dying, its irrelevant to me. devs are starting to go console aswell. HailCaesarHail
EA: PC becoming biggest platform, digital distribution profits doubled this year
EA has been making a killing in the PC space (unlike its performance with music-based games), the company revealed during its recent financial earnings report. Shacknews reports that EA has seen profits from digital distribution on the PC platform double over last year to $80 million, whereas the company's digital distribution revenue on the whole has generated $400 million for the company this fiscal year.
CFO Eric Brown says EA's online business is growing at a phenomenal rate, "as much as 60% year over year." As such, EA says "the PC is becoming the largest gaming platform in the world," prompting the company to focus accordingly.
Gaming PCs outsell all consoles combined twice over
The PC Gaming Alliance has announced some of the results of a giant research project which claims that more gaming-capable PCs were sold in 2009 than all consoles on the market (not including handhelds).
Indeed, PCs outsold home consoles at a ratio larger than 2-to-1 last year, with revenues totaling $54.6 billion. That brings their total number to 212.6 million worldwide. PCGA expects those numbers to reach $61.3 billion and 322 million in the next 5 years. For comparison's sake, there are currently 73 million Wiis, 41.7 million Xbox 360s, and 36.3 million PlayStation 3s out there.
What is a gaming-capable PC? According to them, they're the ones with a discrete graphics card, i.e. not netbooks or others with integrated GPUs. Here's most of the press release:
SAN RAMON, Calif. – August 2, 2010 – The PC Gaming Alliance (PCGA), a nonprofit corporation dedicated to driving the worldwide growth of PC gaming, today unveiled its Horizons Hardware research report, an exclusive research study encompassing major aspects of the PC gaming hardware industry worldwide. Among the key findings: Annual shipment volumes for the PC Gaming hardware market in 2009 were over two times larger than the combined Wii™, PlayStation® 2, PlayStation® 3 and Xbox 360® console units shipped in the same period. This trend for the PC Gaming hardware market to outpace all console shipments combined is expected to continue through the forecasted period of the research. In addition, revenues from consumer PCs capable of gaming that shipped with a discrete GPU (excludes Netbooks and integrated graphics-based PCs) totaled approximately $54.6 billion in 2009 and are forecasted to grow to $61.3 billion by 2014. These revenue figures are based on an estimated 61.5 million PCs (Desktop and Laptops) shipped in 2009 that can largely be associated with PC gaming as a key usage scenario.
The report also estimates the worldwide number of consumers gaming with discrete graphics solutions on their PCs (Desktop and Notebooks) to be 212.6 million for 2009 and expects this to grow to about 322 million by 2014. The report also includes detailed breakouts of various PC configurations (e.g. Basic, Mass Market, etc), by form factor and by geographic territory.
The Asia Pacific region continues to be the world's largest hardware gaming market with approximately 33% market share followed by Western Europe and the United States at 24% and 22% respectively. The rest of the world follows with 21.5%. Growth is expected to continue through 2014, largely driven by the Asia Pacific region.
"One of the biggest trends I'm seeing in the 2009 Horizon's hardware report indicates a strong demand for more capable mobile based systems by PC Gamers." said Matt Ployhar PCGA Research Committee Chairman. "PC Gamers are playing a central role in fueling healthier margins, and driving innovation in this space worldwide".
"PC gaming is the highest profile and most mature example of a new era of computing systems based on usage," said Richard Shim, research manager at IDC covering PCs. "These new usage-based systems are hardware configurations optimized for an improved user experience. Consumers are often willing to pay more for such an experience. In the case of gaming PCs, up to 25% more as compared to a mainstream system."
Microsoft to keep staggering PC and Xbox 360 releases
Microsoft Game Studios has said it will keep staggering PC and Xbox 360 releases so that desktop users have a reason to keep buying console titles.
Which is not to say the PC masterplan is any less important, argued MGS Europe business boss Peter Zetterberg - but given the platform choice in somewhere like Germany, then Xbox 360 sales would fall by the roadside.
"I would say that 90 per cent of the games that are pitched to us are on console. We're strongly perceived as a console publisher because we're the first-party publisher even though the Windows operating system is equally important to us," Zetterberg told GamesIndustry.biz.
"But in Germany for example, we want more gamers to buy our Xbox 360. If we launch a game that is on 360 and PC simultaneously, we basically shoot ourselves in the foot by allowing the German market to choose to play the PC version - because they are more likely to buy that than spend their money on the Xbox 360.
"If we launched a Halo game on PC and 360 in Germany simultaneously, 80 per cent of sales would be on the PC," he added.
Zetterberg also hinted that the future lies not just in projects with huge budgets, but in titles based around a free-to-play or browser-based model.
"We need to not only do the big budget, big production value, global titles like Gears of War, but we also need to go with titles like World of Goo or Crayon Physics. Those are games that are made with an almost anarchistic approach to a business model," said Zetterberg.
PCs Played More Than Any Console, Reports NPD
PCs are used for gaming more than any console and PlayStation 3 owners are more likely to have multiple consoles, according to the results of the Games Segmentation 2008 report from sales tracking and research firm The NPD Group.
In addition to stating that PlayStation 3 owners are most likely to have other "next-generation" consoles than Wii and Xbox 360 owners, NPD claimed that only 10% of PS2 owners have a PS3. In the realm of portables, 45% of PSP owners have a Nintendo DS, but only 21% of DS owners have a PSP.
Despite the broad declarations, NPD did not provide specific figures for console and PC playtime. Likewise, an exact breakdown showing the ownership patterns of those that have multiple "next-generation" consoles was absent from the release.
BioWare Says the PC is "Made For Games"
BioWare designer Daniel Erickson says the PC is "made for games" and that despite the never-ending predictions of its imminent demise, it's the "natural" platform for BioWare's RPGs.
"There was not a question when we started Old Republic - or any of our games, for that matter - [what the lead format would be]," he said. "There's a reason the lead SKU for Dragon Age was [PC] as well. When we're developing an RPG, it's a natural place to be."
PC Most Popular Format For Euro Gamers
Who's the most popular gaming format, eh? Who is? Who is? Is it you? Is it? Awwwww, yes, you ARE the most popular gaming format! You big, loveable thing you…
Oh, I'm sorry, you've caught me having a chat with my PC. Because my beautiful little boy is the most popular kid in school. According to an MCV report, as I've been saying for the last four hundred million years, the PC is by far the most popular means of playing games in the UK.
ELSPA and ISFE (Interactive Software Federation of Europe) have conducted a survey of British gamers that finds 33% of all sentient gaming humans are playing their chosen distractions on the big grey box.
Valve: Don't Believe The US Press, PC Gaming Is Alive And Well
in an interview with Good Game that slipped under the radar, Valve's business manager, Jason Holtman, said all the talk about PC gaming dieing because of some super-game console comes from "North America press looking at North American reports". "And North America retail reports don't have Europe in them, and they don't have online PCs on them, they don't have micro-transactions PCs in it. Steam has 20 million users right now and you've got figures like the Cartner Group tells us there's 260 million online PC gamers in the world
Valve: PC Gaming Alive and Well, But Developers Off Their Game
Valve's marketing vice president and frequent spokesman, Doug Lombardi, laughed off the idea that PC gaming is dying, but said other developers need to get with the program.
"I mean, I think, we sort of laugh at it," Lombardi said of increasingly high-pitched concerns over the viability of PC gaming in an interview with Shacknews.com
"Because we've been wildly successful - we're very fortunate, you know. Our games have all done really, really well, Steam has taken off and become this whole other business for us, Valve has never been in better shape - and yet everybody is talking about how in the PC world, the sky is falling," said Lombardi.
Lombardi pointed out that the sales data often cited to buttress claims of a dying PC industry do not include MMOG subscribers, Steam users, other customers of digital download services, or even other countries.
"NPD, god love 'em, they release a U.S. retail sales report, and people take that and say that's the world picture. And it's just not true...if people were looking at WoW's subscriptions alone and factoring it in, looking at Steam sales and factoring it in...Just look at what Popcap's doing - Bejeweled and Peggle and all this stuff - they're not in that NPD data."
Lombardi also said part of the brouhaha was effective PR by console makers and the absence of anything similar on the PC front.
"It is absolutely a perception problem. I mean one of the things that happens is - Microsoft has an army of PR people that work for Microsoft. They have at least two agencies that are additional armies. Nintendo I'm not as familiar with their PR outline, but I'm sure it's similar. Sony is similar. The PC has nobody," he said.
At the same time, Lombardi blasted developers for not taking accurate stock of what computers gamers have, and for aiming only at the high-end. He contrasted this with his own company, which conducts surveys twice a year to gauge the horsepower of gamers' computers.
"You know, it's hard to be able to have games that scale, and to write performance on the high end, and write performance on the bottom end, but you know, winning in any industry means some hard work, and there's a certain level of hard work that developers have to take responsibility for," he observed.
BioWare: PC gaming is in fine health
More PC players and more money being generated "than ever before"
The CEO of BioWare has told us that, contrary to numerous 'PC gaming is dying' claims, the sector's in fine health on a number of fronts.
I think there are more people playing PC games and more dollars being spent on the PC space than ever before, but it's taking a different form," Ray Muzyka said in a recent interview.
Study: PC Software Sales Up 3% To $13.1 Billion In 2009
The PC Gaming Alliance (PCGA), a non-profit PC gaming advocacy group, revealed a new research study indicating that PC gaming software revenues worldwide reached $13.1 billion in 2009, a 3 percent increase over the previous year.
That increase came in spite of decreased retail boxed sales for PC games, which suffered the "biggest downturn" out of all the sales categories PCGA tracked and now accounts for less than 20 percent of total software revenue for the year.
Digital distribution growth also largely offset losses in other PC gaming software categories. In its surveys of PC gamers in North America and Europe, the report found that 70 percent of respondents have purchased a full game online.
"The most notable trend in recent years has been the movement to digital distribution and payment for subscriptions, and the growing popularity with consumers of online games as a service," says PCGA president and Intel director Randy Stude.
Tales of PC gaming's death have been greatly exaggerated
The "death of PC gaming" has become reliable column and blog fodder for tech journalists. Perhaps it stems from lingering bitterness over time wasted editing Warcraft batch files in DOS 6.0. Regardless, you shouldn't take the idea seriously.
To prove it, we won't even lean on that most tempting pillar of PC gaming, the 12 million-strong World of Warcraft monthly subscription-paying player base. Instead we'll point to a report by Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Kieron Gillen from Britain's Develop 09 conference, specifically from a presentation on digital distribution.
Chart Track also estimated that digital distribution makes up 22 percent of the $13 billion global PC market, which boils down to $2.86 billion. If global digital distribution sales follow the same growth pattern that Chart Track projects for Steam for 2009, worldwide digital game sales will climb by $2.23 billion. That brings the global digital from from $2.86 billion in 2008 to almost $5.1 billion for 2009.
Now let's look at retail, in this case we'll use NPD's $701 million in U.S retail sales. Globally, Chart Track says PC retail sales represent 24 percent of the $13 billion pie, or $3.12 billion. That means NPD's $701 million figure represents approximately 23 percent of the worldwide retail market in 2008.
To recap our estimates for 2009:
* Global retail PC game sales: $2.37 billion (23% decrease)
* Global digital PC game sales: $5.09 billion (78% increase)
* Global in-game PC ad sales: $1.32 billion (26.8% increase)
* Global subscription and microtransactions: >$5.98 billion (unknown % increase)
* Total 2009 global PC game sales: $14.76 billion-plus (minimum 13.5% increase)
Blizzard: PC gaming is not dying out, BlizzCon proves it
In an interview with Gamasutra, Kevin Martens, Blizzard Lead Content Designer, revealed his opinion on the "PC gaming is dead" mentality that has been of much discussion lately. Martens feels that Blizzard counteracts this best by keeping system requirements low while making sure its games are still marketable.
"The death knell of PC has risen and fallen over the years, and we keep releasing PC games, and they keep doing incredibly well," said Martens. "I think that there is a market out there for PC games. The latest consoles are great; it's easy to get the game running and all that. They're useful.
"But everyone has a PC, and we try to keep our system requirements down as low as possible. That's one of the ways that we can make sure to appeal to enough people. Some of the really cutting edge games that come out for PC require a brand new video card and probably more RAM at least, if not a new CPU as well. That's really rare with Blizzard games. I think that's one of the reasons we still keep doing well.
"The best evidence that the PC market is not actually dying is the 20,000 people that showed up this year at Blizzcon, and the fact that those tickets sold out in one minute flat.
"That doesn't seem to me, that it's really good evidence, of a platform with a problem."
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