Weekly PC Digital Charts - Mass Effect 2 sales go beyond

[Masakari]

Japanese developers putting games on PC just makes sense. In fact, it's ridiculous that they basically ignored it for ages. But that is due to trying to reach the western market more, and also because the 360 is so similar to PC. Those titles sell a fraction of what they sell on 360/PS3, at least on retail.

My point wasn't that PC gaming is dying or some like that, but rather that there are strong PC titles and companies, but gaming as a whole has moved to console in a big way, you can easily see that in traditional PC developers who have moved to attack the console space.

VGChartz doesn't track PC numbers, but you can see from sales tables that PC ports of multiplats are much lower in the pecking order. Alot of them are also released much later, akin to the "PS3 release of former 360 exclusives", and you know how badly some of those sell.

You also have to take into account that X number of units sold isn't an accurate reflection of a game's success, PC games are discounted much more heavily than consoles titles, Steam does insane sales (like Mass Effect for $3 last december), etc, overall, even if ME1 had 2 million on both platforms, the 360 version would have been much more profitable. PC also has heavy piracy issues, as well as configuration issues, and the fact a lot of people want to play in their big screen living room TV, not on their desk in front of a monitor. Heck, you even see PC games nowadays that have "less features" than they used to because they are "consolized".

There's lots of reasons for PC nowadays selling less copies, and only one that can be said for the reverse - that the PC userbase is huge. Well, if that translated into sales, consoles wouldn't be as big as they are now.

I consider myself a hardcore PC gamer first and foremost, but I have no illusions about the current state of the market. Out of all my friends, i'm the only one that still buys retail PC titles or even Steam titles, all my friends pirate PC games unless it's an MMO, and have bought consoles because they can't afford a good gaming rig.