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.
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Will there be pony mounts?
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.
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.
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”?
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?
@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.
To be clear (whilst not outright killing a mediocre joke): there’s 20 GB ponies to the GB monkey.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe I’m misinterpreting here, but… isn’t that exactly what they’re doing?
Oh, and for ponies: click, you knave.
And the sequel to that one!
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.
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?
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*
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.