Aren't you the one resorting to mud slinging? You should already know how pointless the retail market is becoming for PC. PC is in a transitional phase, from physical to digital, and in 2007 only 30% of PC Gaming's revenue was from retail. Now roll up 1 year later, imagine that digital distribution alone has surpassed retail in revenue, and let's not even bother thinking about subscriptions, microtransactions and advertisement revenue.

This is all circa 2008 again - I remember when people started screaming "bloody murder" when PC only had made $910 millions in 2007 on retail (US). Some people kept saying "PC gaming is dieing" and etc... then a few months later NPD makes a press release telling that games subscriptions were $1 billion in 2007 (US), more than PC's retail, and that's not even including revenue from digital distribution, microtransactions and advertising. What a great way it was to shut up some ignorants.

Then came the Horizon Report from PCGA and DFC Intelligence, and shut some more people up. Truth is online revenue should be increasing far, far more than what retail is losing.

Tell me, what PC games tanked recently? Spore definitely didn't because it sold 2 millions in just 3 weeks, a strong 'The Sims' performance (in comparison The Sims 2 reached 1 million in 10 days, and now look where it is) and that's not even taking into consideration it's digital sales.

Expecting a PC game to outsell a console game with the same expectations in just a few months is, pardon my french, ignorance. PC games are not front loaded and never have been. PC games keep selling for ages, and with digital distribution this trend will be even more present because the games will have a permanent shelf space.

If PC was really dieing, then why is that all the third-party big publishers are more and more betting on PC than ever. Hell, EA and Blizzard Activision now are making PC their main focus, ignoring the consoles at a degree.

Online poker was pretty big back then.

To make this quick since shio is up and runing.

Did you read the post where I talked about how consoles have certain genres just because they can't be done all too well on a PC? I'm pretty sure that covered Madden and Rock Band, as well as a bunch of others out there. I'm talking your shooters, role-players, and your strategy games here. Also adventure games, but you can also push a bunch of platformers as adventure too, and it all just gets blurry. The truth is you see those olden games because there haven't really been new games that top them. Why buy a clone or an inferior product? Again, I blame the fact consoles' backwards compatibility for this and the sudden jump of the "quality" of games when a new generation is launched.

So what are you guys discussing here again?

I wished there were more positive PC gaming threads on this website. But then again, I still wished LucasArts and Sierra would develop point&click adventures. Yes I know, like many former PC gamers I live in the past.

Maybe that's one of the main problems of PC gaming: It seems the platform doesn't attract many new gamers anymore and many old gamers who left are not (yet) convinced to return.

Or maybe the reason why PC gaming is always considered dead is that most of the new PC gamers are not playing retail games, but only MMO games (like my nephew and his friends - they play lots of free MMOs to death).

I don't know.

I think PC gaming is a much more complex system than consoles/handhelds when it comes to statistics, in fact we never knew and we never will know how many games are played on PCs.

I'm arguing that PC games just don't sell as much because for many many years now the quality of the games has started to go downhill. The fact that 8 year old games are STILL in top 10 lists is proof enough of that. And it's not like the PC isn't getting games either, we get a lot of games even if they are on another console. Then you have some good games that are decently made, not even that great, and are truly PC only exclusives and they sell pretty damn well. From all that, I'm coming to the point that consoles are just ruining the quality of games.

P.S. I'd kill for a new Incredible Machine. I still have TIM on a floppy laying around somewhere....

Edit @ mrstickball: I just realized Spore is beating out Fable II as well. It only has about 2.34 mil . Also if you are wondering where I'm getting my Spore numbers, if you log on to the sporepedia it has a little ticker:

Total number of users: 2448470

Sales don't matter to me. PC has better games. Plus, when Starcraft 2 is released, you'll see these numbers change FAST. Also consider when prices drop, more people will buy PC's and they need a PC anyway because it has a longer lifecycle and...

Oh crap I sound like a Sony fanboy

JUST WAIT UNTIL...... Sad but at least for the PC it's true.... It seems that if a game is PC exclusive or not really does affect the overall quality. That or at least designed thorougly and only for the PC while having only a port for the consoles.

Remeber UT3 and what a pile of crap that game was....

You want to know why Spore flopped, here's why

So really it did just as good as the console games

Have you read this topic AT ALL?

1. I was addressing the European market for a large part where PC gaming is considered to be much stronger.

2. I didn't say that PC gaming was dying, I merely wanted to discuss the trends in retail that we now have some hard data on.

3. Its the overall market not the one game I found as an example which is important. Rough estimates for market share @ retail in the U.K.:

Wii: 24,636,596 (42%)

Xbox 360: 15,468,907 (27%)

PS3: 8,932,496 (16%)

PC: 8,500,000 (15%)

4. The definition of computer is changing, soon your average desktop tower will be niche and people will be migrating in great numbers to mobile or alternative platforms. Even the idea that flash and online games are strictly in the PC space is false now that a multitude of different devices have now or will soon have browsers of their own.

5. Do you have a link indicating EA/Activision will be focusing on the PC space to the detriment of consoles? I seem to recall inspite of WoW revenue Acti-Blizzard had more console revenue than PC revenue and they would be expected to be on the high end of PC revenue.

6. Do you not concede that losing the retail space would be detrimental to the future of the PC platform? If most people grow up gaming on consoles then why would they suddenly switch to pc gaming at a later date?