Or so say the RPS readers anyway. I wanted to do a follow up on the polls Jim ran a few weeks ago, highlighting the results and what they say about the state of the PC nation (in short: People buy stuff on direct download! Man!). Some of them didn’t require much other interpretation. Others – like the one in the header – required a little maths to arrive at. And more beneath the cut…
Before we’re going further, worth stressing the weaknesses of our numbers. Firstly, they’re from a poll of RPS readers. Are RPS readers characteristic of PC gamers generally? Maybe, but I’d argue they’re not exactly far from self-identified core PC gamers. Secondly, there’s traditionally a bias in polls like this, as people who aren’t involved in the practice don’t necessarily click. Thirdly, the 47% figure is extrapolated from other questions, as shown here, and the question was based on percentage of expenditure including things like subscriptions.
But on the other hand, almost two thousand PC gamers contributed to the poll. This isn’t a bad sample size at all. And the picture which it presents seems to confirm many’s gut feeling about the direction of PC gaming. Let’s take that 47% seriously for a second. If it’s a general rule, it basically means that you have to double the NPD figures to get a truer picture of where PC gaming is.
93% of RPS readers bought a PC game digitally in the last year, dwarfing the 7% who only purchase via traditional retail. 71% of them bought more than four digitally. In terms of the percentages of purchases via a digital channel, there’s 25% who say that fewer than 20% of their purchases are digital – but there’s also 17% who purchase more than 80% of theirs online. In fact, the spread across the four 20% groupings (25%, 19%, 21%, 18%, 19%) lacks an obvious peak.
We’re left with an undeniable portrait of PC gamers increasingly at home with the digital present.
Related Stories:
I just want to reiterate my prior statement made earlier this week.
“I love the communication we have going on here. Developers, Publishers, Critics and Consumers all sharing together.”
The best part is that we can pretend to be adult-like while doing so. Thank You commenters, one and all, for the civil discourse.
I’m guessing it’s because the vast majorit of D2D games – regardless of platformg was a – don’t sell enough to make that sort of cash purely from ESD.
When I can get a D2D game that I can burn onto a CD and keep, as my possession, which I can resell as I choose to whomever I want for whatever price they are willing to pay, without restriction or activation or worrying about the service provider going broke, I’ll start buying ESD titles. Whilst I have to sign up for invasive bloatware like Steam, it can go take a hike.
GoG, thus far, is the only service I’d even consider a game from.
Retail’s crap, but at least as long as I avoid EA titles I can, by and large, be assured it’ll work if the publisher goes bust.
@ds lite
L4D would have made its money back if it had forgone its advertising and been digital only. But it wouldn’t have made *as much* money. Truth is, you can’t put an amount on the digital distribution scale. Not only is it a moving target but its an unknown quantity.
You said you don’t use the digi services much. Maybe you should. I shared your views on its inviability 2 years ago. But since then it has come on strides. And heres the thing. Its growing and it has wonders the stores don’t. Sir? Do tell me you have played world of goo? If not i fear your arguement loses some strength.
Speaking of DRM… if King’s Quest 3 were made today they just would have SecureROM’d it and required you to activate it over the internet. DRM techniques like making the player give a word from the manual or “spellbook” are kinda’ funny now. Did you really think that was a feature?
Several people have mentioned boxart. I used to like boxart a lot when it represented what the game was supposed to be. I remember a game called Dragon Wars. The cover had this Conan the Barbarian look alike waving a sword at this huge dragon. It was a cool drawing, like a fantasy novel cover. The game presented the same hero in giants pixels using 4, count ‘em, 4 colors. While playing games back then I’d really pour over the boxart. Now the boxart doesn’t matter. I want the 3D game to look better than the 2D boxart.
In the future box art will be 3d. And the games will be 4d.
Lots more DRM in the fourth dimension.
I don’t really get people’s obsession with digital distribution.
I’ve got a few hundred original games on my shelf. I’ve moved house 6 times in the last 15 years. I’ve been binning lots of old games recently because they take up too much space. And I regularly use two different PCs that are far apart. And with the state of manuals these days… :)
I do find the comparison between activation DRM and physical based humanity checks disingenuous. Is it DRM? Absolutely. It’s a method by which you ensure that a person who just gets floppies from a friend has a nearly impossible time completing the game. DRM in a nutshell. The difference is that, for example, in 1 year Sierra may be gone as a developer and publisher, but as long as I can find my 3.5″ drive, my floppies and my manual, I can play King’s Quest III (with DOSBox or one of my OLD boxes I have lying around). I can’t do that if it chooses to protect the software by making me activate the software. Having access to the internet trivializes the need of the manual (or feelies) and, thusly, the effectiveness of said physical check. I think as we got more connected, the realization crept in we couldn’t use that model any more.
I didn’t mind copy protection that was built into the game, honestly. I worried about losing my manuals, but if that happens, and I lose full access to my game, it would be my own fault, not because some company went out of business. You know that dark maroon card with the odd symbols that came with Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders? Don’t lose the card or, do what I did, make a copy by hand (since photocopiers couldn’t distinguish between the maroon and the black). My signed copy of Uplink uses the same concept and, quite honestly, I love it (probably more as a throwback, however).
I guess I can see where you are coming from. It obviously is a form of DRM, but, even then, it helped bring me into the game more and immerse me with lore. I was vested in poring over every inch of that comic book that came with Leather Goddesses of Phobos (still, I maintain, one of the greatest names for any game, ever) in order to make sure I could solve that esoteric puzzle that wasn’t going to make any sense whatsoever unless I knew its context. Have fun getting through the maze without the map. Is that DRM? I’d argue yes, but nowhere as invasive as the current rent-and-never-own model.
Other than the box of M.U.L.E. and the manual of Laser Squad, I think most box, manuals, etc.. are better on the trash bin.
Nostalgia is overrated.
K240 i spent more time reading that manual than playing the game. It was beautiful.
Most people here don’t seem to realise how TINY a fraction of the market hardcore gamers like us people who read this website are! The vast bulk of sales, both on PCs and consoles, are from people who buy 1-2 games a year max and play maybe a couple of evenings a week.
The thing you have to ‘get’ in order to understand why surveys conducted on sites like this are meaningless is that most people who buy games wouldn’t list “gaming” as one of their hobbies. There’s people who like sports and therefore buy sports games as part of their fascination with sports (whether it’s football or boxing or golf or even bowles). There’s people who like strategy games, and wouldn’t ever buy anything else (my dad’s a good example – last game he ever bought is Dune 2 AND HE STILL PLAYS IT!). There’s people who like flight simulators, or people who like cars and therefore buy driving games, or people with other interests who might buy a game that appeals to that interest. But “gamers”, even though they buy 4 or 12 or 20 games a year, account for a small fraction of sales compared to the millions of copies games with mass-market appeal manage to flog.
I suspect that this is PARTICULARLY the case on PC over consoles. OK, most sports titles are multiplatform, but most strategy titles and simulators are on PC, and those games rely on “non-gamers” for the majority of their sales.
The ds got my lady who is a sims player. Into turn based strategy games (the new advance wars) so, i think it bares mentioning that player classification is bull. Always was, always will be.
@Markoff Chaney
Don’t worry, it won’t last very long. Just you wait.
@Heliocentric
Thats just not good enough for me. I have different standards. If its ok for you, by all means, keep buying ESD games.
Until ESD becomes seamless, ubiquitous (sp?) and no braindead DRM (Byteshield is the future of DRM) in sight, I’m not interested.
If I were in Europe or some third world country where ESD was my only option, then yah. But for now, I’m going to restrict my ESD game buying to casual titles- which I have littlle or no interest in – only.
I don’t buy games just because someone says they’re good. Which is one of the primary reasons why, like most sensible gamers, I don’t put ANY stock in game reviews – which are based on one lone wanker’s opinion. A wanker who is either more likely to be on the take or even more likely to have an agenda.
I buy games that I would like to play – and own. World of Goo is not my kind of game, so I have no interest in buying it. The same reason I still don’t own Braid.
@ unclelou
Join the club. I’ve got so many games, I lost count at 12,000 or so. I’m paying almost $250 a month on air conditioned storage to store most of them. Each time I’ve moved, it costs me more to move them, put up shelves to store them etc – than it does to more the blasted furniture. Go figure.
One of these days, I’m going to put the whole shebang up on eBay and see which sucker out there wants to own a piece of history for a cool $250K starting bid.
@dsmart: I can see why you’d think that. There’s no way that ESD – providing government services through the Internet or other electronic means, could ever compete with retail game sales.
Why are you calling it ESD.
I’d rather get the physical media, with box art, manual, and a game I control myself
Last time I went to Best Buy, new PC games were being sold in flimsy DVD cases. You either buy the collector’s edition or get stuck with a worthless piece of plastic. Packaging size has decreased over time and continues to do so.
The absurdity of shipping physical media hundreds of miles by diesel truck will become readily apparent when fuel prices rise again.
Digital distribution is the future, even if it takes 20 years to get there. It eliminates the second-hand market, which the publishers hate, and is a more efficient way of transmitting information.
“The difference is that, for example, in 1 year Sierra may be gone as a developer and publisher, but as long as I can find my 3.5″ drive, my floppies and my manual, I can play King’s Quest III (with DOSBox or one of my OLD boxes I have lying around).”
I’m willing to bet lots of money (and effectively I have) that Valve will be around longer than my manuals. I know this because I’ve already lost a ton of them.
“I’ve got to say, I doubt this survey has much use as an indicator of overall market trends. RPS readers are extraordinarily unlikely to be representative of the overall market (only a tiny fraction of games players read mainstream games magazines, let alone blogs by freelancers that specialise in esoteric games). I hope it helps you sell ads, but I wouldn’t read too much into it.”
Name a single method that would work, though. Hell, polls for elections use what, 3,000 people randomly called? Who’s likely to actually respond to these calls? A) Elderly, B) Non working, C) Only people with listed phone service (obviously), etc. Any way you get stats they’ll be biased or problematic in some way. I’m not saying these are perfect, I’m saying that you shouldnt discount it.
I can see myself buying more games over digital distribution in the future, provided the DRM schemes used (such as Steam’s) are less onerous than the limited activation schemes that are becoming more and more common on retail releases, and that the prices are less than or at least comparable to retail.
Also it’s becoming harder and harder to find PC games at retail at all, and systems like Steam and GOG make it easy to get hold of the games you want.
Well, NPD numbers are useless when determining PC market status. Of course one can make argument than DD isn’t there yet on the levels to compete with retail and that’s true. However data shows online revenue (ie DD+online fees) count for over a half of all pcgaming revenues. I mean you can look at NPD numbers and say PCgaming declined in last couple years, but WoW US subcriptions alone are more than the loss in retail sales.
What’s worse NPD tracks only US sales and while in console market that’s the main market, it’s far from such on PC. Most PC devs will tell you europe makes up 60-70% of their revenues. And it’s not just smaller european games. CnC3 sold less than 250K in US in 9 months, while it passed 1mln worldwide in two months.
So NPD is useless, all it gives you is report about specific segment of the market, a segment that’s not representative of the market as a whole.
With DD vs retail numbers, I doubt DD is close to beating retail yet, but at the same time we have to remember two things:
-DD is growing at extremely fast rate, while retail remains stagnant
-it’s profits vs revenues. Even Stardock sold more Sins copies in retail than through Impulse, AFAIR 5 times more, but at the same time they made half of their profits with DD sales.
I suspect that that the kind of people that buy multiple sims expansion packs and bejewelled didn’t vote in the original survey, and I fear that they ARE pc gaming.
@ Smurfy
Why not?
If you don’t know what ESD means, why not just ask?
@AdrianWerner
Yep. And the reason for that is the COGs, marketing, cut to Take 2 distribution etc are not applicable with Impulse sales. And since they priced the retail game the same, it makes sense that they would make more money on the Impulse sales. That is the beauty of ESD. But again, there are many PC gamers who would rather get their games from retail. Hence the reason there is still a push to get PC games onto shelves.
Incidentally, since the retailers are more focused on console games, and given that only a few publishers have distribution and relationships with the buyers are the retailers (who make extortion look like a hobby if you know exactly what those bastards are doing these days), you won’t see many PC games at retail, apart from those “Triple A” offerings from the usual suspects who already have console versions.
The whole thing is one big racket that is going to come crashing down very soon. And when it does – given the amount of money involved – it will be spectacular and there won’t be any comparison to the videogame company crash of the nineteen eighties.
Selling games through Electro Static Discharge! That would be cool, getting zapped every time you buy something.
.
NPD sucks. does not account digital download neither online subscriptions to MMORPG.
Anyway, any statistic has to show numbers. And NPD Group NEVER shows numbers.
Maybe not completely related, but I notice how many people are fond of making up statistics on how big a percentage gamers “like us” are of the PC gaming market. Most people seem to think it’s a vanishingly small percentage, but is it really? That depends on what you mean by a gamer, of course, but from what I’ve seen most people who buy any games at all usually play quite a lot of PC games. I just don’t see where this “casual” crowd is, and what they are doing.
Unless we’re talking games like World of Goo or Popcap games, I don’t see there being a great load of people who have a computer and have enough interest in games to buy some, but only stick to one or two a year (as someone mentioned).
Now, I’m a fairly huge PC geek, and I know that most people aren’t like me. But even my friends in school who were only mildly interested in games bought quite a few of them, or played a couple a lot. I got the impression that either people weren’t really into gaming at all, in which case they definitely won’t be a big part of the software market, or they were into it enough to buy several games a year.
Am I wrong? I might be; I’ve got no real statistics to prove me right, but it’s just the way it seemed to me.
So NPD is useless
NPD is useful for retailers, but is useless for drawing conclusions about the health of PC gaming as a whole.
The data isn’t problematic. The analysis of said data by gaming sites is the problem.
“I don’t buy games just because someone says they’re good. Which is one of the primary reasons why, like most sensible gamers, I don’t put ANY stock in game reviews – which are based on one lone wanker’s opinion. A wanker who is either more likely to be on the take or even more likely to have an agenda.”
This is the most effective way to insult the authors of this blog, by the way.
Soooo… what does ESD mean in this context then?
@ Gap Gen
….and your point was what exactly?
Did you see me naming names?
Which part of on lone wanker seemingly applied to anyone (named or otherwise)?
And do you think I’m posting here because of reviews or because I want to be part of the collective group hug?
If you must know, I’ve known Kieron for as long as he’s been writing about games. In fact, his (like Tom Chick, Jeff Green and few old school handful) includes some of the only opinions I pay attention to.
In fact, for as long as I’ve been reading RPS (during my daily and periodic Google iG / Google Alerts pass), if the original thread here about my game hadn’t started by him, I’d never have paid any attention to it, let alone bothered to post.
There are literally dozens (don’t take my word for it, go Google) of sites on the web talking about either Derek Smart or one of my games. I don’t post at any of them. In fact, the only places I bother to post are Gamasutra, Blues, Avault, a blog (mostly industry related) or two and now here.
Get a grip and settle down.
@ Wurzel
ESD = Electronic Service Distribution, which invariably got somehow mangled (and lost in translation) once the media kiddies started coining “Digital Distribution”.
oh, the actual mean in fact is Electronic Software Distribution when talking about the delivery of media (games, music etc) online.
What exactly is the issue with the term “Digital Distribution”?
Well, Relic said that their Steam numbers were quite close to their retail numbers so I guess… you’re wrong!
“What exactly is the issue with the term “Digital Distribution”?”
That games in brick and mortar stores usually don’t come on vinyl, either. ;-)
Maybe sould be called Redownload Services, because is the confidence you can download again, that make you trust the service.
I mean, in the good old times, it used to be normal for males, to have a secret folder on the computer with porn. Now, more and more people just browser to sites like redtube, that is more porn that what you can store on your harddisk, and updates daily with new videos.
Withouth the confidence of infinite ammounts of free porn whenever you need it, people would manually collect the porn on his secret folder, like a personal Fort Knox…
Guys Guys!.. I got news, EPIC fail awesome news
“It seems that the DRM on the PC version of Gears of War came with a built-in shut-off date; the digital certificate for the game was only good until January 28, 2009. Now, the game fails to work unless you adjust your system’s clock. What is Epic’s response? ‘We’re working on it.’”
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/01/pc-gears-of-war-drm-causes-title-to-shut-down-starting-today.ars
Children eaten by DRM today: 6818 + 1!!!ONEONE
@unclelou: lol, fair enough. :)
@roBurky: You have a point here.
The closest Steam gets to offering uptake statistics is at this page under “View Steam players per game”, which provides information that is tantalisingly close to being useful. Still can be interesting reading; Football Manager 2009’s peak simultaneous users suggests quite a healthy install base while poor, poor Age of Conan …
One thing to remember is that it’s still very early days with sales through downloads. Reliable services have only been in place for a couple of years, and most people have only recently got fast enough broadband access to make downloading a couple of gigs of files reasonable as opposed to hideous.
Certainly I know that if I’d wanted to download L4D a couple of years ago it would have been “leave the PC on overnight and hope that the connection doesn’t crap out” hell.
As long as there are benefits to downloading (reasonable prices, buy-once-available-in-perpetuity-backups, non-intrusive DRM (if any) and secure trusted providers, then online sales will only continue to grow in popularity.
I can easily see that in a few years, publishers will be taking the application providers’ model with their games, where downloads are the first route to availability, and you can pay a few pounds more for a DVD to be posted to you if you want one.
Most epic DRM fail ever:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F30%2F0556251&from=rss
Gears of War on the PC no longer works after Jan 29.
(Oops sorry for the dupe. And yes, funny how we both used “epic fail” (geddit?))
P.
( I think is hardly news. DRM don’t work for most people. It will be news if DRM work for some random guy, in the sense Man byte Dog. )
Re: Is this poll skewed?
Well of course, but in a very interesting way, and one that might mean it reflects the current state of play more accurately than it first appear to. I took the survey and would admit to being a typical hardcore PC diehard. The shelf holds copies of The Witcher EE, Fallout 3, Civ4, etc. The hard-drive is stuffed with DLC from Valve and EA. So far, so typical.
Let me tell you about somebody who didn’t take the survey, has never even looked at a gaming magazine (Online or printed), and gets a rash every time we go into a GameStop. My girlfriend.
So, a typical non-gamer? Far from it. There is a good chance she has spent more in the last year on games than I have. She has started to hide the credit card receipts, alway a bad sign. Popcap and Bigfish and all the others supply her with all the games she needs.
I looked over here shoulder the other night to see what sort of shoe-matching game she was playing, and was suprised to find her plowing through a point and click adventure that owes more to LucasArts than any Bejeweled clone. Proper game, proper gaming.
My point is this. She is as invisible to us, the Angry Internet Men, as she is to NDP or any of the other stat gathering, market researching outfits. She, and the uncounted thousands like her, are the dark matter that contorts and ridicules all of the statistics we see proclaimed as evidence of this or that death or ressurection.
All of her purchases are digital, none of her games of choice would even get a look-in on one of the mainstream gaming sites, and she doesn’t want to know about any of the other stuff anyway. But there she is, hammering away at a type of game most pundits would tell you died a commercial death a decade ago.
There are more people like her out there, and I suspect they are females between 20-35, computer literate, who think Marcus Phoenix is a shoe designer. They don’t buy from the shops because they never have and they never will. They are 100% digital, and I suspect they push that 47% figure much, much higher.
I know that CliffyB insists that PC gaming is dead, but I wasn’t quite expecting Epic to be pulling the trigger in quite this manner…
Gears of Wars: The gaming equivalent of a sweaty jockstrap.
I just cannot understand the love for that game.
P.
As long as game designers and publishers think forcing users to allow the programs to communicate with central servers before allowing play – regardless of how uninvasive that check is – is an acceptable invasion of their privacy and ability to use and resell the software they’ve paid for, I’ll have nothing to do with it.
I actually think this is pretty accurate, because you have to be a pretty hard core PC gamer to buy the PC version of any big AAA title in the first place. I mean, who buys Witcher or Fallout 3 for PC other than the tech savvy people who are likely to read this forums?
For anything other than the Sims and WoW this is actually a very good source for poll information.
That’s my feeling too.
Digital distribution is the future… fck the middle men, we want our games cheaper.
Of course, Steam miserably failed at this where they were off to a great start at first. Raising prices as if dollars are euros isn’t making you look nice Valve!!!