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PC Games (Games) Businesses

Half Life 2 Retail Sales Hit 1.7 Million 117

Posted by Zonk from the so-many-headcrabs! dept.
blueZhift writes "It looks like PC gaming is not dead yet! GamesIndustry.biz reports that retail sales of Valve's Half Life 2 have topped 1.7 million. There aren't any numbers available for online sales via Steam, but these are impressive numbers for any platform, console or PC."
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Half Life 2 Retail Sales Hit 1.7 Million More

Half Life 2 Retail Sales Hit 1.7 Million

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  • Article doesn't say, but there was some hum about it when the initial sales figures were released back before Christmas. Does anyone know if they're including the yet unclaimed 'presale' tickets in this 1.7 million figure?

    There were a lot of Graphics cards sold with Halflife 2 prommisory notes in them, and I suspect most of those didn't get collected.

  • Do you think it was worth the money? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by snuf23 ( 182335 ) on Monday January 31, 2005 @02:39PM (#11531128)
    I purchased via Steam to avoid having to do a CD check as well as the Steam sign on (as with the retail version).
    I paid $60 for the silver version which includes the Valve back catalogue.
    The main HL2 game certainly was a lot of fun, although the load times could be annoying and the overall game was kind of short. In particular the last levels where a large amount of time is spent on the cool but non-interactive ride, followed by an ending that is more "huh?" than "woah!".
    The long term value is arguably good. I myself can't get into Counter Strike and the added on HL2 deathmatch becomes dull quickly. I am looking forward to the mod community's releases to extend the value of the game.
    • I also purchased via steam (went with the cheapo $50 version).

      I don't think HL2 was worth the money or the hype that surrounds it. Honestly, the game just isn't that much fun. The story line was flat. The weapons (excepting the gravity gun) were nothing special. The game feels unfinished. And the ending was boring.

      I had a much better time playing Far Cry. The first time I played it I thought it was never going to end. It's much longer than HL2 and cost me the same amount.

      I still liked HL2, but Far Cry is
      • "I still liked HL2, but Far Cry is a much better value"

        I wonder if you'll be saying that two years down the road, when there are 2 or 3 must-play mods for HL2.
        • "I still liked HL2, but Far Cry is a much better value"

          I wonder if you'll be saying that two years down the road, when there are 2 or 3 must-play mods for HL2.

          He probably will. There may be the same type of "must-play" mods on Far Cry by then too. Far Cry's engine is pretty good and has some cool features for modding. The SDK has already been released as well.

          Both games have the potential to produce some awesome mods.

          That said... if you are buying HL2 strictly for mods, then you should have waited "tw
          • I dunno, I found Far Cry multiplayer to be laggy and unplayable even when it claimed a 30-40ms ping, heaven help you if you hit 100ms.

            CS:S Is smooth, responsive and a blast even at 100ms, it's bloody amazing at a 30-40ms.

            HL2 SP as compared to Far Cry SP, though in some ways more confined, had a much better story, a lot more variety/originality, better pacing, and the puzzles were actually fun. The only thing Far Cry had going was that it seemed longer, but that may be because I couldn't stop playing HL2 o

      • It's funny how drastically different reactions people have to games. My experiences were almost exactly the opposite. I found Half-Life 2 to be one of the best games ever, almost certainly the best FPS ever. Far Cry on the other hand, I thought was just awful. I'd rank it as one of the worst FPS ever.

        Different strokes for different folks, eh? :-)

      • How can you complain about the ending of HL2 and not Far Cry? The Far Cry ending was just awful. Shoot the bad guy, a 30 sec pointless cut scene and 10 minutes of credits. I did it twice because i thought i'd missed something. HL2 Ending was far better. Far Cry also managed to follow the "Mutant experiment gone wrong" storyline.. hmm that's original. In short HL2:fun and Original, Far Cry:Repetative and predictable
        • My all time favorite game is the original Tomb Raider and the Far Cry environment reminded me much more of that than did HL2. HL2 reminded much more of TR:AOD which was a complete letdown (I still haven't finished AOD).

          I think my angle is more from the "I want an adventure" than the "I want a FPS". The freedom of movement in FC was much greater than in HL2. As I'm playing FC the second time, I'm coming at everything from a new direction and handling tasks in different ways (which even TR didn't really allo

    • Re:Do you think it was worth the money? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "I purchased via Steam to avoid having to do a CD check as well as the Steam sign on (as with the retail version)."

      You know they removed the CD-check about 4 weeks after the game was released. Valve aren't stupid. People complained and they did something about it.
    • Amen to that. Snooze until the bigs mods hit and then fire up ye-old HL2 again. I doubt I'll ever see the inside of the single player levels again, unless some mod borrows prefabs from them or something.
    • Yes.

      .

      .

      .

      Oh, I suppose I should elaborate.

      I thought the game was lots of fun. It might be short, but when you get to be my age, you tend to have more money (yay!) and less free time (boo!). So I find that I'm starting to prefer the games I can complete in 8-10 hours. If I hear that a game takes 40+ hours to complete, I might think twice about buying it, because I know I'll never get close to finishing it. At least, not before the next big thing comes along to distract me.

      So it might have been a relati

      • but it was loads of fun while it lasted.

        I keep hearing people say how fun this game was... I still haven't finished it, because frankly it is just so boring. The whole thing felt like work, and the pace was so slow. I just didn't feel like I had the kind of time it takes to play a game like HL2.

        Don't get me wrong, I'm very satisifed with my purchase. Counter Strike:Source is easily the best FPS game I've ever played, and I'm totally sold on the whole Steam thing... I just wish I hadn't lost my CD k
      • I dunno about the length, it was definitely much longer than I was willing to put up with it. Stopped playing half way through Ravenholm (watched a friend play it farther so I know how far I'm in) because it just stopped being interesting. For a comparison, I played though Doom 3 shortly before (and actually prefer its gameplay, HL2 manages to make even the gravity gun feel like it's an old, overused idea).
    • Check out the Source Racer mod. http://www.sourceracer.com/ [sourceracer.com]
    • I found the combat to be quite boring. The enemies don't respond to your gunfire. They only head for cover if they are reloading, or if you've thrown a grenade towards them.

      In one of the trailers from HL2, ant lions are attacking the Combine. A combine soldier would stand in place reloading his gun as an ant lion was mauling him. I thought that it was just becuase it was an early build.... not so.

      There wasn't as much physics use in combat as shown in one of the early trailers.

      Most of the environments
      • I do think some of the negative aspects in HL2 are the result of extensive playtesting with non-FPS-expert players. The linearity makes it much harder to get lost, AI is fairly forgiving of mistakes and it's rare that you'll get in an impossible-to-recover-from situation thanks to the large amount of health and ammo lying around.

        What the game could really do with is a Halo-style 'Legendary' mode, giving the enemies faster reactions and removing a few of the many health-packs. The AI is actually pretty dece

  • The Future (Score:2, Funny)

    by Mr.Dippy ( 613292 )
    So 1.7 million people are going to be really pissed in like 5 years when Valve gets bought out by EA and EA discontinues the Steam servers making everybodies HL2 game unplayable.

    • Re:The Future (Score:4, Insightful)

      by PoderOmega ( 677170 ) on Monday January 31, 2005 @02:56PM (#11531323)
      How many times is this FUD example going to come up? Yes, it is possible this will happen. But I have a feeling if this type of situation arose, Valve would release a non-steam patch before totally going out of business. Yes Steam authenication sucks, and I hope someone does sue them to prove that I did, in fact, buy that game, not just a license to play by their rules. But I would bet cash that if there was a steam doomsday, there would be a non-steam patch release.

      • Re:The Future (Score:3, Informative)

        by NanoGator ( 522640 )
        "How many times is this FUD example going to come up? Yes, it is possible this will happen."

        If it's possible, as you say, then why's it FUD? Why is your feeling that Valve would release that patch more likely to happen than anybody else's feeling that they won't? The mere fact that they're requiring Steam to play it says to me "They really don't give a rat's ass about our right to play it." That may or may not be true, but I'd be surprised if you had some other example of Valve's behaviour to suggest t
        • "The mere fact that they're requiring Steam to play it says to me "They really don't give a rat's ass about our right to play it.""

          How about they try to establish their revenue ?

          "Valve doesn't have a good reputation with some people"

          But has a kick-ass reputation with far more people... Just in case you forgot, they -did- support HL/CS for quite some time.

          "Until that happens, your best bet is to just own up to the fact that some of their business practices are offensive and, believe it or not, the peopl

          • "How about they try to establish their revenue ?"

            By punishing their legit customers?

            "No looney tunes, nope ; Selfish and shortsighted, yes ("My Steam doesn't cache right on my pentium III 500 Mhz, FUCK STEAM !!!!!!one!!")"

            Um, okay. Except the complaint is about the game NOT WORKING because one of their servers ISN'T WORKING. That's actually a legitimate complaint. Selfish? Short sighted? Yeah you can label those complaints that way. Sure. One could also label the whole plan to force people do
            • "Except the complaint is about the game NOT WORKING because one of their servers ISN'T WORKING"

              The single player-part still is, not ?
              I didn't hear the same uproar when the WON-network went down in the time of HL/CS.

              I still stay with my opinion that the majority of the people complaining about Steam, are looking at their own 'bugs' ; Caused by them expecting to run the game/Steam flawlessly, with a sub-par system.

              (postnote : Don't think that I'm some sort of Valve-fanboy that won't see -any- mistakes mad

              • The single player-part still is, not ?
                I didn't hear the same uproar when the WON-network went down in the time of HL/CS.

                The single player part did not require WON to work. You did not need to authenticate HL online at all to play the single player-part.
                And a lot of people were not so happy with the switch from WON to Steam. But then again, most people bought HL as a single player game and got CS as a free add-on, so they had less reason to complain.

                Concerning the quality of Steam, it used to be extremel
    • Try 6 months. This is one of the reasons I will never buy software that requires the internet to be functional.
      • Hear hear. I've heard plenty of arguments about how steam isn't that intolerable, but to allow this kind of thing is to start down a very ugly path. Software that *can* run standalone *should* run standalone. I'll provide the sandbox, and I'll take the responsibility of not violating copyright etc.

        This is one of the reasons I will never buy software that requires the internet to be functional.

        I'm not going to go that far, though. An internet connection is inherently required for some software. Also,

    • Played it. Won it. Can say I really care all that much if I ever play it again. Maybe to boot it up and mess with it for nostalgia but there isn't much replayability there.
  • Halo 2 sold 6 million copies on a closed platform and as I type this there are roughly the same number of people playing HL2 online for free as playing Halo 2 online as part of a pay service.

    Its not dead, but PC gaming is staggering in a standing 8 count right now.

    Mod away, but it won't change the numbers.
    • This year I played console games online on the PS2 for the first time. With no graphic problems, no major tweaking needed. It just worked out-of-box.

      Today I play as much games online on my PS2 as my PC. That's something I never thought would be possible for me anyways.

      If they shipped the next consoles with a mouse, keyboard, hard drive, I'd say PC gaming is toast. A game like HL2 can easily be done on a PS3 and xbox2.

      • If they shipped the next consoles with a mouse, keyboard, hard drive, I'd say PC gaming is toast.
        If it's got a mouse, keyboard, and harddrive, how is it not a PC?

      • A game like HL2 can easily be done on a PS3 and xbox2.

        I wouldn't say that as if it were a good thing. To say that a next generation console that won't be out for another year at the earliest can play a PC game that came out a few months ago is no great feat. The problem (one that will not go away) with consoles is that for the lifetime (~6 years for the PS2) of the console its specs will not get any better, so PC gaming will surpass it.

        • The problem (one that will not go away) with consoles is that for the lifetime (~6 years for the PS2) of the console its specs will not get any better, so PC gaming will surpass it.

          On the other hand, due to the hardware staying static for 5-6 years, developers become more and more proficient with the platform and are able to eek out more than you would expect (see Gran Turismo 4, for example, which will do 60fps 1080i on an aging PS2, or compare FFIX on the PSOne to FFVII in terms of graphics, or compar

          • Have you seen GTA:SA on a good TV ? Have you seen Resident Evil 4 on a good TV ? I'm talking the kind of TV you can connect your computer DVI output on and play in widescreen. Far Cry, Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 look amazing. Playing NFS Underground 2 on it is incredible. Now, a friend of yours bring his console to show you his favorite game .. Both of you will notice the VERY LOW QUALITY that they render on. XBox, GameCube or PS2, none of them give a good quality render "out of the box". Perhaps you can buy s

            • Have you seen GTA:SA on a good TV ?

              Yes, and it looks like ass. However, notice that I held up GTA:SA as an example of expanded environments compared to previous iterations in this console generation, and not as a paragon of graphical goodness.

              Have you seen Resident Evil 4 on a good TV ?

              Nope, but then I'm not really interested in RE4, which is beside the point.

              I'm talking the kind of TV you can connect your computer DVI output on and play in widescreen.

              My TV is about a year too old to have a

        • It doesn't matter that the specs don't get better, because the specs don't matter. Games are what matters.

          Now if you're one of those people who brag about frame rates and resolutions and other benchmarks the specs matter to you, probably more than actually playing the games.

          All that technological surpassmenet doesn't make the games actually better or more fun to play does it.

    • Its not dead, but PC gaming is staggering in a standing 8 count right now.
      PC sales may be dropping slowly (I don't think the 2004 figures are quite out yet, but an increase wouldn't surprise me) but it's a _long_ way from dead.
      Mod away, but it won't change the numbers.
      ... but the Steam sales figures will. The 1.7 million only counts the people who bought the retail package.
      • The Steam figures will probably not be larger than the retail package.

        Costs of game production are rising, PC games will have to sell as much as this to survive, or will slip to become simple ports of console titles. With little to differentiate them, there is little point is there in spending extra on dedicated gaming graphics cards, and the associated hassle of maintaining such a system. Expect graphical superiority to be wiped out with the coming systems and HDTV.

        Exclusive PC titles are a rare breed th

        • The Steam figures will probably not be larger than the retail package.

          Probably not. But the grantparent post claimed that the numbers would not be changed by moderation -- which is true, but the Steam figures _will_ change them.

          With little to differentiate them

          You're kidding, right? Right now, today, PC games are still blessed with much better graphics (HDTV consoles aren't here yet, are they?) and better interfaces for certain types of games (the mouse still rules the FPS and the RTS, for examp

          • Right now, today, PC games are still blessed with much better graphics (HDTV consoles aren't here yet, are they?) and better interfaces for certain types of games (the mouse still rules the FPS and the RTS, for example. Has any console since the Dreamcast offered a mouse?)

            There are HDTV capable consoles (Xbox and Gamecube) but you have to buy the HD plugs and obviously have a HDTV. Whether the keyboard/mouse combo is better for FPSs is debatable as well as based on personal preferance. Also the Playstation

            • Re:Get your facts straight (Score:4, Insightful)

              by dougmc ( 70836 ) <dougmc+slashdot@frenzied.us> on Monday January 31, 2005 @07:42PM (#11535266) Homepage
              There are HDTV capable consoles (Xbox and Gamecube) but you have to buy the HD plugs and obviously have a HDTV.
              So there are. But it looks like only certain games support these enhanced resolutions -- which I guess is true for PC games too.
              Whether the keyboard/mouse combo is better for FPSs is debatable as well as based on personal preferance.
              Really, what's happened is that console games have been dumbed down to be playable with the little joysticks/joypads that they give you. With a mouse, you can zero in on the bad guy's face and get a head shot off very quickly -- with a joypad, it would take much longer to do so, so the console game is set up to either auto-aim for you, or to make it so making head shots really isn't important to the game -- either you get no extra benefit from it, or the game is easy enough that you don't need to make them very often.

              But if you tried to play something like the PC version of UT with a joypad like you had on an X-Box, vs. guys with keyboard and mouse, you'd get pwn3d quick. It's just that the PC version makes it important to be able to aim precisely, something the joypad just isn't good at.

              Not quite. Any Tom, Dick or Harry can write a PC game. But to write a console game, you need to get a development kit from the console maker, and pay them royalties on every game made.
              True, but how many PC games do you think are 'copy-cat' games?
              Probably a number similar to the number of console games that are `copy-cat' games. The vast majority of games out there, PC and console, are copies of other games, with some tweaking or new features. Few are revolutionary rather than evolutionary.

              The grandparent post of this post was claiming that `Exclusive PC titles are a rare breed these days' -- which couldn't be further from the truth. And I pointed out why. (Though I guess if you restrict yourself to `big budget, blockbuster titles', then maybe that statement is becoming true.)

              As for consoles not getting RTSs is a matter of RTS games being TOO complex for the general gamer.
              Ok, I won't argue too much about that -- I really can't claim to know too much about what your average console player wants.

              But since there will always be `extra'-ordinary games, PC games will *never* die, at least until the consoles can cater to them a little better.

              • Really, what's happened is that console games have been dumbed down to be playable with the little joysticks/joypads that they give you. With a mouse, you can zero in on the bad guy's face and get a head shot off very quickly -- with a joypad, it would take much longer to do so, so the console game is set up to either auto-aim for you, or to make it so making head shots really isn't important to the game -- either you get no extra benefit from it, or the game is easy enough that you don't need to make them

            • There are HDTV capable consoles (Xbox and Gamecube) but you have to buy the HD plugs and obviously have a HDTV. Whether the keyboard/mouse combo is better for FPSs is debatable as well as based on personal preferance. Also the Playstation 1 has a mouse but it was used for like 2 games, an early showing of Sony's commitment to add-on parts (remember how the PS2 was supposed to connect to external Zip drives?)

              The PS2 also supports HDTV

              The PSone mouse also has more than 2 games that support it. Off the to

          • You're kidding, right? Right now, today, PC games are still blessed with much better graphics (HDTV consoles aren't here yet, are they?) and better interfaces for certain types of games (the mouse still rules the FPS and the RTS, for example. Has any console since the Dreamcast offered a mouse?)

            The following consoles have or had mice:

            Genesis
            SNES
            Saturn
            Playstation
            Dreamcast
            P laystation 2 (it has standard USB ports)

            And then there's mods to existing games -- remember, Counterstrike started as a HL mod. C

      • Just because the retail PC game market may die doesn't mean PC games will die. Actually, that would probably help out freeware/shareware/FOSS games.
    • Nothing new about PC games being outsold by their console counterparts. It's been a long time since any PC game held a long term sales record (Myst). All that matters is that PC games are still profitable, and as consoles become more and more similar to your home PC development for both (or I guess I should say "all") platforms will become even more common than it is now.
    • Halo 2 figures would have been less if there were any other good games competing with it on the same platform. I still remember everyone squigling because they didn't have enough money to buy all the games that came out at the end of last year, and most people had to choose. I don't remember XBox people debating between Halo2, and anything else, because there wasn't an 'else'.
  • more like so-many-god-damned-ant-lions dept. curse them and their protective hides!
  • Did i miss something in the last few weeks? Why would pc gaming be dead?
    • Compared to five years ago, it's in a coma. Consoles are eating its breakfast, lunch and dinner. Halo 2 has done nearly four times this figure, GTA:SA probably even greater.
      • Compared to five years ago, it is just as "dead" as ever. PC Game sales have never come CLOSE to console sales, and you can take that number back as far as you want to go.

        I am not saying PC Gaming is dying. It never has been, and while I won't say it never will, I will say I find that very unlikely. I think these 'PC Games are dying' statements just come from the fact that PC Gaming has never performed at the same level as consoles.
        • But as I've said in another comment, costs of creating games with levels of increasing complexity that is required as games mature will catch up the lowly sales of PC software first, which can only lead to generic console ports. It's already happening.
          • I was just looking at all my favorite titles for PC gaming. Every one of them was then ported to the two major consoles. When PC gaming dies, I assume the consoles do as well. Maybe the news about EA buying out the NFL and other such news is also leading towards a "PC gaming is dead" mentality.
    • Well, I've always been more of a console person than a PC person. But years back, I did play my fair share of PC games as well as console games. Nowadays, the signal to noise ratio on a PC is far too low for my liking, and I generally buy about maybe 1 or 2 games per year on a PC. (In the last year, I probably bought 30+ console games, and 2 PC games. (Pirates and Half-Life 2)).
  • ... that can't play their game when Steam isn't working!
  • HL2 works just fine when you start Steam in offline mode. Just load steam with no active internet connection and it prompts you to run in off line mod where upon you can launch and play Hl2. Obviously CS Source does not work but HL2 plays just fine.
  • A chance to flame both Stream and the "PC Gamorz are dead d00d!" crowd.

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