Many of them, I know a lot of them as I game on PC heavily as well.

Then why are there so many sales on Steam? Why are retail sales for PC games so low compared to console games? Why are PC gamers often treated as second rate citizens by third party developers/publishers?

Breath and stop this rant now Samus. You were the one saying not so many days ago "I hope Nintendo doesn´t release any online game never again if all the people is going to do is shit about everything", something like that, well, you are almost the only one doing it now. And I understand your dissapointing but you are being blinded by you own fustration due to your unrealistic expectatives. This is a new IP, CoD is a consolidated FPS with milions of players since day 1 that reuses the same maps all over again and expects to sell +10m everytime, this is not the case, there´s a whole new material here, this is not a rehas of anything, it´s not comparable, this franchise must grow with time, and we are going to see how grows while playing, I think it´s gonna be exciting. The game looks absolutley great and is going to have a very long life, something that I was concerned about, not anymore. 



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1) because people buy full price who are highly interested.  But you can grab less interested parties via sales.  And digital lacks the distribution costs of other platforms so it makes sense that they can do more sales and still make profit.  Many games on sale on steam are games that were already successful, that's why publishers can afford to put them on sale.

2) Because PC doesn't respect right of first purchase anyway (you can't resell, trade in, or return PC games), most people buy digital.  If there are no real benefits to buying retail vs digital, might as well get the perks of digital.

3) Number of reasons for that.  One is that PC games take additional effort to do right and making a good port is key to success.  Another is that PC demographics are harder to guage due to the ubiquity of PCs.  With many companies relying quite heavily on analysts and marketing teams for making decisions (rather than developers), this uncertainty makes them nervous.  Some companies get their knickers in a twist over piracy as well, though there's no real proven loss of revenue there.  Some companies don't like playing by Steam's rules and know success outside Steam is uncertain.  Also, the genres known to do well on PC aren't the same as consoles, which makes companies doing ports uneasy.  Basically, companies are spineless these days. 

Being a new IP is no excuse for lack of content.

When I made that comment I didn't realize they had already unveiled everything that will be there at launch.

Anyway, this game is probably going to flop now which is sad.

Why do we have Black Friday, in the UK we have January sales and so on does that mean we all don't buy anything at full price? No, it's a once in a while treat.

No on buys PC games at retail because platforms like Steam exist this is a silly question to even ask it's like asking why doesn't anyone use floppy disks, have you ever gamed on PC and know the hassle Steam cuts out from retail games, all your back log on one platform and account. No need to enter key codes, look for patches from the developer and all that rubbish to top it off they can't be returned at retail.

You can join my bet if you want.

You make decent points, but at the same time, can you really say that console gamers aren't more likely to buy a game at full price than PC gamers? That's not what I've seen on PC gaming forums and my friends.

I would say the big plus for publishers on consoles is preorders.  Because more console players prefer physical, preorders are easier to drive up.  Also, console players seem to be less informed often times.  PC gamers tend to be more informed and less interested in preordering unless there's a big in game bonus.  And of course, Preorders are always full price.  That's probably the primary source of distortion.  Also, because sales can be quite crazy on steam, people are more willing to buy more games that they are partially interested in.  This also could explain the reason there are many purchases of games on sale.  There are still plenty of early, full price buyers, but more people also buy more games on the side that they are only somewhat interested in.

You do realize you can buy digital games on consoles right? How come retail sales are higher than digital sales then (conso:les)?