You're still talking pure revenue rather than profit figures. Most of those were cheap ports with a much greater profit margin, especially those available for digital download. After MW2 released Activision (not including Blizzard) were only just in the black. HD console games may generate masses of revenue but that obviously isn't translating into profit very well meaning costs of developing and marketing these HD console games is huge.

If you take into account other 3rd-party publishers the situation is mostly worse. Revenue on its own means sod all.

It's 70% of profit, not revenue-

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29052/Kotick_70_Of_Activision_Operating_Profit_Comes_From_NonConsoleBased_Games.php

Revenue on its own means sod all.

Exactly.

like i said, that is with the MMOs aka WoW.

To quote myself:

It might be that the MMORPG part makes more profit than consoles, but it is no big news that WoW is big. The rest of the PC business is pretty small as you can see at the numbers above. That is what I am saying for some time now.

And the profit with normal PC games is significantly smaller than on consoles.

Ok so not only are we "not counting" MMO subscriptions, we are going on a financial report of one quarter of the year fresh from the release of MW2.

So, when Activision releases a version of its biggest IP in the midst of not releasing anything on PC for a good long while, that's a fair argument? You've gotta be kidding me.

Aren't you one of those people I see in threads about MS profitability, bringing up Live subscriptions in an effort to show whether ps3 or 360 is more profitable?

So to recap, you assert that-

1) Besides MMO's, PC games account for a tiny amount of revenue and

2) Console games are significantly more profitable than PC games

Your 'evidence' for the first point appears to be one financial report from one company, said company not only having a very lacklustre PC line-up, but also the biggest grossing MMO (and possibly) game in the world. Bit skewed, no? If I had Valve's sales and Steam income figures, or Paradox's financial report, the opposite conclusion could easily be made and would have just as much validity as yours.

For the second point, you've again gone for a single financial report, but this time, you've conveniently ignored the MMO and despite there being no break down at all of profitability across the various platforms, you've decided that console games are more profitable. For all we know, the 30% of profit that comes from consoles might be split equally between all 3, the PC retail might account for 20% and the WoW subs for 50% of the overall profit. The PC might only account for 3% of profit, but make more money per unit sold. Hell, PC retail might even be making a loss- the point is you don't know because you don't have any profit breakdown figures to back up your assertion.

As seems typical of PC sales discussions, you've fallen into the usual trap of cherry-picking what actually counts towards revenue (there's a lot more to gaming than so called 'core' retail boxed games) and trying to compare the PC to all consoles combined, instead of each one individually. Even worse, you're using the relative lack of data available to extrapolate wildly and come to silly conclusions.

Given that the PC gets a good range of multi-platform games from all the major publishers, has a good range of exclusives, a thriving Indy scene, and a DD platform with 25 million users, I'd say the profits are there to be made. If they weren't no one would be making PC games any more. The only area it's lacking is in really big budget exclusives,  but equally, apart from some first party MS and Sony titles, the HD consoles aren't getting those sort of exclusives any more either, that's because with rising development costs, they're far too risky and no longer financially viable on any single platform.

Console Port

Coonsole port

Utter crap,

shovelware,

mediocre shooter, with elements of console shooters on the PC

None of these are "normal PC games." All of them are either ports, or pispoort games, period. Better luck next time though. I call those games an insult to PC gaming and the fact that there are idiots out there who bought those just makes me sad. Their PC revenue from those should have been 0.

Good thing their worthwhile PC games made money, more money than the PS3 and 360 combined. If I remember correctly they were barely, just barely, in the black, good thing the PC was there to save their sorry pathetic asses from going in the red like every other company out there. In fact the PC has saved many companies from going in the red, because it's so ridiculously profitable when good games are released.

This is the annual report my friend.

And I just said that the PC gaming business is much smaller than the console business, except the MMOs. That is why I said PC gaming is about facebook games and MMOs.

I know wow is big and VERY profitable. But besides MMOs, there is not much left.

"regular" games usually sell better on consoles, even at a higher pricepoint. Check Modern Warfare 2 (included in these numbers) or Mafia II (latest VGC numbers).

And I thought SC II would move more units than it did.

Sou you are saying a comparison between the same games is unfair?

Just tell me which games you want to compare?

EA games? 19% on PC
UbiSoft? 17% of the sales on PC

Also I can't think of a big PC release from either EA, nor Ubisoft. They all released crappy games for the PC. It's like saying "Yeah, check out how pisspoor Nintendo does on the 360 and the PS3!" Well no fucking shit sherlock.

Pull up Valve and Blizzard. I'm curious about THQ with the DoW2 release and SEGA with the Empire Total War release.

Furthermore, didn't BioWare come out and say that Dragon Age: Origins did better on the PC than the consoles?

Revenue figures and trying to compare the PC individually to combined console platforms again. EA's breakdown is about 15-20% for each of the PS3, X360, Wii and PC, yet I don't see threads like this about any of the individual consoles.

The PC's share of Ubisoft revenue over the last year was actually just 8%. Ubisoft lost $73 million on $1 billion revenue. Spending massive amounts on development and marketing for the HD consoles, keeping your fingers crossed for enormous sales and still making a loss despite selling millions of copies of games like Assassin's Creed 2, Splinter Cell and Just Dance hardly looks like a sustainable business model to me.