Destructoid: And you wonder why developers 'hate' PC gamers.

[QUOTE="Captain__Tripps"][QUOTE="XenogearsMaster"] Alright, then why do PC games almost always do badly in terms of sales compared to consoles?XenogearsMaster

and you know this because...? you just plucked it out of thin air to 'support' your view?

if a prominent PC game developer come and say any similar to a phrase containing "piracy is really hurting our business and our games", the fanboys will come out and whine and ***** about how their game sucks and how horrible the developer is... which obviously beside the point. PC developers should pat this guy on the back because if they voice their point of views, the fanboys will attack...XenogearsMaster

Piracy is of course a problem, but it's far from a fatal one and despite console fanboys' dreams and hopes it's not killing PC gaming. Funny thing is that in most cases the devs who complain the most about piracy are those who already switched to multiplat long time ago, so often it just sounds like an excuse. "We dumbed down our games because we had to, piracy forced us to". Now, it's not always the case, but this is the reaction I get when people like those make such comments

[QUOTE="XenogearsMaster"][QUOTE="Captain__Tripps"] Complete sales/revenue figures for PC seem to be a trade secret , so such a claim can't really be made... Firebird-5

and you know this because...? you just plucked it out of thin air to 'support' your view?

Alright, then why do PC games almost always do badly in terms of sales compared to consoles?XenogearsMaster

[QUOTE="Firebird-5"]

[QUOTE="XenogearsMaster"] I think you're talking about Steam/download sales. They hide their numbers because overall it is not impressive.XenogearsMaster

and you know this because...? you just plucked it out of thin air to 'support' your view?

you don't even think for a second that publishers might not want exact sales numbers available for everyone? it gives competitors more information about the makeup of the market

yup, only PC gamers pirate

nobody pirates on consoles/handhelds

.... lol

[QUOTE="Firebird-5"]

[QUOTE="XenogearsMaster"] I think you're talking about Steam/download sales. They hide their numbers because overall it is not impressive.XenogearsMaster

and you know this because...? you just plucked it out of thin air to 'support' your view?

They don't want to because it gives their competition or potential competition more information on the size of the market. From a publisher perspective there could be several possibilities. One is the relationship between publishers and traditional retail. Retail distribution (and the shelf space that goes with it) is still very important to the success of a game. Publishers may not want to cause friction in their relationship with retailers due to the potential sales they might lose to digital distribution. Also from the publishers perspective in the long run Steam being the dominant distribution service is not beneficial from them. If steam achieves a near monopoly in game distribution they would suddenly have very high leverage over the publishing companies. There is a reason why many large publishers have tried themselves (or a trying) to also establish distribution platforms. All things considered keeping numbers private is more beneficial than releasing them, which gains publishers absolutely nothing. That's true for plenty of industries, not just gaming. Even indie developers give vague answers to sales numbers, which is a lot more than AAA studios do.

The journalist simply was talking towards the pirates and it seems like that was his main target. And also how their actions are ruining the PC game industry which is essentially true. And I agree that there are some over exaggerated points he made but I think overall it's a good article because if a prominent PC game developer come and say any similar to a phrase containing "piracy is really hurting our business and our games", the fanboys will come out and whine and ***** about how their game sucks and how horrible the developer is... which obviously beside the point. PC developers should pat this guy on the back because if they voice their point of views, the fanboys will attack...XenogearsMaster

Even if it is aimed toward pirates, the article overall, is pretty poorly written. He uses little evidence to back up points and mostly just assumes. I believe that developers can think what they want, and if they think that piracy is hurting them, then good for them. That's their own mindset that 1 download is 1 lost sale. However, what would you say if a dev comes out and says the opposite is true of piracy, that they aren't lost sales nor potential customers? I have a feeling, you'd criticize them. You have to look at indicators such as "reasonable price" (the price of a game it would take to turn a pirate into a legitimate consumer), because chances are it'll be lower than companies can afford to charge. Ergo, what the heck is the point in seeing them as a consumer? It goes beyond the author's trivial "if you weren't gonna buy it, then why would you download it?" remark and actually gives an idea of the differentiation between a pirate and a legitimate consumer.

[QUOTE="Darth_DuMas"]

[QUOTE="AdrianWerner"]Actualy they are huge. 20+ mln dollars is pretty much standard for modern big profile game and that's not including marketing costs which often add another 20+ mln

AdrianWerner

But why, the technology isn't new anymore? Devs said the 360 wasn't that difficult to develop with to begin with, were's all the extra money going?

Oh okay, I get your point, so in contrast, what isthe differencein the PC environment that makes development... cheaper, if you will, with regards to team size and other things you mentioned.

Oh okay, I get your point, so in contrast, what isthe differencein the PC environment that makes development... cheaper, if you will, with regards to team size and other things you mentioned.

Darth_DuMas

What's the diffrence? Well, PC typically caters to more niche genre and those are cheap to make. The only exception being MMOs of course. But even when comparing same genres PC development is a lot cheaper. Why? Couple reasons:

-PC games are usualy developed in countries with lower salaries than USA or Canada

-PC games can afford long dev cycles. In console market publishers are constantly racing to next holiday season, so you rarely get more than 2 years dev cycle. To pump put a full blown game in 2 years you need to buy a lot of middleware (engines, renderers, animation sytems, physics systems etc), which are expensive, but speed up the development. Also..you needs tons of people to manage to create all the assets in time. The problem is that the bigger the team is the less efficent it works. So eam of 50 will acomplish more in 4 years than a team of 100 will in 2 years. It's just that console publishers generally don't have time to wait those 4 years, so they use huge teams, because while they might be inefficent, that's the only way to make it in time.

Of course you also need to consider that production values requirements on console market are much higher than on PC and that costs a lot to achieve.

Funny how PC gets blamed for piracy all the time yet console games are always available to download weeks before they are even released in the shops. At least PC pirates have to wait till release day most of the time to download games.

UPDATE: Just had a quick look actually and what do you know! Dragon Age 2 is already available to download and PIRATE for the XBOX360, has the release date for that game even been anounced yet?

Never mind PC, we should wonder why developers/publishers bother with consoles...