By Jim Rossignol on March 23rd, 2009 at 3:05 pm.
The PC Gaming Alliance have made their 2008 report to their members, and provided us with some snippets via the magic of a press release. The release claims that “The report provides an overview of the PC gaming market and the growth of the largest single platform for games with annual revenue of about $11 billion.” The full thing is here.
The report also portrays “Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) as the leading products for both revenue and profits. Other significant revenue generators include several Asian MMOGs making over $100 million in annual revenue after five-plus years on the market; World of Warcraft® producing over $1 billion in annual revenue; and the Lich King expansion to World of Warcraft outsold its predecessor. In 2008, two major subscription MMOGs (Age of Conan® and Warhammer™ Online) sold over 1 million units at retail.”
I wish I had $11 billion. I’d buy a pony.
23/03/2009 at 15:09 Bobsy says:
Hang on: Wrath of the Lich King outselling Burning Crusade? How does that work? You need TBC installed before you can install WOTLK at all.
Either there are a lot of disappointed players stuck at level 60 unable to make that leap to Northrend or someone’s misinterpreted the figures along the way… I’ll guess the latter.
Also, I’d hope that pony was magical, for that sort of money. On, Starthunder! Take me to the skies! IN THE PAST!
23/03/2009 at 15:12 alastor says:
mmm a pony or a small country would do nicely.
23/03/2009 at 15:14 roBurky says:
That was my thought, too, Bobsy. I can only guess they’re just looking at the sales from the first two weeks of release, or something, like most short-sighted videogame money men.
23/03/2009 at 15:14 Ginger Yellow says:
I’m guessing they mean the Lich King outsold WoW in its release week or something like that. I’ve no idea why they’d think that’s an interesting fact, though.
23/03/2009 at 15:15 roBurky says:
Also, I’d want a cyborg pony. With a robot hoof that turns into different weapons.
23/03/2009 at 15:16 jalf says:
One pony? So modest.
With that kind of money, you could easily afford 1.5 pony.
23/03/2009 at 15:19 schizoslayer says:
Those numbers for Burning Crusade vs WOTLK are for the first 48 hours.
23/03/2009 at 15:20 Kiran says:
Pony’s cost that much?? :P
23/03/2009 at 15:21 Colthor says:
You could buy two ponies, so that neither got lonely.
Or buy a pony and rehome a retired donkey as a companion animal. That would be nice.
23/03/2009 at 15:22 Ging says:
Hell, I’d want one of those firemares from Krull for that much money, they’re a lot like the superman of horses.
23/03/2009 at 15:23 Jerricho says:
I’d buy a MAMMOTH, one of the main reasons I sunk funds into Age of Conan.
I agree on the first-week-sales hypothesis. Given the vehemence that DRM is only to prevent day one p**** (not gonna say it) destroying their bottom line. Thats life in the mainstream it seems, debt financing and such. I’d say it was sympthomatic of a general sickness in society.
23/03/2009 at 15:29 KBKarma says:
Didn’t the PCGA (or, at least, several members of it, notably Epic) say the PC was dying?
How insidious! The PC is dying, while having record high sales!
23/03/2009 at 15:29 KBKarma says:
Also, I would probably buy Keiron’s RPS slash-fic. And make it a movie.
Also, a pony.
23/03/2009 at 15:33 James G says:
$1 billion? Bloody hell. Blizzard clearly aren’t just wearing money hats but money suits, while driving their money car to their money bin (made out of money) to go swim in their money pool.
It also means that Blizzard are taking almost 10% of the PC Global revenue market!
23/03/2009 at 15:36 Ian says:
You need to remember that Jim is a man who reviews games for money. This means he is constantly accepting large wodges of cash from the MAN to say nice things about terrible games.
Therefore, he is used to things that are super bling, etc. So when he says “pony”, he probably means a 100m high pony made entirely out of gold and diamonds.
23/03/2009 at 15:36 Ysharros says:
“I wish I had $11 billion. I’d buy a pony.”
Right after you bought me a pony. I’ve wanted one for WAY longer than you. (I know this for a fact, coz I’m female. It’s a well-known fact that we are BORN wanting ponies. I was in the womb wanting a pony! Sort of like Derek & Clive with cancer.)
23/03/2009 at 15:47 Taillefer says:
I’d buy a pygmy hippopotamus.
23/03/2009 at 15:48 Ben Abraham says:
I’d buy a pony, then ten more ponies, grind them up and feed them to the first one to make a SUPER PONY with the strength of TEN ponies.
23/03/2009 at 15:51 Gap Gen says:
Yeah, but that $11bn is revenue, not profit. You’d buy a $11bn pony and then ride away into the sunset, cackling, before your entire staff, contractors and everyone you bought stuff from realise that they hadn’t been paid. And the world games industry would die.
Flawless plan.
23/03/2009 at 15:55 Barky says:
I’d buy 1000 mice, and tie them all together.
MICE PONY!
23/03/2009 at 16:04 Heliocentric says:
@jalf
I have questions about the composition of a fractional pony.
The answers may rock my very soul.
Ugh… more podcast backlog. Its like digital brain freeze.
23/03/2009 at 16:11 Heliocentric says:
Sorry, the 2 images are so close they i mentally merged the post! Be more careful in the future and see me after class.
23/03/2009 at 16:26 clovus says:
After reading the summary and comments, I no longer understand what the word “pony” means. Is it some kind of weird British slang?
23/03/2009 at 16:28 Rei Onryou says:
@Ysharros: Does your post confirm that you are the first/only female on RPS? A prestigious title to hold. Jim, get this lass a pony, stat!
Of course, if it were up to me, I’d get a Pegacorn. The Linear RPG taught me about them. Seriously, anything that farts rainbows and shits diamonds has to be awesome. Also, Chuck Norris has eight!
23/03/2009 at 16:31 Heliocentric says:
ponys are a breed of large dog as i understand it.
23/03/2009 at 16:31 cliffski says:
Epic might want to do down the PC, but the rest of the PCGA do not. Epic are just justifying moving to consoles.
23/03/2009 at 16:40 Ysharros says:
@ Rei Onryou – Nah, we’re coming out of the woodwork. Like termites. NOM NOM NOM.
But hey if it gets me a pony, then whatever!
23/03/2009 at 16:45 Optimaximal says:
I’d say it’s more a breed of unhappy cat. With hooves!
23/03/2009 at 16:50 Ian says:
She arrived for the mention of ponies, she’s staying for the RPS porn.
23/03/2009 at 16:53 Heliocentric says:
When you deliver derivative works you can sell well on the consoles, at least upon the birth of the system. But on the PC your old games exist and you are judged by them.
Its only natural to want to avoid that kind of comparison.
23/03/2009 at 17:06 Ysharros says:
@ Ian — she’s been lurking for months. ;) But ponies force unlurkage. So, where’s ParcelFarce with my four-hooved friend, hmmm?
23/03/2009 at 17:09 Tworak says:
$11 billion worth of PC might be able to tackle Crysis.
AHhahahaha reeeeaaally old shite joke. Like your mum.
23/03/2009 at 17:15 Ian says:
Ysharros: The pony is a lie.
:(
23/03/2009 at 17:17 gbarules2999 says:
With 11 billion dollars, I’d buy a $500 mule and approximately 1.8 billion copies of Fallout on GOG.com.
23/03/2009 at 17:20 Bret says:
I’d get a Hippo too.
Then I would unleash it on those who oppose me. Hippos are nature’s killing machines.
23/03/2009 at 17:21 Subject 706 says:
I’d buy two Tyrannosaurus Rexes and hitch them to a cart.
23/03/2009 at 17:21 Tei says:
I would create a isle of sugar, and genetically engineered ponys that are edible (made of sugar), and I will EAT THEN ALIVE.
23/03/2009 at 17:32 Ginger Yellow says:
“Ugh… more podcast backlog. Its like digital brain freeze.”
When you spend a week without internet access you’ll come to appreciate podcast backlog.
23/03/2009 at 17:33 clovus says:
Someone should mod Heliocentric down for not being on topic. This is a discussion about ponies (whatever they are).
23/03/2009 at 17:35 Mark Stephenson says:
I was attacked by a hippo in Botswana once and bitten by a pony many times.
With my 11 Billion I’d form a team of crack elite commandos and hunt them all down and extinct their asses. At night. Mostly.
23/03/2009 at 17:41 Stuk says:
I would buy many tiny tiny piglets[1] so that they would run around and be happy and I could take videos of them and post them on the Internet[2] and make more people happy and it would be amazing.
*sigh* A man can dream…
[1] http://www.pennywellfarm.co.uk/content_images/news/Mini_pigs1236861157.jpg
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI9gPSymfhY
23/03/2009 at 17:55 Rosti says:
According to Google and my limited knowledge of cawk-a-knee, $11bn could buy you 304.119436 million British ponies. Y’know, if you’re ever da’n the maarkit.
23/03/2009 at 18:07 jalf says:
Rosti: Are you saying ponies cost around $35?
I’ll admit I don’t follow the pony market that closely, but I’d have expected them to cost a bit more.
By the way, I’ve found a critical flaw in Google’s calculator. It can do a lot of interesting conversions (like converting volume to US *or* UK teaspoons, but it can not compute “11 billion USD in British ponies”.
lame
23/03/2009 at 18:22 Heliocentric says:
Try gbp: great british pony.
23/03/2009 at 18:42 Bret says:
Well, British ponies cost 35 bucks.
British ponies are kind of rubbish, really. No comparison to moon ponies, for example.
23/03/2009 at 18:47 Rich_P says:
I hope they began the report with “Good news everyone!”
23/03/2009 at 18:53 Tei says:
Your math is wrong. If you start massivelly to buy ponies, the prices will go up. Will skyrocket. And there will be always a jerk that don’t want to sell his ponie.
23/03/2009 at 19:04 Rei Onryou says:
@Ysharros: Typical pony deliveries take 5-10 working days and come as 7 separate parcels. May require assembly.
Plus, Jim hasn’t confirmed anything. We need moar pony news!
23/03/2009 at 19:06 ...hmm... says:
if i had that much money i would buy the ocean and fill it with pastrami bagels, eliminating global warming, hunger and drought in one foul swoop.
23/03/2009 at 19:22 MrFake says:
So WoW accounts for 1/11th of the PC gaming market’s annual revenue? That’s… that’s………
There’s nothing to say about it. It redefines thought itself.
In ten years, when we’re all jacked into Azeroth and slaving away on the gold farms, promise me that some of you will remember life before the WoW-pocalypse.
23/03/2009 at 20:29 Ian says:
Will there be pony mounts?
23/03/2009 at 20:35 catska says:
Great, another inflated stats report from the PCGA which is staffed by members from hardware companies who are desperate to keep developers making games for people to pirate on the PC, since those same people will still need an unpiratable Nvidia graphics card or Intel processor. Also unsurprising the majority of the revenue (not profit) comes from the pirate-free MMORPG market and Asian mmo market which is driven by microtransactions. The rest is probably Sims, but of course they don’t put that in the PR line.
Great news for Maxis and Blizzard I guess.
23/03/2009 at 20:55 drewski says:
Do you actually have any proof that the PCGA are inflating stats, catska? That’s a pretty big claim to make without evidence.
$11b is a huge pie, regardless of how it’s sliced. And there are still plenty of developers running around making PC games so obviously they still feel there’s opportunity for money making there.
23/03/2009 at 21:16 Rich_P says:
catska is undoubtedly RPS’s most useless poster. Have you ever made a post saying something other than “pc gaming is dead/lol at pc game devs/these sales stats are bunk”?
23/03/2009 at 22:31 Andrew Kirkman says:
ok so this may have come up already, but wat the hell…I just went on the PCGA webby and at the bottom were a list of some of the members I couldn’t hell but notice Epic are there…Y I thought epic thought the PC was a bust wat with Cliffy B bein silly and declaring it dead and then not releasing GOW 2 on the PC?
23/03/2009 at 22:41 jalf says:
@Andrew: The answer might be that CliffyB doesn’t run Epic alone. There might be other people in the company who do have an interest in the PC. But you’re right, it does seem a bit odd. Maybe their membership just haven’t expired yet. :p
After all, Microsoft is on the list too, and their idea of “supporting the PC” is to put everything on 360, and then port to PC a year or two later.
24/03/2009 at 00:28 Rosti says:
To be clear (whilst not outright killing a mediocre joke): there’s 20 GB ponies to the GB monkey.
24/03/2009 at 01:43 TheDeadlyShoe says:
man… 1 billion a year?
Where’s it all going? Blizzard could swamp every other MMO on the market with free content expansions with that sort of money. But they don’t. Bleargh.
I guess there’s only so many people you can put on a software project without them working at cross purposes.
24/03/2009 at 04:15 Tuor says:
Where is all the money going? I’ll tell you where it is going. It’s going to fund the Pony Instrumentality Project. We will all be rendered back into the primordial soup from which life originally sprang, and then one pony will redefine life and reality itself, creating a new world in which to live: a Pony World, in which we will all cease to be individuals, but rather part of one vast Poniestic Universe.
24/03/2009 at 05:20 Bret says:
You know, those ponipocolypses are getting old.
That one shotgun packing marine must be getting tired. I mean, hell ponies, cyborg ponies…
We don’t pay our nation’s Space Marine enough.
24/03/2009 at 07:08 redrain85 says:
For $11 billion you’d better be able to buy a heck of a lot of ponies, not just one. A whole farm of ponies. Then you could open a petting zoo, and make more billions. Sounds like a plan. :)
@Andrew:
I think Epic have learned their lesson, as evidenced by the massive UT3 patch and Titan Pack. Or, at least I hope so, anyway.
No, it wasn’t the PC gamers who let you down, Epic. You let them down.
@Rich_P:
Amen.
24/03/2009 at 08:43 Bobsy says:
Maybe I’m misinterpreting here, but… isn’t that exactly what they’re doing?
Oh, and for ponies: click, you knave.
24/03/2009 at 09:10 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
And the sequel to that one!
24/03/2009 at 11:50 dsmart says:
If those ladies over at PCGA are only going to be shoving reports under our collective asses instead of actually doing something worth talking about, then PC gaming really is doomed.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, PCGA is pure bullshit and a joke (on someone) – at best. And they’re just as funny a Microsoft supporting PC gaming – then they go and prove it by unleashing Games For Windows Live and subsequently shuttering all their PC game dev studios (Alan Wake is a third party game).
PC gaming is just fine. It always will be.
In any business, you win some you lose some. Those clamouring that nonsense are those on the losing end – usually sparked by foolish decisions and wanton acts of corporate suicide.
24/03/2009 at 12:10 Bobsy says:
Well Dezza, at the very least this has managed pretty big mainstream coverage, and with that I guess could come investment. Good ol’ PR, eh?
24/03/2009 at 12:39 TheDeadlyShoe says:
Bobsy: Perhaps it’s just me, but WoW doesn’t seem to have any more (or less) content than any other mature MMO, even counting two paid expansions. *shrug*
24/03/2009 at 14:55 Bobsy says:
Well I would guess that some of that WoW money is funding Starcraft II (even Koreans must have stopped buying SC1, right?) and a lot of it is funding Diablo 3 and their other MMO. I think WoW’s permanent development staff probably outnumbers every other mmo ever, with the possible exception of Lineage.