Retail PC Game sales - another terrible year

[Phil Steinmeyer]

Off 14% in 2005. Note, these are NPD's numbers which do NOT include casual game downloads or MMORPG subscription revenue.

Overall, the retail PC game industry is down 57% (inflation adjusted) since 1999.

Chart and data here:

http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/40/retail-pc-game-sales-off-57/

[papillon]

As I understand it, fewer games are released as well, making it a sort of self-perpetuating cycle. (That statement is based on hearsay, not numbers.)

As a tiny little indie I'm happy if all the mainstream people get off the PC entirely, more room for me. :)

[electronicStar]

As I understand it, fewer games are released as well, making it a sort of self-perpetuating cycle. (That statement is based on hearsay, not numbers.)

As a tiny little indie I'm happy if all the mainstream people get off the PC entirely, more room for me. :)
Well if all the mainstream player get off the PC I'm not sure it will be a good thing for the indies. That will mean less invetment in gaming technology (3d cards). And with increasing gizmos able to browse the web (console, telephones, PDAs) the usefulness of the home PC will start dwindling, the PC market will be in danger of disappearing completely.

Although I am a huge basher of the retail industry (it's just too easy) I can't help but notice a little improvement in the quality of the retail titles in the last few months (due to my juvenile Alzheimer I can't remember any one right now, but take my word for it).
Still, the retail editors are probably going to be investing in the console market and slowly abandon the PC market which is not very worth it.

[svero]

No surprise really.. there's probably some limit you can take warcraft clones to before people start getting a little bored. I wonder if that applies to match 3 games as well? Nah...

[puggy]

retail stores seem to be heading in the console area. A few years ago my local game store had about10 large selves worth of pc games (about 1/3 of the shop), today there's about 4 shelves of pc stuff and seemingly starting to shrink all the time. Very little pc hardware remains it's all console stuff now.

I think the PC stuff is heading more towards the download arena, which makes some sense with broadband becoming soo popular, the publishers and developers can make more money this way, removing the stores from the equation.

Also online games are becomming more popular, the dev's make more from the game generally, the players get more of a challenge generally (replacing the AI with other players makes a big differnce) and the game is constantly updated. At the minute most of them are mmorpg's which are mainly the level mad grinding system, which quite a lot of people are getting sick of. There's a few mmorts's but nothing over major yet and a big gap in most of the other area's.

The realm crafter engine is quite a good one, though still needing a bit of work, for $55 you get a pretty decent and esy to use engine and soon they will be releasing the pro version which includes the source code so i expect quite a few more mmorpg's comming out and hopefully some will have unique systems in them but the mmorpg market is going to get a bit packed soon enough.

[Jack Norton]

The realm crafter engine is quite a good one, though still needing a bit of work, for $55 you get a pretty decent and esy to use engine and soon they will be releasing the pro version which includes the source code so i expect quite a few more mmorpg's comming out and hopefully some will have unique systems in them but the mmorpg market is going to get a bit packed soon enough.
A MMORPG engine in Blitzbasic? did I read it well? :eek:

[terin]

Seeing as I am one of the few (only?) who is technically upper management in a retail publisher and has access to the numbers I can confirm a couple items.

First, retail is horrible, overall, as an outlet. Broken system blah blah blah.

Second, the primary cause of this year's decline (other than the crappy games) is that the specialty stores are ditching PC titles.

Third, the 57% number is worse than it seems. Retail operates on economies of scale, that 57% decline is costing people more than 57%. Worse, the number of titles available to buyers has increased from the peak: This means a smaller slice of pie with higher costs and quite a risk. If I had to guess, I would say on average per game, the profit is down 75% or more.

There IS Good news!

I'm working with my retail partners on two totally seperate an independent solutions.

Unfortunately I can't really talk about them :(... but suffice to say both represent opportunities for indie developers, who have a much ... better ability to adapt and a much stronger economy of scale (meaning you don't have to recover 500k in development cost + 100k in marketing; minimum)

*shrug* retail sucks. I'm going to fix the small part of it that I can... or at least try to.

-Joe

[cliffski]

Well if all the mainstream player get off the PC I'm not sure it will be a good thing for the indies. That will mean less invetment in gaming technology (3d cards).

Bring it on. I'm sick of people obsessing over whether a game has bump mapping rather than if it's fun.

[Jack Norton]

It seems to me that the problem is more in the player than in the games.
When I see masterpieces like Vampire: Bloodlines that get almost ignored by sales (you can pick a copy of it for 9.99 euros) I wonder if the people who buy games are only women or 8-years old boys.
Even last Sid Meier's titles, Pirates and Civilization, have been "casualized". You see tutorials explaining such obvious thing that you wonder "What happaned to Sid? he need to explain me even how to use right mouse button?".
Or the addition of cutscenes in pirates that are nice the first times then sucks and you would like to be able to eliminate them completely from the game.

So I guess that the Pc market is dead maybe because the niche players use pirated product and don't buy, while the kind of customer that buys more is soccer-mom and sons... :mad:

[princec]

Bring it on. I'm sick of people obsessing over whether a game has bump mapping rather than if it's fun.
Indeed, it'll be a decade before I manage to write a game that stretches the resources of the current hot-poop PC, so no worries about stagnating technology here. It's already far more powerful than I can get my head round!

Cas :)

[puggy]

A MMORPG engine in Blitzbasic? did I read it well? :eek:
yip, it's even quite good to work with. It's easy enough so i can get some of my minions (aka non paid players who help me out) to do a game based on starpeace for an aditional gameplay for one low subscription while i work more on the coding side of the main game. All i really need now is a 3d modelr who will work for peanuts (high grade peanuts of course, not those hard ones that break teeth) and i'll be set up to improve my own game graphically as well as being able to start on a few other games i'm looking to make (using 3rd party engines to save a lot of time).

[zoombapup]

Its not an entirely exceptional thing. The fact is that console returns are just bigger. The barrier to entry into console dev means you get a LOT of crappy PC games bunging up the workds for the commercial shelf space. Loads of the Jowood style games etc.

So its no surprise that stores have decided to go into console games entirely.

Which means we then get a big gap in PC gaming where there are a LOT of PC's capable of playing various levels of games out there, with less of a product on the shelf mentality. Which means we might finally get a boom of "indie" games sold via ESD but not of the match-three-colours casual variety.

Of course if it starts getting profitable again, the likes of Epic and the rest will be back in with both feet, but for this short time, things are definitely up in the air. I like it!

In fact I like it when things are shaking up anyway, its been bad for a while, so it makes sense that things are being shaken out.

[Jay_Kyburz]

Where is the chart that shows these figures including steam and MMO figures.

"This data only reflects traditional, brick and mortar PC game sales"

The two biggest games of the year have been wow and HL2. Since I'm paying 30/ month for wow I'm not buying other games.

Did i read that wow had 5 million subscribers now?

Sure the industry is changing, but PC gaming is a strong as ever if you ask me!

[kjs335]

Honestly, there were hardly any innovative games since 2003.
Why would I want to buy FPS Clone B if it's got a bit better game play, new maps and better graphics than FPS Clone A?
I wasn't gonna buy any next-gen consoles but after I watched the Nintendo controller, I'm thinking about buying Nintendo Revolution. PS3 and Xbox360? Never

[Darth Nader]

I honestly think that once the numbers for online sales are given full notice, we will see significantly better numbers. I've noticed that as the number of available sources for downloadable games has increased, the retail sales numbers have been said to decrease...I don't think thats a coincidence.

I don't think innovation plays a big part in sales. By and large, its the recognizable titles, the sequels and the base genres that are the breadwinners with the general crowd, regardless of platform.

[soniCron]

According to the BBC, PS2 and the PC are the top two gaming platforms in the UK (http://www.joystiq.com/2006/01/26/bbc-release-full-stats-on-uk-gamers/). Go figure.