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greenmedic88 on 31 January 2010
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daggy said:
greenmedic88 said:
But PC sales don't seem to be bringing publishers the ROI they're looking for on major budget releases or there wouldn't be the shift in emphasis we've been seeing to console gaming. When this comes from long standing traditional PC game developers, the message should be loud and clear.

Personal preferences aside regarding platforms, it's hard to overlook the comparative numbers between PC and console game sales in all but the most hand picked examples.

Long term sales on PC games may not be the factor some are making it out to be in terms of generating revenue as PC games are virtually always discounted sooner and often to clearance level prices. Love the Steam weekend and holiday deals, but can't help but wonder how much purchases on these games are actually benefiting publishers. Not hurting them since there's no inventory being processed, but when you buy a game like Mass Effect for $5, it's hard to think you're giving Bioware your money.

It doesn't really matter, because it's a constant revenue string that almost never ends. Starcraft 1 sold only 1.5 millions in it's first year... over 11 millions right now. And with digital distribution, games give higher profit and need less costs.

Why do you think that big publishers like EA, Square Enix, Capcom, Konami, etc... are more and more giving support to the PC platform?

Lack of hard inventory is why DD services can offer big sales on older titles as I pointed out; units are not sold at a loss as opposed to physicial inventory clearing either through distributors on discontinued games, or at retailers themselves in the interest of clearing shelf space of slow moving product.

DD is ideal from the standpoint of keeping old, out of print titles available to consumers through legit means. Of course this torpedos one of the few semi-legitimate reasons given for pirating games: they're out of print and I couldn't buy them even if I wanted to.

But don't think that having a game rack up 30-60k sales at sub $10 special weekend sale prices is some sort of revenue boon that keeps publishers and developers in the black. Those revenues are more like royalties received for back log songs or CDs as opposed to the profit publishers receive from new game sales at $50, or whatever the initial MSRP happens to be.

Try not to interpret major publishers having their products available to the PC market as some sort of indicator that's where the emphasis within the game industry is heading. As it's been pointed out often when discussing the sense (or lack there of) of platform exclusive titles, it will always make more sense for a publisher to make their games available for as many viable platforms as possible for a better end ROI. When you see Capcom and Konami and SE releasing PC ports month after console release, no one can interpret that as anything more than an effort to improve the bottom line on revenue generated by a given title. Unless development is being subsidized by the platform company, whether it be MS, SCE or whoever, there's no good financial reason to keep a game exclusive to one platform as it only limits your overall market.