Take a look at http://dev.zr40.nl/steam/games for some indication of Steam sales figures. Bear in mind that this is collated from achievement data scraped from public community profiles, which only account for ~40% of all active accounts, so the actual sales figures will likely be much higher, probably double the numbers here. Unfortunately, figures are only available for games with Steam achievements.

Now, I freely admit this is a big stretch, but if we can extrapolate from peak concurrent users soon after a game has been released to get a ballpark figure for total Steam sales, then it would indicate that both Dragon Age and ME2 have sold extremely well.

This is probably way off target but here's the reasoning-

Torchlight is listed at 170,000 in the first link, it peaked at around 6,000 concurrent users soon after release. Ratio of ~28:1

L4D2 is listed at 680,000 in the first link, it peaked at around 25,000 concurrent users soon after release. Ratio of ~27:1

CoD6 is listed at 1,038,000 and has maintained a peak of around 110,000 concurrent users. Ratio of ~9:1

Mass Effect 2 has so far peaked at 15,500 over its first weekend and Dragon Age peaked at around 18,000 when it got released. Using even the lowest ratio above indicates that both have sold getting on for 150,000 on Steam alone, never mind at retail or through other DD. Using the highest ratios would indicate that they're approaching 500,000 each. Again that's on Steam alone.

Now, the owner of Impulse reckons that Steam accounts for around 70% of total DD sales and from NPD data, retail and DD sales are about equal, although they expected DD to overtake retail this year. For the sake of argument, assume that DD now accounts for 60% of overall sales. Applying these ratios to the lowest estimates above-

ME2:- 15,500 concurrent users => 139,500 sales on Steam (x9 using the CoD 6 ratio) => 199,285 total digital sales (Steam is 70% of the total) => 332,142 overall sales (digital distribution accounts for 60% of overall sales including retail).

Using a similar method with the higher 27:1 figure, gives just under a million as the total. The actual overall figure should therefore be between 332,142 and 1 million. The retail component of this will be between about 133,000 and 400,000.

So no, at retail the PC version has sold nowhere near the 360 version, even using the higher ratio. However, adding in DD the sales are still very healthy and very profitable to EA/ BioWare as there are no licensing fees and the DD version would be expected to realise higher profits as they don't have to ship any physical media.

Of course, you could probably drive a coach and horses through the methodology above, but I think at least it gives an indication of ballpark figures and explains why companies continue to release on the PC- it's simply worth their while and makes them a stack of cash.

As for piracy, checking one of the largest BitTorrent trackers indicates that the XBox 360 pirated version accounts for about 25% of the total number of downloads. Not as high as the PC version of course, but pretty significant all the same.

Oh, and the sales figures on this site are for 360 only. None of GOW, ME 1 or Fable have PC numbers included, they are all at 0.0 m-

Mass Effect.

Fable.

GoW.

i want to play this game but first i have to finish the first one.

That 5 euro digital sale might be giving them almost as much cash as around 20 euro retail sale for x360 version, and infinitly more then second hand sale of ME1 X360 through ebay.

And that 5 euro sale is just a bonus a money they wouldn't see normally as it either comes from people who previously had no intention of buying those games at retail prices or who pirated it and now had a chance to "legalize" themselves.

Now just becouse sales of pc games in US are crap it doesn't mean they are crap everywhere.

Modern Warfare 2 PC was reported by NPD IIRC at 170k first week or first month. In Poland it sold 23k copies on PC first day, 3,8k on PS3 and 2,5k on X360.

And of course EA has it's own download sales service - which one gives them more money $50 digital sale through their own store or $60 sales through retail from x360 version after all the profit margins for stores, distributors, microsoft ?

Xbox 360 blockbuster exclusives are always perform crazy sales numbers. I'm not surprised at all. Even with the major piracy issues Microsoft always out performs in software sales and sets new heights in sales numbers! Mass Effect 2 is the best RPG game iv ever played and seen! I hate RPG games but after playing this, i'm hooked!

Mass Effect 2 is not an exclusive and is published by EA, not Microsoft.

Than why bother with putting up both versions as seperate entities in the database? It makes no sense whatsoever. Also, how on Earth are we tracking PC sales figures when the vast majority of tracking firms have a tough enough job already with a much larger data set. And it's even more of a problem to break it down on a region to region basis.

And can you link where Bioware have announced total ME1 sales figures for PC and 360? All I can find is a 2 million figure for 360 sales.

Thanks for the info. An interesting estimation. So PC could account for anywhere between 330K-1M sales of ME2, which even at the low end is a significant amount of revenue comming in.

Bickering aside, this means that ME2 will outsell ME1 very soon. It nearly shipped in a week what ME1 sold lifetime. Combine that with Ioi having ME2's first week sales being 67% of ME1's lifetime sales and this means good things for Bioware. EA has to been happy. Which means they'll continue to leave Bioware alone to do what they want. That is good for us gamers.

I have a feeling that is wrong.. I believe it sold those extra and got a small boost when it became a platinum hit. The PC version sold like shit though, you have that correct, and it was pirated alot. Mostly just PC gamers who felt they were entitled to a free game, lol.

I wish I could find an article about how bad it sold, but it was a late port so EA must not have cared that much. No figures anouncements or anything. While ME1 for xbox has alot of sales info for it. It's called google, people. Sometimes it's not what you fgind, but what you can't find.

We have no way of knowing this though. It's been available for digital download and had many sales on Steam etc. Also PC games aren't very front heavy so it may have sold better than the 360 version for a few of the later weeks.

One thing we can check and know for sure, it was pirated a lot, lol. I don't think the DRM helped much either. The sequel doen't have the annoying DRM of the original luckily.