| Pemalite said: Nah. The PC seems to be switching into another gear over the last year and the next couple of years. |
About time we got some new folks debating in this thread. Glad to see you Pemalite. 
OK, I checked out the points you made.
Star Citizen. Developed primarily by Cloud Imperium Games (owned by Chris Roberts of Wing Commander fame) & Behaviour Interactive, the largest independent developer in Canada. Game to be released somewhere in 2015.
Top-notch game development by the people, for the people, & exclusive to PC.
This shows confidence in the PC platform!
I see so little of that from all the loudmouthed PC developers flapping gums about Nintendo's deficiencies while either being owned by a publisher who makes its money mostly on consoles (Maxis—owned by EA, DICE—owned by EA, BioWare—owned by EA, idSoftware—owned by Bethesda/ZeniMax) or being self-owned but going to the consoles to make their money (Bethesda, Epic Games, Telltale Games, Avalanche Studios, Funcom/Red Thread Games, GSC Game World/4A Games, & yes EA).
These PC guys had become salty when their games didn't sell enough on PC alone & they were forced to go to the consoles to stay alive.
Some even let themselves be bought out to stay afloat & be subsidized. Problem is that subsidization comes from the consoles.
Let's see if Star Citizen can make it solely on the PC. If they do, at least they actually believed in their platform unlike these loudmouths & made success from it.
Next, League of Legends. Developed by Riot Games, a subsidiary of China-based internet services house Tencent Holdings.
Game released worldwide on October 27, 2009.
According to my findings, in 2012 this MMO battle arena game had over 32 million registered players & averages about 12 million players a day worldwide.
As of 2013 this game is the most popular e-sports game in South Korea. Hmmmm.
There have been cash prizes given out in public tournaments of the game one of them being a pool for $5 million. Impressive.
Riot Games, the maker of the game, has rumored revenues of over $150 million...
...wait a minute. Just $150 million? After all that I just posted??
Ah that's the situation. The game is free to play. There it is.
Money is only made through microtransactions buying Riot Points which give you the ability to buy new characters (champions) to play with, skins for those characters, performance enhancing boosts & other options.
Freemium stuff again. More pay-to-win stuff.
Easy to get a large gathering when you don't have to pay for nothing.
And these guys should be making a LOT more than $150 million as big as this game is.
Once again, it shows flaws in the PC market for revenue/profit potential.
Dota 2. Developed by Valve. Game just released on July 9, 2013.
It's a little better than League of Legends setup. No signs of pay-to-win there so far. Free-to-play with no holding back of essential gameplay content.
They pretty much just take donations as people buy community-created costumes & other things like virtual books (interactive compendiums?) from the in-game store.
Valve even shares royalties with the costume makers. Pretty nice.
Valve won't share those revenues with the public, however, & all we got to go on is Team Fortress 2's free-to-pay/donations model which raised $3.5 million for its costume makers.
Nice number but it's not enough to have the strong videogame business that Nintendo enjoys.
Star Wars: The Old Republic. Developed by Electronic Arts' subsidiary BioWare. Co-published by Electronic Arts & LucasArts.
Game released on December 20, 2011.
This game, the most expensive video game ever made, was originally subscription-based by times between 30-day to 180-day spans & prices between $14.99 to $77.94.
Co-publishers EA & LucasArts expected to beat World of Warcraft's record of 11 million subscribers with this game.
After all it's the Star Wars universe full of Billy Dee as Lando, Princess Leia in a bikini for Jabba the Hutt, "Luke I am your father!", Ewoks, Wookies, Death Stars, Boba Fetts, Yodas, R2-D2s & C-3POs, Darth Mauls, Samuel L. as Jedi, Lightsaber Fights, Clone Attacks, Millenium Falcons & Darth Vader not to mention Jar Jar & the Expanded Universe. What could go wrong?
After reaching 1.7 million subscribers in February of 2012, the subscription count for the world's most expensively-made game started slipping.
That July after the subscriber count slipped under 1 million, EA decides to open up the first 15 levels for free-to-play.
We're a long way from 11 million, boss! They had already been giving out numerous free trial weekends that year to sweeten the pot.
Not enough. And soon neither was this.
That November, EA then opens up the first 50 levels for free-to-play!
EA mentions that it only takes half a million subscribers for this game to be profitable & they were well above that number.
Sure you are, bo. Sure you are. Then what are those layoffs at BioWare Austin all about?
Hey, the EA Louse warned you! Sorry Old Republic subscribers. 
Funny thing happened to the other co-publisher LucasArts that year of 2012.
They published Kinect Star Wars for April. Powered by the Star Wars-themed XBox 360/Kinect bundle package with R2-D2 styled console & C-3PO styled controller the game makes it to 1.39 million despite disappointing feedback.
Suffering from years of layoffs, resignations, & random disappointments, LucasArts would soon get the biggest blow ever.
George Lucas, the Lucas in LucasArts, was ready to retire. He was tired of the blockbusters, tired of the whole business in general.
He was ready to sell his namesakes............to The Walt Disney Company. Darth Mickey? WHAT?
With that move the whole Lucas Empire including Industrial Light & Magic, LucasFilm, & LucasArts was owned by Disney.
Almost fittingly the last game published by LucasArts was Rovio's Angry Birds Star Wars.
Disney stated that they wanted all employees in Lucas' properties to stay where they are...
...until they laid them off, of course.
On April 3, 2013, LucasArts would no longer be a game developer. The company along with ILM was gutted save for 10 employees to keep the label open as a licensor.
Disney made these moves to minimize the company's risk while achieving a broad portfolio of Star Wars games.
The first game made from the Disney-run LucasArts.........Angry Birds Star Wars II.
Like its predecessor it will probably be ported to consoles.
World of Tanks. Developed by Wargaming.net. Game released first in Russia on August 12, 2010 with other releases spanning 2011-2012.
Freemium model. Pay-to-win. Interesting to have an MMO tanks game though. You get tired of orcs sometimes.
Wargaming.net's fiscal 2012 revenue (ending December 31, 2012) was over €217.9 million with a nearly €6.2 million profit!
(that was about $287.4 million U.S. for revenue & nearly $8.2 million U.S. for profit)
And it comes almost entirely from this game! Impressive.
60 million registered players worldwide too. Nice.
By the way, World of Tanks will be coming to the consoles. The XBox 360 to be exact. So there's that.
In addition, Wargaming.net's CEO Victor Kislyi is EXCITED to bring World of Ranks TO the XBox 360, a console.
By ratios, World of Tanks has about double the registered players as League of Legends does & fittingly about double the revenues.
As big as a game like this is, you would expect more money to be in Wargaming.net's pockets.
Though it's not perfectly comparable let's just take the 33.92 million Mario Kart Wii alone has sold & compare it to League of Legends & World of Tanks.
33.92 million Mario Kart Wiis sold × $49.99 price = $1,695,660,800 → nearly $1.7 billion in revenue.
Just one simple game from Nintendo made them nearly $1.7 billion in revenue. That's headed in the neighborhood of $2 billion.
$2 billion is about Oprah's financial worth! Nintendo damn near sold an Oprah!
So where League of Legends makes $150 million with 32 million registered players, Mario Kart Wii alone made $1.7 billion with above 32 million owners.
And World of Tanks making its equivalent of $287.4 million with 60 million registered players, double Mario Kart Wii's figures to get $3.4 billion with well above 60 million owners.
The PC market just can't compare to the console market even at its best.
I don't wish the platform harm but business-wise I have broken down & detailed everything you just mentioned.
And these are the results.
| Pemalite said: Valve hasn't lost confidence in the PC, it's profits, the amount of people using, playing and buying on Steam has been climbing over the past few years and not slowly either, that's mostly just hyperbole on your part, any smart business should look to expand outside of it's bread-and-butter market which is exactly what valve has and will continue to attempt. World of WarCraft however is on the decline, it's still a very profitable game or heck, even the most profitable game ever made, but that won't last forever. :) Plenty of PC only developers, lots of kickstarter projects, lots of mods that are being turned into full fledged games that are PC only, lets not forget PC games are cheaper, look better, sound better, run smoother and have a better and a larger choice of controls too! Entire genre's of games are pretty much non-existent on consoles, all genre's are pretty much readily available on PC. Here, have some information: http://pcgamingalliance.org/member-benefits/research/ Of course, some people have specific reasons for choosing a particular platform, mostly just personal tastes and all. |
Well, Nintendo hasn't left their bread & butter market & it has gone well for them.
You never (legally) see Nintendo's stuff on any other platform but Nintendo's. They don't entertain PCs or smartphones or none of that.
They stick with their own platform to sell their games & nothing but. It doesn't get any more confident than that.
Those rare times you saw Nintendo's stuff outside of Nintendo's platforms (the pre-Famicom/NES days & the CD-i), quality was HORRIBLE!
I believe Nintendo made Ocarina of Time so good because last time a Zelda game was out we heard this:
The Steam Box just doesn't make sense really. Valve pretty much already has their own virtual console (no trademark infringement intended 
) so why do they need to create a physical console for it?
And on that point why build a console in the first place if they already have a physical machine—the PC—to host that Steam service to begin with?
Shouldn't they be more concerned with bringing players over to the PC instead of making a console that might not get them there?
Listen, I have used Steam before. Nice service. Lots of games to choose from. Decent prices.
My cousin got me to use it this summer. It's a great option for videogaming.
They're already on the smartphones & tablets—a natural fit being that those devices are the new PC market.
Why did Valve put it on the PS3 though? Doesn't the PS3 already have an online service. the PlayStation Network?
Is Valve trying to turn the console into a PC? Keyboard & mouse controls for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive through Steam??
Seems strange to me all this hanging around consoles from these PC guys. Especially if PC's supposed to be the superior platform.
It's been about 10 years for World of Warcraft so no surprise it's slowing down.
But one thing I'll say PC games can do better than console games is draw out the life of the game to the nth degree.
Mods & expansions can keep a game going for years & years before they have to release the TRUE sequel.
I hear you on the Kickstarter thing, the range of genres & all that but here's my question.
If PC games are cheaper, look better, sound better, run smoother, & have a better & larger choice of controls...
...then why do consoles exist?
If PC is superior, why do consoles exist?
Why haven't consoles ended up like the 8-track by now?
At the end of the day, the traditional desktop PC is a work device. It comes from the office world.
You sit upright in a stiff computer chair & look at an upright monitor with arms cocked at about 90° to type on the keyboard.
With TV & computer monitor merging (inevitably) over the years this is alleviated somewhat but the PC just doesn't scream FUN.
The laptop is not comfortable for gaming with its flatter set-in buttons that can cause you more mistakes than the desktop keyboards.
Laptop is a portable work device & while it can be more fun than a desktop based on its portability, it's still awkward with that big hot lower half with all the buttons.
The new PC, the tablets, remedies a lot of this. They look more fun, they're less awkward, & they're easier to carry around.
A console-ized PC I like to call them.
They have other problems like being TOO optimum in design which over time won't allow the game design to change.
On the small tablets known as the smartphones, games are compromised by the primary function of smartphones: To make calls.
And the business model of the games on this market is not as stable as it seems to be.
The console exists because it still has a purpose. That's why it survived the 1980s. That's why it survives in the 2010s.
And the one who makes sure the console has a purpose is none other than Nintendo.
I see your PC Gaming Alliance charts on the current year when Nintendo is coming out of a slump (and still Nintendo puts together $7.6 billion in revenues matching Sony's & Microsoft's numbers) but I have shown my work here with Mario Kart Wii alone.
In the earlier post you responded to here I broke down (I should say dismantled) that $20 billion/1 billion people stat as I compared it to Nintendo's 2007 & 2008 fiscal years.
I notice they represent the consoles with Halo 4 & try to juxtapose themselves against that to look big.
How about they put some Wii Sports or even Wii Play against those PC numbers? How about Wii Fit?
How about Mario Kart Wii? How about some New Super Mario Bros. Wii? How about some Nintendogs?
Hell put some Brain Age on that sucker. Some Pokémon Diamond & Pearl. Shoot even put some Super Smash Bros. Brawl on it.
They won't do that 'cause they'll be EMBARRASSED if they do that. Nintendo with one title alone can smash their BEST representative.
But Nintendo has all these monsters all to themselves. Put 'em all together & Nintendo alone can make the PC game world look wannabe.
Wait until the Wii U gets off the rocky road. They'll be back to fiscal 2007 & 2008 in no time. And they will even surpass it!
| Pemalite said: And lastly, Valve doesn't give out any numbers on the amount of games sold or the profits from each game sold (Neither does EA with Origin or Ubisoft with uPlay), hence that 20 billion number is probably incredibly inaccurate.
|
That's what gets me. If it's such a strong platform then why not publicize your power?
Show the world why they would want to bring their games to Steam.
To be fair none of these online marketplaces share their info INCLUDING Nintendo with their DSiWare/WiiWare/eShop situations.
But I would think Valve would do it just to show the strength of the PC games market while showing that Valve rules a big part of that market.
A lot of smoke & mirrors going on here & I don't trust it.
All I can go on is behaviors & the PC guys keep showing me behaviors that they are not really as confident in their platform as they seem.
They just keep coming back to the consoles one way or another.
The mathematical/logical breakdowns I exampled in this post & the one replying to richardhutnik most likely explain why they do.
John Lucas
Words from the Official VGChartz Idiot
WE ARE THE NATION...OF DOMINATION!
