By John Walker on January 16th, 2009 at 1:14 pm.
A number you might see a lot over the next few days is 14%. This is, according to the US games sales data compilers NPD, the percentage drop in PC game sales in 2008 from 2007, the market pulling in $701m. As reported by GameDaily, the figure suggests the PC has fallen in sharp contrast to the soaring figures for console sales. But of course this number doesn’t mean an enormous amount – it does not include so much of the PC market, including digital downloads, micro-payments or subscriptions. Which is a big deal.
As GameDaily mentions, NPD has recently started recording data that will hopefully give a better impression of the reality of PC game sales, and we might see the first of that as early as next week. And, as always, NPD is North America only, which is never the whole story.
But in the meantime, be ready for this 14% figure, that could be used as a weapon by those who want to imply the fall of PC gaming for many and various reasons. From the evils of the Big P to claims that the future’s all about consoles, it’s a number that meets the agenda of many. But it’s a number that, if anything, is likely to demonstrate the evolving nature of PC sales. Clearly we don’t know, and they could be falling, but this isn’t the data to show it.
It’ll be interesting to see how NPD calculates figures for digital transactions. Especially when companies like Valve are so peculiarly quiet about their numbers, and so much of the money changing hands for PC gaming is going directly into the pockets of independent developers, and not giganto-publishers who might need to boast such figures.
It certainly makes for interesting times. How interesting we’ll hopefully find out soon, as more relevant data becomes available. At the moment, measuring PC game sales by the number of boxes shifting from stores is like announcing a drop in album sales by the amount of vinyl being sold.
16/01/2009 at 13:23 James G says:
Bah! If you exclude digital downloads you exclude a huge proportion of my PC purchases over then past year, and, surprise surprise, digital download sales are increasing.
Also, I’m not sure US figures are a decent representation of the whole market, as if I understand it correctly, the PC market is larger in Europe (Germany in particular.)
16/01/2009 at 13:24 LewieP says:
PIRACY
16/01/2009 at 13:26 roBurky says:
I believe that 2008 has been the year that digital download has really taken off. I bought more games this year than ever before, and almost all by download. These kind of figures are going to be utterly meaningless for the PC from here on out.
16/01/2009 at 13:27 harvb says:
Oh goodness, you can see it coming: “PC gaming is dead!!!1″. Let’s hope the idiots don’t believe it.
16/01/2009 at 13:30 Nimic says:
I’ve bought quite a lot of games the last two years, and nearly all of them have been digitally. And at least two of those which haven’t have included subscriptions (WoW and AoC, for a while), which the 14% also leaves out.
16/01/2009 at 13:33 Seniath says:
To hell with the high street; they’re all going down the crapper anyway.
16/01/2009 at 13:39 Bobsy says:
I’m going to go all Debbie’s Advocado again and suggest that we’re being a bit too quick to get defensive when it comes to sales figures. What would we do if they re-released the figures to include digital downloads and they’d barely shifted?
16/01/2009 at 13:49 Chris Evans says:
@Bobsy – if that was the case, well at least then there is some concrete evidence of falling PC sales. Not just a figures which ignores what is becoming a massive part of the PC games market.
I wonder though, to what extent are small indie developers such as those behind World of Goo, Crayon Physics and such like going to be represented when the NPD publishes figures for digital transactions. Sales of these games through the big portals such as Steam/GamersGate etc. will be counted (I assume) but what about direct sales from their own sites? It is something that has to be questioned.
GOG.com is another thing, this is a great new site allowing people to get their hands on older games, will that be counted?
That 14% does not show the whole picture, yet due to the fragmented nature of the PC market, will we ever see the whole picture? This is something that the PCGA really should be responding to, will they?
16/01/2009 at 13:50 danielcardigan says:
“Especially when companies like Valve are so peculiarly quiet about their numbers, and so much of the money changing hands for PC gaming is going directly into the pockets of independent developers, and not giganto-publishers who might need to boast such figures.”
So much of the money? A relatively tiny amount goes to independent developers more like.
Steam only have to say how much their sales have increased by as a percentage. They don’t have to give dollar amounts.
16/01/2009 at 13:58 Ado says:
What a nonsense. How can you not include digital downloads?? That’s like recording sales of beer without including Pubs. I bought at least 50% of my games digitally this year (mostly off Steam), if this is true of us all then PC sales are going through the roof…
Me thinks this report was just dreamt up this way to be more ammo for the console companies that want to line there pockets by charing devs for releasing games on there oh so precious formats.
Just give us Fable and GTA games on the same release dates and you can have all of that other over blown rubbish to your selves…
16/01/2009 at 13:59 Down Rodeo says:
Bobsy: I’m not sure but I find it very unlikely. If I am an average PC Gamer then my digital downloads easily outstripped my box purchases (roughly 10:1, pricewise).
16/01/2009 at 14:04 Dr. Quincy says:
I don’t think I bought a boxed PC game all year.
16/01/2009 at 14:04 Down Rodeo says:
No, that’s wrong. If I am an average PC Gamer then digital downloads are soaring as I did purchase far more as a download. Yay for logic!
16/01/2009 at 14:11 cliffski says:
Not always. When you buy direct, the dev gets a huge chunk of the money. And some on-line sellers like stardock are pretty generous with the cut the developer gets.
16/01/2009 at 14:12 phuzz says:
I’ve just been thinking about it, and my first thought was that I buy most games through Steam, but a look at my order confirmations reveals I only bought three games through steam last year, and four or so through retail. Lower prices for boxed copies helped with that though, I even bought L4D on CD as it was about £7 cheaper.
That’s still under-representing the amount I spent on digital downloads by about half though.
16/01/2009 at 14:13 Lilliput King says:
It wasn’t my understanding that steam/valve are particularly generous when it comes to the money going to developers of indie games on steam.
Though its only fair of me to also mention I havent a clue where that understanding comes from.
In any case, if proper retail sales are down then its really no surprise.
The GAME in guildford seems to have been actively shrinking its PC games section down to a select few games over the past year, to the point that its genuinely not worth visiting for games anymore. Too expensive and not enough of a selection.
If the online purchases offer a better service for less, then its no surprise retail sales are falling. It really says nothing about the state of the games industry whatsoever.
But we all knew that anyway.
16/01/2009 at 14:17 Heliocentric says:
My digital to retail ratio is about 1 to 3. But thats including ds and second hand games. New pc games only? Last year i got l4d retail as the only full price(£20) game i think. But retail can be rabidly cheaper than steam. But at those prices i don’t consider it full price(i get lots of games for £10 or less). Still i have enough crates of games for an fps to fully decorate its corridors. And no matter how long my steam games list gets retail most of my titles. But digital gets more new games purchases.
16/01/2009 at 14:19 cyrenic says:
I’m pretty sure more than 14% of PC game sales are digital, now.
16/01/2009 at 14:21 Markoff Chaney says:
PC Gaming (as supported by a long term quarter of a century love affair with shrink wrapped boxes of colorfully painted cardboard sometimes containing awesome collectibles, back story, useful, illustrated manuals and (back in the day) various and sundry forms of wheels and decoder rings on non copy machine reproducible colored paper as a primary method of DRM which) is DEAD!
Long Live (As supported by a more intelligent distribution methodology which is inherently more difficult to measure amounts distributed from consumers to a large number of independent creators while somewhat bypassing the publishers who seem to have mostly turned into overlords who stifle true creativity while plopping out their latest iteration of Mediocrity 2009 (c)(TM)) PC Gaming!
Take that you publishers! Consolidate your power, cheapen the physical product while spending more on development and making the game look and act beyond what my eyes ever imagined could appear on a screen that used to come in any color you wanted as long as it was green or amber before it got it’s first upgrade to 4 colors so I could play Alley Cat properly… Maybe that will learn ya!
Take my money, dear developers. I want you to have it more than publishers. You dreamed it. You sweated over it for months or years. Many times, you risked everything on getting it to me. You created it. I’m glad those publishing guys had those distribution models for a quarter of a century, since there was no communicative infrastructure to support a direct delivery fulfillment model. Whether it’s giving my money straight to 2DBoy or Valve or Kloonigames, Caravel Games, CD Projekt, or any of the other many small developers I send my money straight to these days, I feel SO MUCH BETTER! I strive in every way possible to purchase most titles so that they arrive as a stream of 0s and 1s through the magical tubes I dreamed about with my 2400 baud modem. I still buy some physical media (whereupon my Big Daddy and Bobblehead square off, perpetually eyeing each other from across a Virtual Springfield near some of my other Collector’s and Enhanced Editions) but I strive not to just because the majority of them are worthless now. The manual = the PDF that’s downloaded with the game from DD or on a page on steam and you are lucky if you get anything else out of that box any more… What’s the point of the physical media at that point, save a backup mechanism?
Some distribution methods still suck and won’t get touched with a 10 nanometer fiber. EA Download won’t let me back up or re-download my game after 6 months without paying you more? Screw you. Some, like Steam, started rocky (HL2 launch was quite rocky) but have turned phenomenal. GOG is fantastic and a real wonderful opportunity to take a bite out of the abandonware market too.
PC Gaming will NEVER die. May we lose some AAA high budget killer titles to consoles? Aye. There will always be that. Anyone remember the first mario clones for our PCs? Yeah. It wasn’t the same as those NESes. That’s ok. I got to play Sierra and LucasArts adventure games, Wizardry, Ultimas and countless other, deeper, games properly.
As long as there is an OS that can be coded for, there will be games for that system. Just because it changes, doesn’t mean it’s dying. It just means that the old ways don’t cut it. If the water is rising, you better evolve, engineer or miracle your ass some wings. Else you drown, and then you are dead. Those that saw what was coming, however, are safely soaring in the air: free as an independent developer, stomachs rumbling and seeking scraps and some kind soul to send 20 bucks via paypal instead of clicking some torrent link.
Enough of my blather. Long Live PC Gaming!
16/01/2009 at 14:26 Bobsy says:
I’m not sure we can count ourselves as “average” gamers either. “Average” would be the people that buy a thousand Sims expansions every year. From Tesco.
16/01/2009 at 14:32 Tei says:
Well… DirectX is stuck on 9.0c in Windows XP for ages.
IMHO (Conspiracy Theory follows…) Microsoft is killing Windows XP. Canivalizing it, to feed XBox Live and Windows Vista.
All the sales lost are to be blamed on this strategy. People like Valve lost two dollars, and Microsoft win a dollar.
16/01/2009 at 14:40 Down Rodeo says:
That is it entirely, Tei: there were a few technologies implemented in Vista that stopped DirectX 10 from working in XP but had Microsoft wanted to they could relatively easily upgraded XP. But they didn’t, which is upsetting.
16/01/2009 at 14:40 Sacrovir says:
It seems that the falling confidence in PC sales is linked very much to it’s visibility. To what extent then are digital distributors failing the PC sector by either not declaring their figures or not shouting loud enough for recognition?
Should we not be politely requesting that Valve and others make a bigger noise about the missing % of PC Sales rather than grumbling over our blogs?
16/01/2009 at 14:42 shon says:
Wait, it didn’t factor in subscriptions? That refers to monthly fees for MMO’s right? If that is the case, how in the world can you accurately rate PC’s economic power when you eliminate the monsters like WoW from the equation?
16/01/2009 at 14:45 Sacrovir says:
PS i dont really understand the argument that digital downloads mean more money for developers. So far as i can see, it is normally the publishers who continue to make agreements with the digital distributors as they previously did with physical distribution.
Sure a developer can go it alone but this simply means higher costs with the digital distributor, probably no physical distribution (and thus less commercial competition between outlets for the consumer like me), and less cash upfront to fund the development in the first palce…
16/01/2009 at 14:49 phuzz says:
Had an even closer look at my gaming purchases over last year, and apart from realising I spent over £200 on games alone (ie excluding hardware), which was split about £150 on retail games vs £50 online (mainly Steam, but some console downloads too).
Anyone else want to actually post some hard numbers rather than guessing?
Oh, and I guess they left MMO subscriptions off because at the end of the day, all they measure is the size of Blizzard’s money hat, it doesn’t really affect anyone else.
16/01/2009 at 14:55 gbarules2999 says:
It’s not piracy – I’m just not buying games any more. All I bought this year was The Orange Box and an olod copy of Darwinia. The rest of my PC game purchases came from gog.com.
16/01/2009 at 15:06 Fitzmogwai says:
The only boxed games I’ve bought over the last few years have all been old titles in the GAME 3 for £10 rack. Everything else has been digitally downloaded from either Steam Stardock or GOG.com, gawd bless ‘em.
The only titles I’m planning on buying boxed this year are Empire Total War and Dawn of War 2, and I may even DL Empire if the price is right.
16/01/2009 at 15:06 Ravenger says:
It’s dredging up the old DRM thing again, but I would have bought at least 3 or four more games in the last few months if they hadn’t had activation based DRM, Far Cry 2 and Dead Space among them. I can see my PC game purchases dropping off sharply if that style of DRM increases.
16/01/2009 at 15:08 Bobsy says:
Not hard numbers, no. But my most recent spends over the last 6 months break down like this:
Digital:
£20 – Tomb Raider: Underwear (Steam)
£5 – Defcon (Steam)
~£5 – Broken Sword 3 (GOG)
~£5 – Fallout 1 + 2 (GOG)
~£5 – Freespace 1 + 2 (GOG)
~£5 – Sacrifice (GOG)
~£5 – Giants (GOG)
About £45 total
Online retail:
£5 – Republic Commando (Play)
£5 – KOTOR 2 (Play)
Total: £10
Shop retail:
£18 – Wrath of the Lich King (Gamestation)
£35 – Spore Galactic Edition (Game)
Total: £53
So for me, shopping still pips it, but I certainly prefer Steam. Also, considering I’ve spent most of the last six months in no-internets-land, I guess the digi-downloading I’ve done counts double or something.
EDIT: Oh, forgot to put World of Goo and Crayon Physics there, which would bring digi-downloads well above shop retail. So dere.
16/01/2009 at 15:15 Colthor says:
Personal anecdote (ooh, exciting!):
I bought/was bought roughly £110 of boxed PC games last year.
Buying SoaSE digitally (~£26) is more than enough to bump that over the ~£128 I should have spent last year, assuming I fit their analysis. Ignoring World of Goo, Robokill, Audiosurf and all sorts of other stuff I bought digitally last year.
I much prefer boxed copies, but last year was pretty rubbish for new big-name boxed games (Fallout 3 and TR: Underworld were all I got), so that’s more money to spend on the indie games, budget games, and so on, which are often only available through digital distribution.
16/01/2009 at 15:38 itsallcrap says:
End of story. Ignore it.
16/01/2009 at 15:44 Craymen Edge says:
It would really interesting to see sales from digital distribution, but it’s probably impossible to get a comprehensive view, since there are so many places to get games, and few of them publish their figures.
Personally, I haven’t bought a retail PC game since sometime in mid 2007. Not that my purchases would have much impact on the overall figures, my PC is well behind current specs, so my purchases are generally indie, old, or just a little bit niche to count in charts, etc.
16/01/2009 at 15:46 Manakha says:
“At the moment, measuring PC game sales by the number of boxes shifting from stores is like announcing a drop in album sales by the amount of vinyl being sold.”
Actually, vinyl album sales in the U.S. have almost doubled in 2008 compared to 2007 (source : Nielsen Soundscan via LA Weekly).
16/01/2009 at 15:52 Kieron Gillen says:
John’s aware of that.
KG
16/01/2009 at 16:07 jonfitt says:
I estimate 70%+ of my purchases this year were from Stardock or Valve via their online services.
Brick and mortar stores in the US are absolute rubbish when it comes to PC games (I’m sure you’d find a better selection in Woolworths than most Gamestops). The only non-Steam/Impulse purchases I made were from Amazon., does NPD count that too?
16/01/2009 at 16:08 Eli Just says:
Without Steam sales you exclude almost $500 of PC game sales I’ve made in the last year. This number is useless.
16/01/2009 at 16:09 Brian says:
No digital? wtf? this is the dumbest chart ever. I have bought 100% of my games via steam this year.
16/01/2009 at 16:21 seraphic22 says:
Well I still can’t justify buying online, I can see the convenience of it but two factors stop me. Australia has crappy internet costs (so I have this tiny download cap of 5GB) and I like hard copies, though the major thing stopping me is still it would eat my precious 5 gig a month, I could upgrade and pay more just to download the games but it is still not worth it.
I think many people think the way I do, so these numbers still have some meaning. I would still think if it were counted then we would probably have a percentage increase.
16/01/2009 at 16:22 Jeremy says:
I have to admit, I love books and maps, so I usually want to buy the retail copy. It’s probably how my parents really like paper copies of things, to them it’s a proof of ownership. Now for me, having a DVD of my game or an booklet that I’ll probably never read anyway will prove ownership to me. I’m such a dinosaur…
16/01/2009 at 16:24 Rich_P says:
Riddle me this: the internet geeks who actually discuss NPD numbers are usually the first to celebrate the death of print, CDs, and watching programs on your TV. The internet is the future, they say! But as PC games leapfrog the consoles by offering awesome digital services, thereby making retail irrelevent, people claim that it’s dead!!11 Why the double standard? Why aren’t people celebrating this?
I made about $200 worth of purchases on Steam and Impulse last year. NPD won’t ever count that money because both services are managed by private companies who’ll never report sales info.
If Steam was sucking it up, I doubt we’d see EA jump on-board.
cliffski also noted something important: digital distribution is more profitable, especially if you control the means of distribution. Brad Wardell said that Stardock receives 2x as much money if you buy their games through Impulse. So with the correct digital model, you could sell fewer copies online but still have it account for the majority of your revenue.
PC games moving away from a clumsy retail model. Yay.
16/01/2009 at 16:28 MeestaNob! says:
Yeah, these charts never reflect the digital download services available.
Valve for example will not divulge their online sales whatsoever, other than to offer a smug “We’re still in business, if that’s what you’re asking” then going off to swim in money and then dry off in a money towel.
With the poor performance of bricks and mortar retailers in PC titles compared to console stuff, plus the added convenience of buying online, I imagine digital downloads will be the overwhelmingly dominant source of PC gaming within 12 months.
16/01/2009 at 16:28 BC says:
I bought one PC game in a box this year, FarCry 2 because the deal was good and it came in a fancy steelbox …but I spent a fortune on steam (january sale nearly bankrupted me)
16/01/2009 at 16:29 Papageno says:
One question: I’ve heard/read that the NPD figures do not even include BOXED COPIES sold by online retailers like Amazon– is that correct? Because that would make the figures doubly suspect.
16/01/2009 at 16:36 Rich_P says:
@Papageno: I’ve heard that too, but I can’t find a definitive source.
If NPD only counts B&M retailers, and not Amazon, then those numbers really are worthless. Utterly, utterly, utterly worthless.
16/01/2009 at 16:37 Heliocentric says:
Drm has no baring on this arguement as consoles are drmed up the jacksey. Npd dont even use walmart. But really i expect console gamers use amazon just as much as pc gamers. We are ahead in digital distribution though. This is good news overall you know. I can’t wait for the death of instore retail(online retail i want to survive though). As with no bricks and shits sales steam and the likes will have all games. I worry this will make pc gaming over elitist though.
16/01/2009 at 17:00 ScubaV says:
Personally, I try to avoid digital downloads where I can. One, I don’t want to use 50 different downloading services clogging up my hard drive with who know how many unsavory, if not malicious, background processes running. Two, I like to have a physical copy so I’m assured I can play the game whenever I want even if the company goes belly up.
16/01/2009 at 17:03 Kalain says:
I never believe anything that NPD produces anyway. They miss out so much data from so many sources for PC games that the number they come out with don’t make much sense. Their numbers are worthless.
I do think that John is right, we’re going to hear all kinds of rubbish now because of this crap..
16/01/2009 at 17:08 Gpig says:
Steam weekend deals accounted for half of my purchases for the last year. That said, I didn’t buy/play much for the pc last year.
16/01/2009 at 17:14 pkt-zer0 says:
Especially when companies like Valve are so peculiarly quiet about their numbers
Wouldn’t it benefit them if they actually declared their supposedly massive sales, though? Unless, of course, said sales aren’t that massive in reality. /CONSPIRACY
16/01/2009 at 17:18 Xercies says:
I don’t want the death of Brick and Mortar since I rarely use Steam. You just don’t get enough for the price you pay.
1) Its sometimes more expensive on digital service then in shops, especially some games on Steam(I’m looking at you L4D and until recently COD4)
2)You have to wait for it to download, which takes ages for me. By the time i have downloaded it I could have gone to the store bought it installed it and gotten an hour in the game. Sometimes it takes even more time then that.
3)Most times you have to be online to play on some of the services. Also you have to have a program clogging up your system always installed.
But i still think Steam should say their sales otherwise the “PC is dead” people will just have more ammo every year this graph comes up and it shows a loss.
16/01/2009 at 17:49 SwiftRanger says:
US retail sales only (has never been the most PC minded market anyway) for a year which definitely was a lot weaker on PC than the year before. For strategy games and shooters alone the 2007 lineup was much more impressive on PC than in 2008. Pure logic that downdrop I’d say. 2009 can (and probably will) improve on this.
And PC without boxed sales is a dead platform, digital delivery isn’t the chicken with golden eggs, not for devs and definitely not for consumers.
16/01/2009 at 18:12 Rei Onryou says:
Last year I went from not trusting digital download to being a Steam convert. I must’ve spent £150-200 online, and maybe a similar amount on store purchases/play.com/amazon. I can’t say which was the greater spend, but I do know that digital downloads were significant.
And if you consider the WoW income each month is ~$100,000,000 (based on the 10mil members paying $10 each) then their yearly income is $1,000,000,000. Now that’s….hmm….more than double the 2008 figure alone.
I’d like real figures counting every possible revenue stream and to be able to compare them to each platform. Unlikely to happen, but maybe then I’ll believe what I read rather than seeing it as doomsaying.
16/01/2009 at 18:17 Dave says:
Looking at just what I bought for the PC in 2008:
- half were downloads.
- 1/4 were collectors’ editions bought online for $20
- 1/4 were boxed games at standard price.
- except for a gift for my wife in November and one of the $20 deals, all the boxed games were from the first half of the year, before we changed ISPs and our internet connection got much better.
- we don’t own an XBox, a PS3 or a Wii. We do have a PS2, but I bought nothing for it this year and almost never turned it on.
- I did pick up a DS early in the year and have bought about as many games for it as I did for PC, but that represents about half the dollar value spent on PC games.
- what I actually played in 2008: mostly TF2.
16/01/2009 at 18:18 Rich_P says:
A fellow named DG posted the following on Blue’s News. It suddenly makes everything clear:
For the umpteenth time, there is nothing known to be wrong with NPD’s data. There is plenty wrong with many people’s interpretations of it however (and gamedaily’s article makes for example).
That the NPD data does not include non-retail sales is not even a limitation when it is used by and as intended. It becomes a limitation when it is being interpreted as a barometer (or other indicator) for the entire industry, because that’s not what it is.
NPD sells their data to the retail gaming industry. That’s who they make their figures relevant for. Arguably, including digital sales muddies the waters and makes the data less relevant. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, when they do start including digital sale data, they include it in additional notes and so on, so as not to disturb the relevance of their retail data.
16/01/2009 at 18:22 theleif says:
I made a quick calculation of my game purchases last 2 years.
Retail: 1 (M:TW – Kingdoms)
Digital: approximately 70 games
I’m probably an extreme case though.
16/01/2009 at 18:25 jsutcliffe says:
@SwiftRanger, but it’s a general note
I do not know what the situation in the UK is any more, but I am a Brit living in Chicago. Finding a games store with a decent selection of PC games is becoming increasingly hard. They generally either stock only console games or have only a handful of titles (big-sellers like WoW). I don’t think that a more robust lineup of PC games in 2009 will save PC game boxed retail sales.
16/01/2009 at 18:30 Rich_P says:
Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Target all have excellent PC game selections. I’d mention Circuit City, but they’re going out of business :(
Game-only retailers have crap PC game selections.
16/01/2009 at 18:35 Dr_demento says:
Wow – this is now officially an ubernerd blog. Markoff Chaney has commented on it.
On-topic, just why *are* Valve so cagey about Steam’s sales figures? Obviously the companies who have stuff for sale on there know how well their own stuff is selling, so it can’t be for fear of scaring off publishers or anyone. Or maybe it’s the other way around – the publishers don’t want anyone but them releasing sales figures? They don’t seem too fussed about the NPD data, though… a quandary!
16/01/2009 at 18:37 deoren says:
Long live physical media! :)
Regarding the selection of retail Brick & Mortar stores declining:
I agree. I walk into most department stores these days and the selection is pathetic. I don’t know if it’s just the area I live in, but I imagine it’s widespread.
Thankfully Amazon.com doesn’t seem to have any problems stocking retail physical copies of games I want so I do 99% of my shopping there.
I will resist Steam, Impulse and their like until games simply aren’t available anywhere else. I’ll then take a hard look and ask myself do I really want to hand control of my collection to someone else, to decide when and if I’m allowed to play them.
Who knows, perhaps GoG.com will continue expanding and recent games will continue to be added (UT2004 as an example of a somewhat recent game).
Until then, Amazon.com it is.
16/01/2009 at 18:59 unclelou says:
I buy most of my stuff boxed – I am not especially passionate either way, but, as silly as it is, boxed games are in most cases cheaper and available earlier.
(Latest example: bought Mirror’s Edge on Tuesday in a store for 40 EUR, it wasn’t on Steam before Thursday for 10).
Digital downloads I bought last year: Sins of a SE, Trials 2, World of Goo, Hinterland, Defense Grid, Bionic Commando. And maybe 20 boxed games. Too many, anyway.
16/01/2009 at 19:01 unclelou says:
That should have said “it wasn’t on Steam before Thursday for 10 EUR more”, ie 50,-.
16/01/2009 at 19:02 cyrenic says:
@dr_demento
I suspect they don’t release actual dollar amounts because if they did, they’d have even more competitors springing up overnight, taking away from their sales.
16/01/2009 at 19:25 Chris R says:
Only boxed games I bought last year were Red Alert 3 and Age of Conan (DOH). Other than that, it’s all been through Steam.
Wish there was a way for Valve to release their figures, without giving away how much they actually make (which is the reason they don’t publish their numbers I assume).
16/01/2009 at 20:01 Kadayi says:
I’m probably about 30/70 on the retail Vs digital purchasing front. Play have been undercutting digital quite a lot and when we entered silly season, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to blow more cash getting a lot of the triple A games via Steam etc. However without digital taken into account these figures are worthless. Albeit that we don’t know the numbers, and we might never know them, that so many publishers opted to release their new games via Steam, (even the ones with GFWL attached) since the fall seems indicative that it’s become very much an essential release avenue.
16/01/2009 at 22:29 Tim says:
I don’t think I bought boxed games at all last year, not that I can remember anyway. I think I spent spent £150+ on digital downloads though.
Quite a lot of it was indie stuff too :) I think RPS was responsible for a lot of my purchases. PC gaming seems to be getting better for me, but maybe I just have more money now.
16/01/2009 at 23:59 Jeremy says:
To throw in my 2yen, I bought several games in 2008 (thanks a lot, RPS, now I don’t have beer money).
Digital:
Mount&Blade (maybe 2008)
Stalker: Clear Sky
Boxed:
Far Cry 2
Fallout 3
Left 4 Dead
Spore
Indigo Prophecy
Beyond Good & Evil
I’m sure there are others, but can’t see/think of them now. FC2, FO3, and L4D I would’ve bought on Steam, would they stop blocking my credit card. You could also add audiosurf and multiwinia as casualties of sucky cc policies.
17/01/2009 at 00:06 Paul Moloney says:
I thought it would be interesting to tot up my own PC game expenditure for 2008; it works out as :
* Online retailers: €252.94
* Steam/GOG/digital downloads: €104
* eBay: €39.20
* Bricks ‘n’ mortar stores: €34.99
Total: €431.13
My first reaction was: dear god, I’d better not tell my wife I spent _that_ much on games.
My second was surprise that almost 25% of it was digital downloads even though I’m one of those people who prefers having the box.
And even though I live in the centre of a major city and browse PC games stores most weeks, my expenditure in them is negligible since on the whole they’re way overpriced.
P.
17/01/2009 at 01:24 frymaster says:
gog, greenhouse and stardock: £42.85
steam: £686.21 :O :O :O
Actual shops: Not sure, but all I can think of right now is world in conflict, red alert 3, and a few budget games
I’m pretty confident at least 85% of my purchases are online
17/01/2009 at 04:29 Caiman says:
People have been saying this for months, nay YEARS about the NPD data – without downloads, it’s a complete and utter waste of time for the PC market. I feel sorry for the time that you guys waste every month posting this crap. If they ever get around to including digital purchases let me know, but how they can track it all is anyone’s guess. And what about those free flash games for example, whose revenue model works very differently?
NPD is good for one thing only: console sales.
17/01/2009 at 05:37 PaulMorel says:
In 2008, I spent about $500 on PC games.
$120 went to GameTap
$50 was for The Witcher BOXED
The rest was spent on STEAM
So, as others have pointed out, any count that doesn’t include digital downloads is hilariously wrong.
17/01/2009 at 09:13 Dreamhacker says:
PC GAMING LIVES IN DEATH!
(Dies in life? Lives on dice? Dies of life? I never could remember which one was correct)
17/01/2009 at 09:21 The Apologist says:
Yep – most of my purchases are on Steam these days. Interesting to note that some of the more interesting games on console are for download only too – PSN new games, Wii old classics.
The NPD numbers just get more and more pointless…
17/01/2009 at 10:22 Ravenger says:
It’s not surprising to me that PC boxed sales are declining. I’ve given up shopping for PC games in the main retailers now because there’s a very very limited selection of games on offer. How can they get impulse purchase sales of boxed games if no-one is stocking them?
The majority of the boxed games I buy now I get online, with the occasional digital purchase from Steam. With obnoxious DRM schemes becoming more prevalent, I imagine I’ll be buying more games from Steam in the future – provided they use Steam DRM only, and of course providing the publisher decides to release them in my territory, and at a reasonable price.
17/01/2009 at 13:15 Benjamin Ferrari says:
I averaged expenses of 23.87(!) Euro per month ( ~31.75 USD ) for game software in 2008. About 50% where retail, all games for the Nintendo Wii (I had never played a Nintendo game before, so I bought the latest Mario kart,Mario Galaxy and Smash Brothers).
7% were spent on Amazon (The Baldur’s Gate Series and Grim Fandango).
23% on steam (GTA IV and Dawn of War Pack)
15% on impulse (Galactic Civilizations II Pack and Space Rangers 2)
5% went to 2D Boy
That is the most I ever spent on games in my life. Next year will hopefully a lot less, since I probably won’t buy another game for the Wii anymore and I bought more games this year than I could play.
I don’t feel _too_ bad for spending so much on games, because I do not watch or pay for TV anymore since 2007. And that saves me about 30-35 Euro each Month ( fucking television licence ) and also a lot of time.
One thing that I learned in ’08 is that there is absolutely no relationship between the cost of a game and the amount of entertainment you get out of it: About 7 Days after I got GTA4 for 50,- Euro, I bought Space Rangers 2 for 2.4,-. And I a lot of fun with both games. The whole Baldur’s Gate Franchise was only 13.3$ …
I’m sure in 12 month there will be some special offer for GTA4 to buy it for $30 or so. Maybe it is a bad idea to buy any games at release at all.
17/01/2009 at 15:46 Paul Moloney says:
“I’m sure in 12 month there will be some special offer for GTA4 to buy it for $30 or so. Maybe it is a bad idea to buy any games at release at all.”
I just got it from Asda online (of all places) for £24, which works out at $35; I think that’s the cheapest price I’ve seen it so far.
P.
18/01/2009 at 17:51 Shnyker says:
You crazy British types and your lb.s (yes pounds) if anyone there doesn”t know the conversion rate, its about one pound to two dollars. So double all of those prices, and put a dollar sign in front of it. Thats why we think everything there is so expensive. Of course as I learned, you pay 70 lb.s for a pair of good jeans, we pay twenty bucks. so we pay twenty and you pay, 140, yeah I don’t think sales in other areas of the world can represent others, the difference is too big.
18/01/2009 at 17:54 Gap Gen says:
Shnyker: That’s incorrect since the pound plummeted in value. The internets put it at about 1.5 dollars now.
19/01/2009 at 08:53 tentacleraep says:
I just thought I’d say that I spent about about 2,10€ per day (768€) on digitally distributed games last year, and I’m a pirate.
I bought 4 boxed games including WotLK and AoC.
19/01/2009 at 23:54 Erlam says:
I bought 20 games (or more) on steam alone, this year. About about 4-5 as downloads. Bought 1 in a store.
20/01/2009 at 03:45 Petrushka says:
What rationales are there for folks like Steam and Stardock not reporting their sales? On first thought it seems to me that their reporting their sales figures would provide a substantial boost to the PC games industry, as it would provide solid evdience that the PC is not even remotely dead. Surely such a boost would be in their interest. What am I missing?
20/01/2009 at 09:49 Kanakotka says:
Digital distribution is probably over half of PC sales.
22/02/2009 at 02:17 Yang says:
Well as i read the gamedaily article, NPD did not say PC gaming is dead, and keeps no secret that the figure does not include #insert whatever they left out here#, so i think the flaks NPD got is undeserved. It is not they who interprete the numbers to mean “Death of pc gaming”, it’s the fanboys and …big Ps? (why it was of their interest to kill off PC gaming anyway? Besides, claiming something is dead NEVER make it drop dead, to kill it would take some action, like stop making games for pc, prosecute every WOW player etc, which I TOTALLY believe is coming)
*it is like calling console games dumbed down doesn’t suddenly make every console gamer’s brain rot*
And why all these “pre-emptive defence” even the bomb is yet to fall? It’s a (partial) number for yesteryear people, get over it.
22/02/2009 at 02:47 Yang says:
@heliocentric
IIRC no console use online DRM? You can play a console offline for lifetime if you wish.
Though seen things as it goes, the compulsory-onlineness may as well infect nextgen hardwares. Alas, the horror of not able to be a freak who plays alone..
*additional question: what qualifies as the DRM people hate? Surely having to put in a disc doesn’t count?
22/02/2009 at 02:54 Nick says:
“prosecute every WOW player etc, which I TOTALLY believe is coming”
..?
22/02/2009 at 03:11 Yang says:
@Nick
it was supposed to be sarcastic.. I’m sorry if my limited grasp of English language made it sound otherwise
*addition for previous post. Maybe my lack of an Internet connection made me a little paranoid (recently moved, posting via mobilephone)
22/02/2009 at 03:16 Nick says:
Thats ok, I was mainly seeking clarification – its not your grasp of language that is at fault, it is the nature of the internet.
03/06/2009 at 19:26 mike says:
lol at piracy, piracy is stealing the game, they said ONLINE SALES idiot, its called a catalog if you’ve never heard one and yes, they are online, ever heard of amazon.com? its something similar to that so before you yell piracy why dont you get the cutlass out of your arse and think before you post.
Buying stuff online is much better, you don’t pay for gas, you don’t have to pay as much since you can buy it from the developing company. there are so many things that are better about getting your stuff online and since more and more people are finding about how much better it is for you to get it online its only natural that stores arent selling as much when people find it much cheaper/easier to get their products online.