Rock, Paper, Shotgun

As the lovelies at PC Gamer have observed, Steam passed 5 million concurrent users on the 2nd of January, a spike that seems largely powered by the popularity of Skyrim and the Christmas sale. Check it out on the Steam stats page. Valve confirmed that Steam had passed 30 million active accounts as of October 2010, so it’s probably a bit bigger than that by now.

I seem to be missing where and when this was said, but UK industry site MCV has Sega boss John Clark claiming that the PC market is better than most people seem inclined to report. And Sega should know, because they’re the UK’s second biggest PC publisher thanks to their ownership of Total Warists, The Creative Assembly. “The PC market is third in terms of its year-on-year performance with a decline of 26 per cent, but this doesn’t really reflect the full picture,” said Clark. “The PC digital download business is now a viable sector but somewhat invisible as it’s not yet covered by Chart-Track. The PC market overall is actually performing much better than is currently reported and remains a vital and strong sector to be involved in.”

Interesting.

The PCGA (remember them?) have released a report to their members claiming that PC gaming software sales went up in 2009. The report apparently collated data on PC games software sales from all part of the world, in both retail and digital sales markets. “PC gaming software revenue was a $13.1 billion industry in 2009,” says the PCGA’s release, “up 3% from 2008.” While traditional mainstream PC games sales are still in decline, it seems that revenues across the globe have been boosted by online distribution. “In our surveys of PC gamers in North America and Europe we found that over 70% indicate they have bought a full game online. Furthermore, over 50% indicate that they have bought a virtual item,” said DFC Analyst David Cole. “This is very positive because, when done successfully, companies in Asia have found the digital distribution model to be significantly more profitable than the traditional retail boxed goods business.”