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Forums - PC - PC gaming is bigger than ever - and likely bigger than Wii+PS3+360 in 2007

twesterm on 19 August 2008
Mudface said:

If you're going to try that method, don't take the total and divide by 4, that's just silly.  You give a pretty exact amount for the PC to compare a very general for the other four, one of those not being a huge factor, and that just isn't right. 

If you want to try and compare that, find the totals for each indivual console.

 

Why? As I said, the total for all consoles and handhelds looks likely to be around $25 million, therefore there's absolutely no way the PC's in last place. Like I also said, unless the Wii accounts for more than about 40% of that figure, the PC will actually be in first place for revenue. If you can find different figures proving otherwise, then be my guest.

 

The likely part is what bothers me.  I just find it incredibly hard to believe that the PC gaming market is bigger than the console market when I know it isn't.



 

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Mudface on 19 August 2008
guigr said:
Mudface said:
guigr- did you get to see any UK sales figures as well? I know Germany's a massive PC market, especially in strategy games, but I just wondered how we Brits compared.

 

Not much I only saw some totals. From what I saw multiplatform games were selling very poorly compared to console versions and games like Football Manager were selling very well.

You must know that already, sorry.

No bother, I was just interested. The last concrete sales figures I saw were about 4 years ago or so in PC Gamer UK. From memory, they mentioned that the PC accounted for around 30-35% of sales in the UK, slightly behind the PS2, but way ahead of the original XBox and Gamecube. It's a shame that Charttrack and the like are so tight lipped about sales here.

 



Mudface on 19 August 2008
twesterm said:
Mudface said:

If you're going to try that method, don't take the total and divide by 4, that's just silly.  You give a pretty exact amount for the PC to compare a very general for the other four, one of those not being a huge factor, and that just isn't right. 

If you want to try and compare that, find the totals for each indivual console.

 

Why? As I said, the total for all consoles and handhelds looks likely to be around $25 million, therefore there's absolutely no way the PC's in last place. Like I also said, unless the Wii accounts for more than about 40% of that figure, the PC will actually be in first place for revenue. If you can find different figures proving otherwise, then be my guest.

 

The likely part is what bothers me.  I just find it incredibly hard to believe that the PC gaming market is bigger than the console market when I know it isn't.

Well, it's likely a large exaggeration. I've taken the US sales revenue figures given by the NPD for the US market in 2007 and tripled them. If the software figures on here are anywhere near accurate, then it should only be doubled. If we go further and exclude handhelds, that gives a figure of around $13.2 billion for consoles according to the ArsTechnica report I linked to above, suggesting the PC market is around twice as big as any single console.

 



mrstickball on 19 August 2008

Just an FYI: Console sales were $5.12b in 2007 in the US - just for the hardware.

So unless that PC report is just for the US, that number is pretty bad compared to what console/handheld sales are.



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

Mudface on 19 August 2008
mrstickball said:
Just an FYI: Console sales were $5.12b in 2007 in the US - just for the hardware.

So unless that PC report is just for the US, that number is pretty bad compared to what console/handheld sales are.

 

This doesn't include hardware. It's software sales only.



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BenKenobi88 on 19 August 2008
mrstickball said:
Just an FYI: Console sales were $5.12b in 2007 in the US - just for the hardware.

So unless that PC report is just for the US, that number is pretty bad compared to what console/handheld sales are.

Why are you talking about hardware at all?

If you want to talk hardware sales we'll have to include all the Dells, HPs, and customs that have a workable video card...I'm pretty sure PC would win in that department.



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Bet with disolitude: Left4Dead will have a higher Metacritic rating than Project Origin, 3 months after the second game's release.  (hasn't been 3 months but it looks like I won :-p )

woopah on 19 August 2008

mayb its because PCs dont go through generations as quickly



 nintendo fanboy, but the good kind

proud soldier of nintopia

 

shio on 19 August 2008
twesterm said:
Mudface said:
From what I've seen, it looks like the US accounts for around 50% of video game sales revenue. In 2007, that amounted to around $8.6 billion, stripping out the PC revenue reported by NPD at 9.5% of retail sales. So let's really over compensate, and say $25 billion worldwide.

That was mainly split between 4 consoles (including the PS2) and a couple of handhelds. The PC generated $10.7 billion in the same year according to the report. Maybe the Wii accounted for over 40% of the console revenue and took more, but there's no way the PC is in last place.

If you're going to try that method, don't take the total and divide by 4, that's just silly.  You give a pretty exact amount for the PC to compare a very general for the other four, one of those not being a huge factor, and that just isn't right. 

If you want to try and compare that, find the totals for each indivual console.

actually Mudface was being generous, because DFC estimated that the Console Games Revenue was "only" $14 billions in 2007.

The reason I said PC was bigger than the 3 Next-gen consoles combined, was because if you took out the revenue made from PS2 (plus whatever little from GC/Xbox), you'd probably have an amount lower than $10.7 billions.

Mudface said:
guigr said:
Mudface said:
guigr- did you get to see any UK sales figures as well? I know Germany's a massive PC market, especially in strategy games, but I just wondered how we Brits compared.

 

Not much I only saw some totals. From what I saw multiplatform games were selling very poorly compared to console versions and games like Football Manager were selling very well.

You must know that already, sorry.

No bother, I was just interested. The last concrete sales figures I saw were about 4 years ago or so in PC Gamer UK. From memory, they mentioned that the PC accounted for around 30-35% of sales in the UK, slightly behind the PS2, but way ahead of the original XBox and Gamecube. It's a shame that Charttrack and the like are so tight lipped about sales here.

 

If I remember right, PC had 23% of UK's unit sales in 2007, but it was the highest selling platform. Ofcourse, that's not even considering the sales from digital distribution.

twesterm said:
Mudface said:
Why would a game not make money on 400,000 sales? That's $10- 20 million in revenue, and it would all go straight to the publisher/ developer, rather than a console manufacturer taking a cut. Stardock's games have made a mint for the company on those sort of sales figures, and any company making a game with a budget of a few million will make decent cash.

 

Console games do cost more but it still costs a lot of money to make a game.  Not all of that money goes straight to developer, there are a lot of costs to recover.  I my home I have the costs for a last gen game (PC and console) sitting around and I can list those costs assuming I remember to come back to this thread (I'm pretty absent minded a lot of the times, especially after long days).

dude, Sins of a Solar Empire (88% on Metacritic) only cost $1.5 million to develop, and it made a profit in the double digits. And the game is amazing, by the way.

Audiosurf was made by just 1 guy, and it was amazing. I'm sure that it will reach 1 million copies sold someday (if it hasn't already).

There are tons of stories like these from PC developers. PC games are much cheaper to develop AND have a higher profit margin for every copy sold.

 



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mrstickball on 19 August 2008
BenKenobi88 said:
mrstickball said:
Just an FYI: Console sales were $5.12b in 2007 in the US - just for the hardware.

So unless that PC report is just for the US, that number is pretty bad compared to what console/handheld sales are.

Why are you talking about hardware at all?

If you want to talk hardware sales we'll have to include all the Dells, HPs, and customs that have a workable video card...I'm pretty sure PC would win in that department.

....Because unlike a PC, you actually need something other than the software to play the games? I would think that console hardware has a more viable factor in sales than PC hardware does - since the PC is a multi-function device that is rarely just a gaming platform, versus console hardware (and portables) that are for video games alone.

If your talking software alone, VGC reports 245.6 million units of software sold in NA + JP..Less bundles, it's around 200m units sold through. Just using those numbers alone, you get to around $5b in software sales (at $25 a unit)..Pretty close w/o factoring in PAL markets, or anything higher than a $25 a unit average, no?

 

 

 



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

twesterm on 19 August 2008
shio said:
twesterm said:
Mudface said:
From what I've seen, it looks like the US accounts for around 50% of video game sales revenue. In 2007, that amounted to around $8.6 billion, stripping out the PC revenue reported by NPD at 9.5% of retail sales. So let's really over compensate, and say $25 billion worldwide.

That was mainly split between 4 consoles (including the PS2) and a couple of handhelds. The PC generated $10.7 billion in the same year according to the report. Maybe the Wii accounted for over 40% of the console revenue and took more, but there's no way the PC is in last place.

If you're going to try that method, don't take the total and divide by 4, that's just silly.  You give a pretty exact amount for the PC to compare a very general for the other four, one of those not being a huge factor, and that just isn't right. 

If you want to try and compare that, find the totals for each indivual console.

actually Mudface was being generous, because DFC estimated that the Console Games Revenue was "only" $14 billions in 2007.

The reason I said PC was bigger than the 3 Next-gen consoles combined, was because if you took out the revenue made from PS2 (plus whatever little from GC/Xbox), you'd probably have an amount lower than $10.7 billions.

Mudface said:
guigr said:
Mudface said:
guigr- did you get to see any UK sales figures as well? I know Germany's a massive PC market, especially in strategy games, but I just wondered how we Brits compared.

 

Not much I only saw some totals. From what I saw multiplatform games were selling very poorly compared to console versions and games like Football Manager were selling very well.

You must know that already, sorry.

No bother, I was just interested. The last concrete sales figures I saw were about 4 years ago or so in PC Gamer UK. From memory, they mentioned that the PC accounted for around 30-35% of sales in the UK, slightly behind the PS2, but way ahead of the original XBox and Gamecube. It's a shame that Charttrack and the like are so tight lipped about sales here.

 

If I remember right, PC had 23% of UK's unit sales in 2007, but it was the highest selling platform. Ofcourse, that's not even considering the sales from digital distribution.

twesterm said:
Mudface said:
Why would a game not make money on 400,000 sales? That's $10- 20 million in revenue, and it would all go straight to the publisher/ developer, rather than a console manufacturer taking a cut. Stardock's games have made a mint for the company on those sort of sales figures, and any company making a game with a budget of a few million will make decent cash.

 

Console games do cost more but it still costs a lot of money to make a game.  Not all of that money goes straight to developer, there are a lot of costs to recover.  I my home I have the costs for a last gen game (PC and console) sitting around and I can list those costs assuming I remember to come back to this thread (I'm pretty absent minded a lot of the times, especially after long days).

dude, Sins of a Solar Empire (88% on Metacritic) only cost $1.5 million to develop, and it made a profit in the double digits. And the game is amazing, by the way.

Audiosurf was made by just 1 guy, and it was amazing. I'm sure that it will reach 1 million copies sold someday (if it hasn't already).

There are tons of stories like these from PC developers. PC games are much cheaper to develop AND have a higher profit margin for every copy sold.

 

 

You know for every story like that you have a story about something on XBLA, PSN, or WiiWare making money?

Braid
Geometry Wars
Warhawk
Pixeljunk Eden
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People
Penny-Arcade Episode 1
ect.

For some odd reason you're lumping indie games with all PC games and that's just not the case.  Indie games are much cheaper to develop, PC games are not.