There are several points to consider.

But the main one is this, many of the games bought on steam are full priced games that are only slightly cheaper then retail. Whereas the gaems people buy on xbla are usually far far cheaper.

Steam also has a very vibrant (probably more vibrant) indie and small budget market aswell. So its does well on both ends on the spectrum whereas xbl sells mainly inexpensive games and most of the expensive games are bought at retail.

I had to rebuy Battlefield 1943 and Battlefield 2, mulitple times,why? because the stupid cerial code.

I have the disc, why do i need a cerial code? Ill never understand that....

whats your point? a lot of the 360 sales were at a discount as well, and once you factor in the added costs of manufacturing, licensing and retailer cut Valve probably made more money off the PC sales.

I'm gonna pull a Shio (with respect to him)  here and say that I think it's a PC culture thing. Console gamers by and large seem more likely to deal with paying for things that should be free. Be it DLC or networked gaming.

The only reason I usually go with the PS3 version of multi-plats is because I was unwilling to renew my XBL subscription when it ended in April. $60 for a game plus a monthly fee just seems like a big F U to the customer.

My point is even while the 360 version cost $10 more, it will outsell the PC version. Valve must do discounts to keep sales on par with the 360 version, or else it would look bad.

I will admit and admire that they are making a shitload of money off of the PC version.

Steam has a 60% market share vs. all other digital platforms.

That includes their products as well as 3rd party titles.

Mass Effect 2 sold ~70,000 copies in a month or two on Steam at $49.99 a pop. Valve got approximately 30%, or over $1 million in revenue from that ONE title alone.

Other games released during that period with decent sales - Alien vs. Predator and Bioshock 2 for example. I'd imagine that such fees are doing them very well in addition to massive sales for L4D and L4D2.

Do you guys realize how much people buy from steam....

It's like PSN they get a cut of the profit....and i buy a crap load personally.

I think what your saying would be true of just about any company other than Valve. They have a huge PC following, but are just another dev to console gamers. WIthout any data to back it up I wouldn't doubt for a moment that any and all Valve titles sell better on PC even at full price. That said full price on PC is obviously less than full price for 360.

I know its anacedotal, but I've only been buying games on steam for the past few months and I've already bought more games on steam then I had on xbla in several years.

but thanks to steam sales and PC game legs it will probably end up selling way better on PC than on the 360.