shio said:
Slimebeast said:
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).
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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.
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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)
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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.
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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.
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It's not fair to compare figures from 2 different years. And that $10.96 billions includes handheld games sales, not just consoles.
And how do you know the genres have declining sales? if they are declining, then how on earth is PC's global revenue increasing every year? FPS and Strategy games seem to have a big part of the DD pie when you look at DD Stores Top selling games. And it's obvious that the RPG genre on PC is atleast 5 times more successful than 5 years ago. Your problem is that you don't seem admit the fact that there are other viable business for PC games.
Anyway, great PC games can be developed way cheap. Look at Sins of the Solar Empire, which is winning several GOTY awards - the game cost less than $1 million to develop!
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I do admit that PC market as a whole is expanding and doing well. But the viable business is outside of the traditional genres I (and most people on gamings sites) care about. For me it's a concern that the revenue growth is coming from MMORPG subs, MMORPG microtranasctions, advertising and casual games.
The revenue from traditional genres - RTS, FPS, RPG and adventure - isn't doing well because of piracy (and competition from consoles).
About Sins of solar, are u sure about the $1 million? Because I recall reading in PC Gamer that Stardock's dev team is at least 35 guys (split on two parallel projects perhaps, but still) and a game like that must have taken a couple of years to dev.
EDIT: $1 million is only 10 man years in a Western dev studio (and rufly 20-30 man years in a Eastern studio) - on average 10 guys working on a game for just 1 year.
