ioi said:
ssj12 said:
ioi said:
@ssj12 - I don't agree. When Activision say 14 million copies of COD4:MW they will be referring to retail copies and downloads - they both count as a "sale" for Activision.
Also most publishers are counting dowload sales - it is just that the sales are relatively small in most cases.
When Activision list total sales, top sellers etc it will be inclusive of everything - retail, MMO, dowloads, expansion packs - every way they they have made money basically.
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Then why doesn't publishers that use the PSN, XBLA, WiiWare, and other DD methods display sales information for DD only games? And why does Valve only release information of B&M sales and just tells us about massive digital purchase increases whenever they have sales on their games? Remember Valve stated Half-Life sells over a million digital copies a year still but they refuse to give out any information on exactly how many copies have been purchased on Steam.
I'm thinking something is off it the minds of publishers thinking that if they don't give the public, let alone companies like us, details on DD sales that we will all believe sales are either fine and dandy or piss poor. I do not understand why they do as they do. Shouldn't DD be a separate area on income statements considering even if they only receive $400,000 of revenue from multiple DD platforms that is more than enough to show that the platform should be separated from the individual systems? Unless of course there is a massive loop hole in which development teams are considered substitaries making it so that it is impossible for the public to find out through publisher financial records.
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I'm not sure what you mean by your first sentence - how do you know that sales of digital download software isn't counted within the total sales on most publishers financial reports?
Also you say that Valve stated Half-Life had sold a million digital copies last year - isn't that stating how many were sold on Steam (unless I'm missing something)?
You have to remember how tiny the download market is in general - total annual revenue for XBLA + PSN + WiiWare / VC is around $350m for games total plus another $500m for PC downloads. This compares to over ~$25b for retail software sales.
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The reason I say they don't display proper sales is because most publishers don't discuss digital game sales at all. If they did we would know exactly how many downloads fl0w, World of Goo, Braid, WipeOut HD, Warhawk, Gran Turismo 5: Prologue, and the hundreds of other games have sold.
Valve used a blanket statement. They stated since Steam was launched Half-Life sales over a million a year through Steam. While we get confirmation of over a million sales a year we still don't know how much over a million it is. Last year alone due to the Half-Life anniversary it could have sold 1.5 million copies. That is over a million copies and doesn't go against what Valve stated.
You might be right on revenue gained from DD, but even ~$1b can be considered a great amount of income considering some games might only cost $50k to make versus retail games which can still cost several million to make.
