ELSPA to produce digital download charts

[DirtyP2002]

Foamer said:

They're capable of being used for gaming, That's the point, the potential market is huge and as you've been told repeatedly, the PC games market is about far more than just the one narrow segment of retail copies of high budget games. Within that market, there are going to be people with X1900's still playing the latest releases at low detail, people with GTX 460's who just play casual games and every cominbation you can think of in between. There's massive scope for tapping and exploiting that market and its myriad niches, and high-handedly 'excluding the people playing browser games or social network stuff' would be sheer stupidity on the side of developers and publishers.

Also, why is 322 million by 2013 stupid? There are over 70 million graphics cards sold every year, they're not being bought by businesses. The new Intel chips will have integrated graphics more than powerful enough to run 3D games at 720p. Seems a reasonable estimate to me.

I don't doubt the 322 million number, but they won't be used for gaming and that is what the article implies. These numbers are given by the PC gaming alliance. Not an unbiased source IMO.

PC gaming is MMOs and browser / social network games these days. The rest is VERY small. Get over it.

There is not a 200 million userbase waiting for the hottes new releases on PC.

And they compare Wii, PS2, PS3, Xbox 360 sales with PC sales just to underline their argument of PC being a strong gaming platform. Big parts of these sales are PCs used for business / work or are Netbooks, which aren't meant to play games on. You just can't say "PC has an gaming-userbase of XXX". It just doesn't work. I will buy one PC game this year (Patrician IV) and I can't play this one on my Notebook I bought 3 years ago. My desktop PC can handle the game easily though. My girlfriends PC can't handle the game either. So both of us (two people) are an userbase of 3, but only one can handle the game.

My parents run a business and they have like 10 PCs in their offices that could handle the game, but hell would break lose if someone played a PC game on these machines.

You just can't compare HW-PC-sales with console sales and make any educated conclusion for the gaming business. And if you disagree, there is no point in talking to you any further.