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Slimebeast on 17 January 2009
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shio said:
Slimebeast said:
shio said:
Slimebeast said:

Only $2 billion of worldwide DD sales for the PC is kinda weak.
If retail amounts to just $700mill in the US, that would mean $2.5-3 billion in worldwide retail ----> $4.5-5 billion.

Add a billion or two for subscriptions and u arrrive at $6.5-7 billion for all PC game sales worldwide.

That's a lot less than the $25 billion or so for consoles. I believe piracy is a big reason for the discrepancy.

No wonder there aren't any PC big budget exclusives made anymore (xcept Blizzard).

 

In 2007 the PC gaming market was estimated to be $10.7 billions by DFC: $3.2bn from retail, $2bn from Digital Distribution, $4.8bn from Online and $800 millions from Advertisement.

Anyway, where did you get the $25bn figure from?

And PC games don't usually have huge budgets because they're cheaper to develop and spend little on advertisement. See Crysis, which only cost $22 millions, and is far, far more technically advanced than any console game.

 

 Yeah but I believe DFC overestimated the revenue from online subs and from advertisement big time.

Anyway, the $25 billion console game rvenue was my own ruff estimate.
(if US accounts for $11 billion, EUrope shuld have rufly $10 billion and Japan $5billion... but I can see now that I mite have low balled the numbers. It could be $12 billion NA, $11 billion Europe and $7 billion Japan/rest = $30 billion)

 

The US Console games revenue was only $6.6 billions in 2007, while the Japanese Games revenue was $3.3 billions (and includes handheld games sales I think). Much lower than you're thinking.

And the Online Revenue of PC includes not only subscriptions but also micro-transactions, which is very popular in Asia.

 

In 2007 yes, but in 2008 console software revenue in the US alone was $11 billion.

Taken from the same news u posted in the OP:

"NPD broke down the year's total $21.33 billion revenue as follows:

 So it's logical to assume NA has $12 billion ($11 billion from the US, $1 bill from Can)
Europe slightly less (judging by VGC SW numbers for example)... ~$11 billion.

And the rest of the world includes not only Japan, but Australia, NZ, Korea, Taiwan, South America as well... should be close to $7 billion.

Anyway, how I see it, the problem with PC sales is that the type of games that I tend to like - FPS, RPG, RTS and adventure have declining sales (and I'm excluding Blizzard). And that market is $3-4 billion retail + $2billion DD (in 2007, but probably more than $2.5 billion in 2008). = just $5-6 billion.

So in my view PC market is still pretty big, but half of the revenue is from MMORPG subs, advertisement and casual games like The Sims (and both are kinda niche genres - for example, no one on VGC gives a rats ass about MMORPGs or The Sims).

So, basically it looks like Crysis is the only high budget PC exclusive game apart from a Blizzard game released every three or four years.