PC game sales > Any console game sales.

[shio]

hunter_alien said:

Squilliam said:

Not the topic of discussion in this link, but the information is valuable nethertheless.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3167296

Highlights:

" DFC Intelligence reported that people spent more money on PC games than on any other platform last year"

"15 million people on steam"

"10 million WOW subscribers"

Looks like the PC is flourishing as a platform. There are no licencing fees and developers that distribute through steam don't have to pay that $10-15 retail markup, nor do they have to have the expense the disk or packaging.

Further proof of this - no link sorry, but discrete GPU sales have increased year on year over last year.

It looks like the PC will have another bumper year, with plenty of growth online.

lol ... you actually forget a couple of facts . First of all a major ammount of those sales come from extremly old titles : Warcraft 3 , WoW , UT04 , HL , Oblivion and thousands of other games that sit just there in the bargain bin and bought just because they are cheap and everyone in the world has a PC . Console software sales die out in max 3-4 years with a few exceptions , while small PC games can sell at a budget price for 6-10 years ( Starcraft anyone ) . The development cost for games like those are extremly low , and even if they sell , major releases dont sell that much , at least not in their first month . And here is where the console market will have allways the upper hand . Major opening weeks , and the fact that developers/publishers can make a profit in matter of days , while they often have to wait months if not years , untill they start making money on a huge PC games .

 

Console games are more front loaded, but they also die much faster than PC games, so both have advantages and disadvantages. Also PC games are slightly cheaper to develop and don't need to pay the extra licensing fees that console devs do.

BKK2 said:
Well, "last gen" I was a PC gamer, so I'm quite pleased to hear that, but I'm still skeptical. Anyway, last year, the major PAL markets took 8396m Euros in software revenue with PC taking 1465m Euros of that, or 17.5%. That is just my aggregated value of Western Europe + Australia, but it shouldn't be much different to what most other estimations are for PAL territory.

That can't be right, Most european countries have PC as the main platform and even still the highest seller in retail. Even UK has PC as the main platform and highest games' seller on retail, and when you check the weekly UK top40 videogames you'll struggle to find a couple of PC games in there. I reckon PC should have 25% retail in PAL, without taking into account Digital distribution.

Rock_on_2008 said:
Console games are more fun in my opinion than PC games. I prefer the controller over the mouse and keyboard.
BTW the average person does not own a state of the art gaming PC with latest Graphics cards with Fast speed dual processor with RAM of 2GB or more. PC's need to be upgraded too regularly to play latest games. The console last up to 5 years with no upgrades required.
I notice VGChartz tracks the console games well but the PC games well they are not tracked at all.

You can play PC games with a controller.

You don't need a state of the art gaming PC to play the latest PC games. PC's now are cheaper than ever, with the average PC being around $800, when a few years ago it was like $1200.

You usually only need to upgrade once. If you're doing it twice then you did something wrong. And you get your money back by buying the PC games, which are much cheaper than home consoles'.

A PC usually lasts 10 years. There are always games with lower requirements coming out each year, such as Audiosurf (86% gamerankings) this year, which you can play it on a 10 year old PC. My brother's PC, bought in 2003, is still used to play the latest games like Stalker and Sam&Max. Also PC's can do much more than play games: I have 3 PC's connected at my home, one of them I bought in 1999 and it's still used for internet.