PC gaming gets all the hot vampire bitches
I don't know if
you've seen this on Kotaku. I hadn't, until I found it on Reddit.
A choice quote:
“Our analysis clearly shows incredible growth in online PC gaming, proof that this industry is far stronger than anyone has reported,” said Stude.
“Today’s consumers shop where they live - online.”
Now we can argue back and forth about all sorts of crap, about whether PC gaming is dead because MS is focusing on the Xbox where it can make royalties out the wazoo, or about how EA focuses on console titles or how Epic thinks PC gaming is dead because PC gamers didn't give a shit about their year old Gears of War port and the version of Unreal Tournament III no one wanted. You know, the one without the goddamned
Assault Mode.
Truth is, PC gaming is doing damn fine with retail accounting for only half of the total sales. So yeah, if you saw PC gaming had only $5 billion dollar profits, you could say that it was a problem (and you'd still be wrong), but combined with the first real solid numbers for digital distribution, like Steam (which Capcom hates for some reason), we see that PC gamers are, once again, leading the trend, and the next big trend is DD.
The last time I bought a retail game was when EB had a sale and I could get the Diablo Battlechest for 50% off, the same price I could get it online, without the wait. Other than that, it's been Steam all the way (until Capcom get their hands out of their ass and make the Capcom Store available to Australians so I can play Bionic Commando Rearmed FFS!).
Can we stop with the "PC gaming is dead, piracy is killing everyone" bullshit now please? PC gaming isn't dead but sales for your game are. Because it's crap.
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Consoles however I prefer for action/platformer/fighting/sports/puzzle & of course the exclusives (by de facto).
Anyway, PC gaming has never been dying - reports have just neglected revenue streams like digital distribution and MMO subscriptions which are now widely used. Combined with everyone crying about piracy and MS persuading previously PC-centric developers to go console only or have a console timed exclusive it can certainly seem that way.
There are other games that don't do well because they have never been popular with PC gamers (DMC4 springs to mind) but jesus, that tosser from CryTek confirmed that despite it costing 22 million to create and being pirated by everyone on the face of the planet, it was profitable.
I don't think Valve have helped; why don't they actually release the sales figures for the games they sell on Steam? At least that way the public would get a better idea of what's shifting.
I think the trend of hate of developers, and even the sort of "ignorance" of reviewers (lets face it, too few reviewers here do something else tha writing on the pc), got to change. The excuse "PC gaming is too expensive" is stupid since the 360 is not that cheap and it also breaks a fucking lot.
I dont hate consoles, I hate the fact that so many call "gamers" are only gaming on one console and calling it a winner and the end of the gaming world as they know it.