital Distribution plays its part but its not the selling point of Steam for Me. Because as you've stated, there are lots of digital distributors out there, you just have to find the one that works for you.
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We've know this since the 80's (Score:2, Funny)
Marty McFly: [showing the two boys how to play the shoot 'em up video game] I'll show you, kid. I'm a crack shot at this.
[shoots a perfect score with the electronic gun]
Video Game Boy #1: You mean you have to use your hands?
Video Game Boy #2: That's like a baby's toy!
So, how does it translate... (Score:2)
So could anyone give the adjusted graph of market distribution, consoles vs PC?
PC's will always be a popular platform (Score:3)
Despite the curve involved to maintain, it's highly customizable, and handles a multitude of tasks and games. You can run emulators for different platforms, network PC's together (without needing an online gaming subscription), and hack someone's port... until quantum computers come out, that is.
pc games from the 1990s (Score:2, Interesting)
Old games can still be played on today's pc's (starcraft comes to mind). If you bought an older game for the previous generations of gaming consoles, it will not probably play on the latest generation of consoles.
I still buy pc games that I don't have time to play today in the expectation that I will be able to play them in the future when I have more time. That said, I am buying almost exclusively stand-alone games that don't need to connect to a server with thousands of other players.
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Old games can still be played on today's pc's (starcraft comes to mind).
It does vary from title to title. Starcraft is obviously well written but it does beg the question as to whether or not it would be worth Blizzard updating the engine a little so it can support higher screen resolutions - although I already own the game and the expansion, I would certainly pay, say. £5-£10 for an updated version that did this.
And if we're talking about classic RTS games, don't fail to mention Total Annihilat
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"It does vary from title to title. Starcraft is obviously well written but it does beg the question as to whether or not it would be worth Blizzard updating the engine a little so it can support higher screen resolutions - although I already own the game and the expansion, I would certainly pay, say. £5-£10 for an updated version that did this."
They've said they won't, but it's going to be relatively trivial to make a Starcraft 1 mod for Starcraft 2 so I suspect someone will do that for you shor
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I'm prepared to wait for the initial response to SC2 because SC1 was so good, but I'm not holding out much hope if I'm honest.
I really haven't been enthused with RTS games since they went from sprites to 3D, I think changeable camera views & zooming in & out just adds unnecessary useless features to that type of game.
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Playing StarCraft on Windows Vista/7 requires you to turn on a bunch of compatibili
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> It also requires you to run it as Administrator to play online, including a UAC prompt if you didn't disable them.
Huh, did it turn into malware in recent versions? Why should a game nowadays need admin rights to play?
I can understand needing admin rights if you are going to install it for all users on the computer. But if you aren't doing that, I see no good reason.
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Why wouldn't you just wait until you have time to play the game before buying it? Chances are it will be cheaper in a year or two.
For how long after release? (Score:3, Insightful)
Amazon.com from a shifty third-party seller - $28 ( before shipping )
Steam - $30
Onlive, which charges you $5 per month AND eats your games when you quit, $40, if I recall correctly.
Mind=Blown
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It varies hugely from game to game.
Borderlands was £20 on shop.to at release while it was £27 on Steam.
Digital stores only tend to be cheaper when games are on sale or when a game has mostly sold out at physical retailers.
This is what happens when you let publishers dictate prices.
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Also, TF2 for 15E, and I got Portal and Alien Swarm for free.
Re:For how long after release? (Score:5, Insightful)
And it is so bloody convenient it is costing me a fortune....
When it has become faster and easier to buy it than pirate it... I'm sold!
Damnit steam and your abilty to entice me to pay for things I would have pirated 2-3 years ago :p
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<p>I paid £12 for Borderlands a few days ago off eBay (hoping its on the doormat whern I get home).
<p>I will end up selling it for £6 or £7 in a few months time.
<p>Secondhand on the Xbox wins.
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Breaking news: People like cheap stuff! (Score:3, Insightful)
Who'da thunked it - if people can get a game cheaper and quicker without leaving their house then they will! Next thing you know they'll be telling us that people go shopping in sales...
the PC will never really die as a games platform (Score:3, Interesting)
There was another story on Slashdot recently about centralizing graphics processing into a single graphics server per household, with the output from that server being displayed on client devices. Once you reach that point, consoles and PCs, monitors and TVs, all become the same devices.
new definition of consoles (Score:2)
What define the consoles now, is that the console games hare created for people playing in a coach, with a pad on the hand. this sets limits and expectations. Then, after that, you have the effects of the owner of the console, setting rules, and maybe his idea of quality.
The PC is defined by the high and medium graphic cards, memory availability, mouse and keyboard. And people use it on a desktop.
This may change on the future,but is like that today.
Low(er) Prices + Convenience = no-brainer (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of my game catalogue is on Steam these days
I remember when I signed up for the Steam service and paid for my first game - it was Half-Life 2, naturally
At the time, I thought it vastly different to the conventional model (and psychological security) of buying your games on CD / DVD at retail. I actually paused before committing to the order.... weighing up the pros and cons of online only distribution when I could just wander down to the store instead
Fast forward to today and, given the choice, I'll elect to buy a game via Steam over any other method. No expanding collection of physical media, no waiting in queues at retail stores where pushy assistants are trying to sell me wares I don't want and - one of my favourite points - no laborious installation processes and/or the need for a disc to be present in the drive to play the game.
I haven't even touched on the low price aspect of Steam which, except for some AAA new releases, sees software available for quite a bit less than in retail stores. I don't think I'm alone in seeing single games or multi-title packs priced at what could be said to be impulse buy pricing.
One thing I would like to know is how the revenue from a purchase via Steam is divided up. Knowing how small a percentage goes to the developer / publisher from conventional sales, I wonder how platforms such as Steam fare by comparison.
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Piracy has given you all that convenience for many years, while also giving you no DRM so no risk the game will become unplayable when the distributor decides to stop maintaining drm servers.
Re:Low(er) Prices + Convenience = no-brainer (Score:4, Interesting)
Piracy
1) Hunt for suitable p2p client that isn't taken down or adware infested yet
2) Hunt for suitable download that is not a translated version or fake and has a proper crack
3) Wait hours to leech from people with unreliable connections
4) Start over again when an important patch appears
5) Get trojans off the PC that came with the crack
Digital sale
1) Shell out $$$
2) Download at line speed
3) Play (if Steam is not overloaded)
I admit, this is hearsay experience. I've obviously never pirated a game, that would be illegal.
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>1) Find torrent tracker, preferably reputable with an invite only system.
"Invite only" => Great ease of use there.
>If you aren't stupid you shouldn't have to worry about any sort of Trojan or virus of another kind.
I'm not stupid, which is why I do worry :-)
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- Slow download is also a risk from a legit supplier, depending where you are, where the download servers are etc...
- Trojans, well not from any remotely reputable site... legit items have been known to have trojans too.
- patches - there are pirate bundles which include preinstalled cracks and patches
But you don't mention the potential risks with non piracy:
DRM may not let you play the game if you are without an internet connection...
DRM may not let you play the game if the service is shut down...
With Steam
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>I haven't even touched on the low price aspect of Steam which, except for some AAA new releases, sees software available for quite a bit less than in retail stores.
>I don't think I'm alone in seeing single games or multi-title packs priced at what could be said to be impulse buy pricing.
Only if you're in the USA. In Europe, Steam games are ludicrously expensive compaired to retail.
That said, the convience is huge. So if there are sales (which undo most of the price differential), I'm buying.
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I'm in a similar position. I own pretty much every gaming platform around, with the exception of the new revisions of the handhelds (the DSi and PSP Go), and when there's a multi-platform game I want, I generally look at a number of factors before deciding which platform I go for. But if I go for the PC (or if the game is PC-exclusive), then I want to know that I can get it on Steam.
Why?
First reason (and one that applies to other download services) - I don't need to put any CD/DVD/Blu-Ray in my machine to f
Re:Low(er) Prices + Convenience = no-brainer (Score:4, Insightful)
This is actually a fairly major point for me; yes, I really am that lazy.
This isn't just about laziness, it's more about expecting some common sense from gaming companies.
If I buy a laptop then common sense says I'm doing so because I will probably be moving around a lot with the computer & maybe even using it while I am travelling... in which case, why the f*** do I need to carry around the game disk as well? Especially as the whole purpose of a hard disk is to deliver the capability of storing everything that might be on the game disk!
If Microsoft insisted that you inserted the MS Office CD/DVD everytime you fired up Excel, there would be a public outcry & people would be telling MS to shove their Office disks where the sun doesn't shine. So why we gamers have allowed ourselves to be treated this way is beyond my comprehension - and as someone who has bought many games over the years, I'm equally to blame.
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Don't underestimate the ability to install your Steam games on different machines.
I have different parts of my Steam library installed on my real computer, the XP VM I keep around for old games, and my laptop.
The catch is that I can only be logged on to one of them at a time.
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I have 3x 500GB drives in my desktop and it irritates the hell out of me that Steam games always have to fit onto one of those drives.
Why not make a partition that spans the three drives and stick Steam in there?
Valve Financials (Score:4, Insightful)
The only people who want PC gaming dead.. (Score:3, Informative)
is the industry itself.
All the reasons that it's "dying" are reasons the big players make. The pc is open, anyone can make a game, and don't need publishers. Publishers hate this. Much how the RIAA hates P2P and the internet in general because Artists can just bypass their robber baron horseshit.
1, Piracy. aka, "we dont control the hardware and software, and cannot fully exploit the people who buy our crap"
2, Forced obsolescence. Many big companies are trying to make PC games a second rate citizen, Microsoft gives bigger perks to those who develop games using the "games for windows" moniker, which essentially makes them develop it for the 360 first. The big development houses are pushing for consoles to make console makers happy.
3, see number one
Making Older Titles Available Again (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't necessarily agree with the comment about digital distribution always being cheaper than stores - for example, because I don't usually hurry to buy new games, I picked up Fallout 3 about 6 months after release for £12.50 new (=$18.00) & then the Game Of The Year Edition (with all 5 DLCs) for £19.99 new (=$30.00). That was from my local Game game store here in the UK, a national chain, and they constantly have similar pricing offers on.
However, especially as I've noticed how the PC games shelf space has shrunk in Game stores over the past couple of years (in favour of console games), this is where digital distribution comes into its own - namely for the range of stuff that's available on-line but not in stores.
I don't buy that many new games but I've bought from Steam & GOG.com - in both cases it's good to have the ability to get hold of a few older classics again.
I don't think PC gaming is dying as such but I do think the whole PC market with respect to games is changing dramatically for the following reasons:
1. PC and graphics hardware development is slowing down for desktop gaming PCs & focus moving to lower-powered netbooks & portable devices. Presumably people still want to play games on those devices which means smaller & less complicated games - one reason for the success of selling older titles online.
2. Most Windows users still seem happy enough with Windows XP even though I have no reason to doubt Windows 7 may be a better OS. This brings into question as to just how many people have the capability to run (or even care about running) DirectX 11 and therefore how much development games companies are prepared to do on it - when all said and done, this list [wikipedia.org] of DirectX 11 games is very small.
3. I don't personally care about "mass migrations to Linux", I use it because it's there and because it does what I need an OS to do. But whilst Windows 7 may have fared better than Vista, it's still not the raging success for Microsoft that XP was & Linux has matured greatly since XP was released to the point where there's a far greater chance of running older Windows games in WINE on Linux than on Windows 7 or XP. Again, this fact alone must influence older game sales & the forums on GOG.com have lots of threads discussing whether or not certain GOG-released titles will run under WINE. (I don't go on the Steam forums much but the fact that there's soon to be a Steam client for Linux says a lot to me).
4. Modern games are huge development projects with huge up-front costs. Developing games for a fixed console platform *MUST* be much easier than developing for PCs with their plethora of different hardware. Plus games companies make their money from making sequels of established titles, it's the younger, less cynical gamers that rush to buy (or get their parents to buy) those titles & the youngsters like their consoles. All of this leads to the conclusion that there will be a continued slowdown in new PC game releases.
5. MMORPGs & online gaming - if people are spending more money on monthly subscription games then they're spending less on boxed games, especially during an economic slowdown.
As a PC gamer, what I'm really looking forward to is a lot more resolution of petty licensing squabbles of older games so that more of them get released, maybe even with some commitment to allow those games to be updated to run on more modern Windows OSes or even natively on Linux. It make sense that if the games companies are no longer getting as much revenue from new PC games than they used to, then they should look at opening up the revenue streams from re-selling older games.
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>1. PC and graphics hardware development is slowing down for desktop gaming PCs & focus moving to lower-powered netbooks & portable devices. Presumably
>people still want to play games on those devices which means smaller & less complicated games - one reason for the success of selling older titles online
This is a good point. My main system right now is a laptop instead of a desktop. I understand this is a common transition. Laptops have worse video hardware than desktops, even the high end
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1. Games are getting simpler because the hardware is no longer hi-spec.
___A. Hardware development is not only related to PCs, and it follows market demand. If only a few games exist that require high-end cards, why make an even more powerful one.
___B. the most recent console on the market (the PS3) dates from 2006. That is, we are at the cosmic minimum in the console dev cycle: no replacement has been announced, and so big developers are producing games for the 4-year-old gr
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__2. The XP Ghetto. I quite disagree. While I still run XP, Windows 7 has done good things for gaming. Since the first DOS machines in the early eighties, there's been a split between general computing machines and PCs that can do games. At some points, the gap between an office computer and a gaming PC has been wider than others: in 1992, for example, there was little difference between a 486x33 with a fancy VGA card and Gravis Ultrasound and a 486x25 with a normal VGA card and a Soundblaster compatible; i
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DirectX isn't a moving target, once released it does not change which is why games made for DX6/7 still run on DX11 video cards. Each new version of DirectX is essentially "everything that was in the previous versions plus this extra stuff".
Yes, I accept & understand that part but that isn't the whole story is it? I don't claim to be either a game or graphics programmer by any stretch of the imagination (I'm more a shell & PERL monkey) but an older game's functionality is not just dependent on Direc
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That was from my local Game game store here in the UK, a national chain, and they constantly have similar pricing offers on.
Now, by that do you mean the generic term "game store" or do you mean the chain of stores called GAME? Because I have always found that GAME is ridiculously overpriced. When MW2 came out I had a look round at whom was cheapest. GAME was selling it for £35 (earlier on it was £39.99), but I picked it up at Tesco for £29.99
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Yes, I am talking about GAME and you are correct - most of their stuff is overpriced.
But I do pop into them or HMV if I am passing - it's very rare I buy anything from either but occasionally there is a bargain to be had.
Most of the time, I just end up seeing that something new & interesting has been released, then just pull out my smartphone and order it for 2/3 of the price online.
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I don't personally care about "mass migrations to Linux"
To Steam's credit, they are in the middle of porting Steam and their Source games to Linux, which is a very small but growing market. They have supported Linux for dedicated servers for over 10 years. They seem pretty determined to support Linux as much as possible, even if it isn't particularly profitable. Now that Steam supports OSX and Linux soon, they are certainly positioning themselves for the future. The question is whether other games prod
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As I said already, how many other people use Linux really doesn't bother me & I don't believe any company anywhere undertakes anything unless they think there's profit to be made from it.
But Steam for Linux is a good thing & I'll be interested to see what impact it does have on desktop Linux take-up.
Sure Windows 7 may be better than XP, I don't use it & cannot comment on it. And, yes, it's more popular than Vista, enough so that it's being hailed a success - again, cannot argue with that.
But the
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XP Mode has no OpenGL/Direct3D support. You're going to need VMWare or VirtualBox (with some extra setup, and is limited to DX8/9) for that.
Second Hand Market (Score:3, Insightful)
they simply want to force everyone to have to purchase new which is why they have continually tried to get us to stop using the PC and move onto the kiddie toy consoles.
but now they are not happy with the consoles and are trying to block second hand games being traded on them.
i hate scum bag anti consumer corporations.
Re:Second Hand Market (Score:4, Interesting)
sony and co (all the large game corps) have all got together and are simply trying to destroy the second hand market which is why they are trying to force us to only accept digital distribution laden with DRM like steam where all your purchases are not allowed to be resold.
I accept that Steam is a form of DRM control but it's the best of a bad bunch. The stuff you've bought already is always available to you to download onto any PC you own plus it's very easy to backup your Steam folder to an external hard disk - this means that if you rebuild your OS or upgrade your PC, you just have to copy the Steam folder back rather than having to reinstall and re-update each game one-by-one.
As for re-selling old games, have you checked prices on eBay recently? Unless the used games being sold are highly collectible or only a few months old, the prices of used PC games are peanuts. I have a stack of old PC games from about 3-5 years ago that I no longer play but are just not worth listing on eBay & will go to the local charity shop instead. I'm afraid that this idea that you can re-sell oldish games for anything near their original value is a myth.
but now they are not happy with the consoles and are trying to block second hand games being traded on them.
I'm not defending this behaviour by any means but if, as a gamer, it's important to you to be able to re-sell a game once you've finished with it, then maybe the only option is to factor it into your original purchasing decisions. The fact is that a lot of people appear to be mindless enough to queue at midnight with their kids to be the first to have a computer game suggests that most of them don't care about reselling them. Besides which, have you seen what happens to the condition of optical disks after a few weeks of kids putting them in consoles? :-)
i hate scum bag anti consumer corporations.
I agree - but the best way to hurt them is in their wallets. If you don't agree with the expected terms & conditions around something you plan on buying then just don't buy it. Corporations have got so powerful because too many mindless consumers have been sucked in by too many marketing lies - if you stop handing money over to them, they wither and die overnight.
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I have so many old games laying around that I never got around to reselling, nor do I ever play. I'm pretty sure I'm the norm.
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Who can blame them? They don't owe it to anybody to supply people with games. They have a business to run. Most projects struggle to make a profit the way it is. If they see a new and emerging business model, they're not going to wait around for someone to beat them to it.
And judging by the success of subscription based models and digital distribution, it appears that most gamers aren't tremendously concerned about reselling their games.
If anybody is to blame for this development it's the large chain retail
whining (Score:2)
It is always the same whining. "piracy is killing us", "the VHS is killing us", "bootlegs are killing us" - no matter if it's games, movies, music, the main expertise of the content industry has for at least 40 years been whining.
Unfortunately, they're not laughed out the door as they deserve to.
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Some people like to whine and exaggerate. But it would be ignorant deny that these developments don't change the way people do business. For better or for worse.
Games developers have already shifted the majority of their efforts to consoles, so have in that sense been "laughed out the door". Some people are perfectly happy with that. Others complain about the publishers and write angry posts on forums.
9/10 people agree that most stats are full of shit (Score:3, Insightful)
Contested Numbers (Score:4, Informative)
Why the discrepency? Well, he has actual numbers for retail and Impulse (which he happens to own). He doesn't have numbers for Steam. Of course, neither does NPD. Their digital numbers are based on an online survey. These are not real sales numbers by any measure of the word, they're the sales equivalent of a biased online public opinion poll.
If I stood in the electronics aisle of Walmart and did a survey there, I'd find shockingly different numbers too. Unfortunately since we don't have accurate sales data for anybody, we're left with this kind of guess work.
Like I keep saying everywhere these come up... (Score:2)
Re:and (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a fan of Stardock's Galactic Civilizations II and the expansions, all of which I own on CD.
Not long after the original game was released about 5 years ago, Stardock changed the license key format (I think due to piracy issues) so that the key printed on the instruction manual no longer worked. However, they informed everyone about this & getting a new key issued was straightforward & quick.
I hadn't played the game for about two years & had rebuilt my PC since I'd last played it but decided to dig it out again recently. When I installed the game & connected to Stardock via their Impulse application (think of it as a simpler version of Steam), I remembered the old key didn't work, had the lost the new key & realised that the registered email address Stardock had for me was an ISP-based one from an ISP I no longer use or have access to.
I emailed Stardock, asking them to either send the key to my new email address or to update my records to that I could send myself the key from Impulse. This was on a Friday evening and I had been looking forward to playing GC II over the weekend.
To give Stardock credit, they were very helpful and by the following Tuesday they had sorted it all out - but I did need to send out about three emails to them and they appeared to have nobody on duty over the weekend, which is when I had really fancied having the gaming session.
So, yes, this is one specific reason why too much reliance on the game creator servers can be a problem for legitimate purchasers.
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>1. Computers don't go obsolete like consoles do
No, they obsolete faster. A 5 year old PC is not going to run all the new games. A 5 year old console does.
>2. A keyboard & mouse > controller
There are other games besides FPS (for which a controller is better). Racing games, for example.
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> There are other games besides FPS (for which a controller is better). Racing games, for example.
RTS & Puzzle Games are better using a Keyboard/Mouse, basically any game where you have to click on an area on the screen a KB/M combo is superior. the only games that gamepads "might" be better are arcade games, but even then a keyboard mouse combo is just as effective
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At the very least, racing games, flightsims and platformers are not something you want mouse+keyboard for. The people who buy controllers for PC games surely don't do that because they like taking a step backwards.
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That depends on how you classify "all the new games."
The PS2 is still being sold. I could buy it and play "all the new [PS2] games," but that's like saying I can drink all the water in a desert... there may be some there, but extremely little. Prior to this generation, a console's lifetime was 5-6 years before it was considered obsolete and its manuf
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Well, they *are* diversifying into the HPC market...