First of all,this is just my opinion.You guys can disagree,but please let's talk rationally here ok?!
Ok then....So...
We all know Steam sales and how good this deals are so i don't need to talk about this. 50% off,75% off(or even more).This is great for us gamers/consumers,but...is this being good for developers?
I mean,it seems that some third party devs are "avoiding" PC platform lately. Making console exclusive games,temporary console exclusives games(and even then the ports sometime are shit) or,at least, releasing some weeks after the console version(using some poor excuses for that).
The question is: why?
I thought a lot about this and based on some discussion/topics/threads i came to the conclusion that there is two reasons why this is happening:
First: (and more obvious)
The pirates!!!!
I will not talk about this,everybody knows that PC have high levels of piracy.But still, X360 suffers from the same problem(not as much as PC/PS2,though) and Devs don't avoid that platform.So where is the difference here? well here we go to the second reason:
The Steam sales!!!
I have a lot of friends that are PC gamers first with some console as secondary platform(exclusives).And they all say the same thing:
"I don't need/want to pay $60 for a game anymore!"
This are guys who waited to buy Skyrim for $7.50 on autumn sales last year.
Note: they already played the game before on PC.How? Pirating!!!
Most developer don't talk about this(probably because they don't want to start a shitstorm).But recentily one talked about it:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-16-for-this-developer-steam-sales-screw-your-fans
Some quotes of the article:
"Why Rampant Sales are Bad for Players?"
"culture of rampant sales is a culture of waiting";
"If just half of the players who buy the game during a 50 per cent-off sale would have bought the game at full price if that was their only option, we'd already have a wash," ;
"What fraction of sale-waiting players fall into this category? I suspect way more than half. The picture gets even worse for 75 per cent-off sales."
So why Steam sales are hurting devs? because the majority of PC gamers don't want to pay full price anymore.
When a good,well reviewed, AAA multiplat game is released to consoles,usually sell millions before the first price cut. On other hand,the PC sales seems to increase as long as the price cut get bigger.
Even if PC succeed and sell more copies than consoles in a long run the profit is lower because the price point was lower.
So IN MY OPINION this is why games like GTA 5(for example) were not even announced for PC yet.It's the subtle way that R* found to say "If you want to play our software,pay our price!".
What do you guys think about this?
Sorry for any grammar error.^^
