The Top 20 PC Games of January
IGN: The Top 20 Best Selling PC Games of January
US, February 28, 2008
1. World Of Warcraft – online MMO that is ruling the world
2. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – online shooter
3. World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest – oh look, another WoW SKU
4. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade – and another…
5. The Sims 2 Deluxe – casual, and old
6. Diner Dash – casual, and old
7. 15000 Games – bargain bin filler
8. The Sim City 4 Deluxe – casual, and beyond old
9. The Sims 2 Teen Style Stuff – expansion to casual old stuff
10. Crysis – online shooter charting, but not actually selling much
11. The Sims 2 Bon Voyage – oh look, more
12. Half Life 2: Episode 2 The Orange Box – Steam, where is thy sting?
13. Battlefield 2 – online shooter, again! BTW, did you see their web-embedding announcement?
14. Warcraft III Battle Chest – Eeep. I need something stronger than “ancient.”
15. Pirates Of The Burning Sea – yep, another MMO. Not making enough of a dent though. 🙁
16. Rock Tour Tycoon – casual, and I bet you never heard of this game anyway
17. Sim City 5: Societies – gasp! A new game!
18. The Sims 2 Seasons – another expansion…
19. Age Of Empires III – this game came out in September of 2005.
20. Age Of Empires III: Asian Dynasties – …but the expansion is only from late ’07
Why post this?
Because of what it says about the core PC gaming market, the topic of the last post. The core games that are there are either quite old, or they are online shooters catering to a cutting-edge crowd. There’s bargain bin software compilations in the mix. And there’s these casual games creeping up the charts. Heck, Diner Dash is what, three years old itself?
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7. 15000 Games – bargain bin filler 8. The Sim City 4 Deluxe – casual, and beyond old 9. The Sims 2 Teen Style Stuff – expansion to casual old stuff 10. Crysis – online shooter charting, but not actually selling much …Read more
I check these stats all the time, and it is interesting to note how few franchise and even worse, how few new franchises make it into this list.
If you could aggregate the sales data and post the franchise sums, how would this top ten list look? And what % would be concentrated in the top five?
1) Warcraft
2) Sims
3) Diner Dash
4) COD 4
5) Crysis or Half-Life 2
Well, the second piece not posted here is, of course the actual sales figures. NPD makes you pay for those. And what they say is that a lot of these “top 20 titles” are moving not very many units.
How much of these low sales, though, are the results of diffusion in the marketplace? Sales getting more and more spread out between an ever-growing number of titles new and old, expensive and cheap, online and boxed?
Also, how many people stopped (or slowed) buying new titles after getting hooked on an MMO (or something similarly unending, like the Sims)? That sort of constant presence has doubtless impacted customer behavior. I know I’ve put off buying new games either by saying, “This MMO is enough to tide me over” or by thinking, “Sure, this game’s only $30, but for half that I can re-activate an old subscription and see what’s changed.”
I’m certainly not about to argue that the market’s not in a slump, but I wonder what’s really generating these numbers.
Peter, those are all good questions. I don’t really have answers. The thing that is clear is that many former PC developers now develop for consoles, having fled or de-emphasized the retail PC market; and that many genres have decamped partially or entirely to other platforms.
There are definitely bright spots. Adventure games, for example, are doing solid and sustainable business on the PC retail side. This is an area so neglected by the core publishers that instead we have seen the rise of a set of specialty publishers who sell these titles at Walmart and Target, and even in the checkout line at Office Depot.
Better go take my PC out back and shoot it.
No, no, you need it for YouTube, Newgrounds, Facebook, and Twitter. 🙂
And porn.
Really, all I need it for is Metaplace, of course 🙂 . Oh, and Spore.
And Mass Effect. And Fable 2. (Please, Peter!)
Honestly, I don’t see why a lot of people are seeing this as gloom and doom. I mean, I assume you don’t, Raph, and developers are certainly shifting. But it surprises me that a lot of users seem so concerned about it — as though we’re entering a Great Depression of Gaming.
Believe me, I don’t think we need to fear any shortage of videogame entertainment or means to consume it. We’ll all be safe.
I wish there was some way to quantify the price of what most would consider a good gaming PC over time (consoles excluded). From personal experience of keeping my fairly PC up to date with a new proc/graphics card/ etc almost every year I would say that over time the price has dropped for a “decent rig” to run most of these games above (and the same games for any period of time ahead of that avg computer curve) and compare that over the past 10 years for PC gaming. Again from personal experience, I think you have seen a drop of about 30-40%. ie Subjectively, I think 8 years ago it would have cost ~$1500 for a good rig, now you can build a good for about $900. That delta really isn’t a lot when you think of the advances of consoles. The “happy medium” is going to be a drop in the cost of computer needed for PC Games (games via the web with rich local frameworks – Flash/AIR/Silverlight/WPF etc) or the price of consoles to continue to rise as they strive to keep gaming libs local. I think the kicker is going to be when consoles eliminate the complete need for a PC browser. Wii has done this to a point (Flash) but the framework just isn’t there yet. I assume this is the reason MS doesn’t have a browser on the 360. They want the casual games through their framework (xbl/xna/etc). PS3 is sitting in a good position now, imho. (Note I don’t own a PS3, and am not big fan of Sony). I just think they are non-strategically placed (ie they didn’t mean to get there, but they are) to be able to adapt when web based games really start to get a little more “media rich”.
I think we had a Great Depression of Gaming already. It supposedly happened in the early 90’s, but I missed it because I was too busy …um, not playing video games. o.O Anyway yeah, and here we are today. Not too much to worry about for gamers.
There are a lot of old games up there, but something to consider is, we don’t get 20 new titles every month. We might get 20 new titles every year, and a lot of those are fire-and-forget games, maybe using whatever left-over tech is lying around the office at the time. A top-20 list for any given month is going to mostly be old games.
3 years is old? Oy vey. Now I wonder what the statute of limitations is on fun, versus old. How old can a game get before it loses its charm among the masses?
It seems to me that if you can’t support your game with live content (MMO or otherwise), it better have killer replayability.
Heh, all I want (for Christmas) is for the big publishing companies to re-discover the Laffer curve and start pricing the new, high-budget, big-title games comparably to the old and cheap ones. For totally self-serving reasons, of course.
(Though, really, with both the overall economic conditions of the US and the way the game market is shifting, I really think they would come out ahead on the deal.)
I think that’s mostly the “hardcore” who care if a game looks new, which in realistic-as-possible video game it’s easy to tell.
I read somewhere that the NPD stats don’t take into account sales from Steam/ Direct2drive etc. (doesn’t matter though its an interesting list)
I have a bit of a hard time looking at those figures and not seeing a Total War title there. I could be wrong but just a gut feeling that it should be there and maybe January was a fluke?
Now continuing my post from yesterday in the other thread. There are a number of factors for this but PC Gaming vs. console gaming has always been a tad less accessible. If you think back to atari vs. Apple II vs IBM XT you’ll realize that the console’s have always had the lions share of the gaming market.
There was a time in the 1990’s where the online connectivity of the PC dominated over the consoles but the consoles have caught up in that respect. I think even then the PS2 still outsold PC games overall. Does this mean that PC gaming is dead? Hardly, does it mean it will change? probably.
A couple of things that come to mind here, consoles by their nature spend their time in the living room, they become centers for social activity. MMO’s are social games. Anyone catching a connection there?
I also think that developers have gone a long ways towards killing off PC gaming too in the traditional sense. (i’m not counting casual or MMO’s here)
Take the situation of your average 29 yr old business guy. He has a laptop, a PSP or DS and travels some for his job. He sees a game like Assassin’s Creed and thinks would he like to play that, or Mass Effect and (insert single player game of choice here). Now when he plays his PSP or DS he can carry a small bag with easily 20-30 games with it. However on his laptop he is required to carry a fairly cumbersome CD for every game he wants to play.(considering the cost and how easily you can damage a CD/DVD would you want to carry them?) I don’t know about you but the average person on a plane with a laptop PC isn’t going to travel with 10-20 CD(DVD) to play games.
(I am going somewhere with this just bear with me a moment I’m describing consumer pain here)
Now he take his MP3’s all loaded into his pc and syncs with his iPod. Changes his playlist and away he goes, because its all stored on his harddrive. His office software is loaded onto his laptop, heck even Autocad loads onto the pc without a “insert disk please” message. yet gaming companies seem to feel that a PC needs to be treated like a console where they swap out disks for every game they play. This to a PC user is unacceptable, they pay $1500-$5000 for hardware and they have to change disks for a $40-$50 software title and the $1500 software title they have doesn’t require this? Something is screwy to them.
The premium you pay for a PC to play games on should come with added benefits such as.. not having to put in a damn cartridge.. sorry CD 😛 Consoles are recognized as having limited capabilities so swapping out cartridges err disks 😛 is seen as part of the machine. It’s not percieved that way on a PC, when it requires the disk every single person makes the logical leap of WTF?? Copy protection is a pain in my $@$#@#.
So there is a major point of pain regarding the PC. Another thing is that a PC lacks the social focus of console gaming, its hard to show off to your friends, its also hard to play with multiple people at the same screen. Not the end of the world but its a definite negative to the platform.
Lastly and this one is a big one, a game such as Assassin’s Creed or Mass Effect, or Burnout Paradise. All games with a sole focus on the single player experience (at the platform your playing on, not necessarily online) Either are not released on the PC or come months later. A typical hardcore gamer is going to have a fairly decent PC a (PS3 or Xbox 360 and more than likely a handheld of some sort) Now if a game such as Assassin’s Creed or Gears of War doesn’t come out for 6 months to a year after its launch on the PC wouldn’t you agree that the average person isn’t going to wait and will purchase the title for the console instead of the PC? Even though the PC version will have better graphics(since we’ve seen with WOW better graphics don’t really sell games) and maybe a couple more events within the game?
Top it off when in fact the games are released to the PC instead of it being treated like PC software, game publishers insist on antiquated “insert CD to play xxx” which doesn’t fly for PC owners. Let’s face it there are copy protection schemes out there that work, (direct2drive/steam/etc) that don’t involve disk swapping.
So a lot of the state of the PC gaming I think is the fault of the developers for not releasing at the same time, and not figuring out how to do copy protection that doesn’t involve installing a damn CD everytime.
What I’m curious about is anyone know what the sales figures on Bioshock are for console and Windows and what the digital distribution figures are? I think that game would tell us more about the state of gaming on the PC than these NPD numbers because of all the issue’s I’ve outlined here.
Hopefully there will always be developers out there who use the PC as a showcase for their technology (crysis thank you)
Sorry for so much but a number of ideas here that I wanted to express on this topic, all of which I think point why the numbers are low but leave out how many PC gamers feel frustrated.
PC gaming isn’t just casual games, WoW, and shooters those are just the things that happen to top the sales charts. I’m not sure that is really the core of the market as a whole, just the people that go to a store.
I would assume there is still much room for companies to profit, things like EVE (making more of a dent day by day), Steam (which now carries EVE), and Second Life.
PC gaming is one of the few formats the small guys have a shot at. Sins of a Solar Empire, is proof that small companies can make games that can compete with the bigger fish (not in sales but in quality).
I think core gamers see it that way because the games on console for core gamers are by and large not as deep as they were for PC. So they see their games slipping away. That’s where a lot of the aggro I see comes from anyway.
The point is that the core of the market is shifting.
Lots of developers now look at consoles first and the PC as an afterthought. IMO what killed the PC market was: Rampant piracy + rising development costs + lack of standardization + consoles with online connectivity.
Since the previous gen consoles lacked in online capability, all the expensive multiplayer games (read: FPSes) were developed for the PC first. That is not true anymore though–just look at units sold of Halo 3, COD4, and Crysis. Consoles are where it’s at now, even for FPSes.
Unless you’re making browser games or an MMO, consoles are just a more attractive target for medium-to-large-sized developers. I guess indies will always favor the PC because its an open platform with much lower entry costs. The long tail suggests that there is plenty of room on the PC for casual games, indie games, and small-budget niche games even if all the mainstream developers stopped porting their console titles over to PC (which I don’t think they’re going to do… PC is not worth developing for as a main target but its still worth porting to it to pick up a few extra sales, I guess).
When I look at that list, and moreso when I look at the list of top-selling PC games of all last year, the trend I see is open-ended, long-lasting games.
Perhaps that means PC gamers tend to be value shoppers, searching for the biggest bang for their buck. Or perhaps it means that PC gamers prefer games they can play their own way, at their own pace, etc.
But I don’t see anything in those charts that suggests an imminent shift in PC gaming. Sim games, RTS games, subscription MMOs, and the like seem to be doing alright on the PC… as they have been for years. They’ll do better if developers concentrate on making similarly expansive games more cheaply, such as by not trying to keep up with cutting edge PC technology. Of course, I’m sure you know more about their profit margins than I do.
I always wonder at rampant piracy being used as a scapegoat for PC sales. In the history of the PC, I can’t think of any time where there WASN’T rampant piracy.
Looking at this from 30,000 feet:
The general-purpose CPU is being integrated into more and more form factors, and as a result, the “PC” form factor is losing popularity.
Some of the traditional form factors are:
– Desktops
– Servers (as in blade servers) or really big desktops
– Notebooks
– Consoles
Some newer form factors are:
– UMPCs (the Eeeeeee being the most recently popular), and the console equivalent with the Nintendo DS
– Phones (like the iPhone and CE phones)
The PC losing its “gaming” edge is mostly the result of (a) LCD/Plasma TVs and (b) network access.
Five years ago, gaming systems worked on large TVs, but those TVs looked very blurry compared to monitors… so gamers just bought really big monitors for their desktops. Nowadays, TVs have great resolution, so gamers buy big TVs and play there, buying a notebook (instead of a desktop) for the non-gaming needs.
Network access has already been mentioned.
Does this mean that PC games will increasingly be oriented towards entertainment outside the home? (Such as at work?) Like casual games during one’s lunch hour?
And since consoles only really encourage large game developers (at the moment), PCs are the domain of the small developers… the long tail.
My first thought reading this is of many years ago when my uncle mailed me a lot of games for the C-64 with photocopied manuals. At the time I was so unaware that I just figured for some reason he had kept the books and only mailed me the games.
But what’s changed isn’t the rampant piracy. What’s changed is the ammount of money at risk on a single release and the perception of risk on the PC vs the consoles. Yes, there were always copies flying around, but now it’s easy to see that it’s happening a lot, and probably always has been. But an investor wants to see risk controled.
moo wrote:
In other words, failed and failing business models.
Morgan Ramsay: In other words, failed and failing business models.
Yes, but actually I think for people with a PC there is now so much competition from free non-hardcore online content, so it isn’t only the model. The situation is changing. For your average individual a game is an alternative to watching a movie or doing something else that covers the escapist needs. With a PC you have so many options for being entertained.
A console is a different beast, it creates a feeling of being wasted without new games. “I got to get some new games for my console.” It’s almost as if it is being neglected if you don’t have a dozen, you need a handful to justify the original investment. If you recieve a console as a gift, wouldn’t you purchase a few games to see what it is capable of?
The hobby-psychoanalysis of hardware…
All good points, but Jan or Feb numbers are going to exagerate the problem a little, no? Oct/Nov/Dec would include COD4 and other big Xmas launches.
I’m too lazy to look them up though! 🙂
Regardless, your point is still on the money. BTW, not only is Diner Dash old, it was supposedly reaching everyone via download, so is its place here a statement about teh health/stubbornness of retail?
Raph said:
> think core gamers see it that way because the games on console for core gamers are by and large not as deep as they were for PC
This is a point that often gets overlooked. Those PC/Console dual releases are nowhere near as sophisticated as they used to be. Remember sports games or driving games on the PC? Used to be incredibly deep. Console targets have made them far less sophisticated. This may be a good thing in how broadly they reach people now, but for some its a sad thing.
The challenge with these sorts of lists is that the gloom they portray at retail is not balanced by the money made by publishers themselves. I wish for a day when there’s a single unified list of titles sorted by how much money the make. This would include box sale and digital distribution sale and associated monthly fees. And it would allow for integrated placement of games that don’t have boxes at all.
This would provide great insight into the total potential revenue that can be made on the PC market when everyone can be a distributor versus how much money and opportunity can be had when console manufacturers are aggregators themselves, and rightly conscious of their own internal efforts.
There is no doubt that the vast majority of at-sale money goes to consoles, and it’s right for most companies to chase better console strategies. But with a far larger installed base reaching more parts of the world, and a much greater away of business models to be had, the PC gaming market is far from dead.
It just needs to be compared in the right ways.
Now that’s interesting. I would have thought hardcore gamers don’t care what a game looks like, because omg extreme, playing Pac-Man makes you a true gamer! Or something. Image, and all that. But you might be right.
…which makes me think of another thing. The next gen of gaming, being all casual and stuff, those games are actually pretty darn fun. But a hardcore gamer wouldn’t be caught dead playing those because “they’re not for them.” I think it’s mostly the stigma attached to it; the family games, how 60-year-olds play Bejewelled, 14-year-olds play Runescape, clearly these aren’t REAL games! But I love Bejewelled and Runescape, at the same time I’m liking me some WOW and Half-Life 2.
Okay people, the first person to market Chuzzle to the Halo crowd…wins!
Slyfeind, I think that is dead on.
My core point is more about the RETAIL market, Darniaq. That’s “PC gaming as we know it” to quote the Chrios Taylor statement that set all this off in the first place.
Slyfiend, I am definately a hardcore gamer, and I admit that most casual games are pretty darn fun… for about fifteen minutes, max. Hardcore developers learned long ago that gameplay alone is not enough to maintain interest in a game. That is why video games have become the story telling medium they are today.
That’s why I don’t often play casual games, not because “I wouldn’t be caught dead playing [them].” In fact, I love Orisinal games, Diner Dash, and have played many of the excellent Nancy Drew series of casual adventure games (long live adventure games!). However, many of the gameplay patterns in casual games are ones that I mastered as a child playing old Apogee shareware games, or, in the case of my console brethren, Mario, Tetris, etc.
So here’s my question: Will the casual gamers of today’s boom always be casual? Technically, the hardcore gamers of today started on what you might call “casual” games at the arcades and on early consoles. Yet, they grew in their experiences and mastery and demanded more depth and challenge. Unfortunately, I think the mass public was isolated along the way and a stigma was built around “gaming.” Perhaps this new generation are just “late bloomers?”
Raph wrote:
How many years before console gaming goes the same way? They already have internet access and a hard drive (albeit small) to store the downloads.
Are retail gaming stores a thing of the past, just like CD-music stores?
The only thing preventing this from happening is that the size of content keeps up with download speed. If a blu-ray DVD holds (15gb? 24 gb?) that are completely filled with eye-catching graphics, then I’ll have to got to the store and buy it (unless I have super-fast broadband or monumental patience). In 10 years, assuming broadband speeds increase, games will have to to be 150 GB to be worth buying in physical form.
Creating 15 gb of eye-catching graphics is much more expensive than 1 gb, so for retail gaming stores to stay in business, games MUST get exponentially more expensive to create, in line with the exponential growth of broadband speeds.
Was there ever any question that retail sales would start to go out (as we knew them)? The stores are small and carry only a small percentage of what’s available. Companies are fighting for space, and controlling it (this is bad for business). The internet was always going to grow to the point that it becomes the better retailer. Especially since it supports different points of sales, which is probably the one thing that people aren’t grasping. So, the question is, today with all the options, how can a list like this even be viable? Where is Runescape?
So, yeah, your point is correct Raph. Times they are a’changin’.
10/20 are Warcraft and Sim franchises. That’s pretty concentrated. I agree with more interest in markets beyond PC retail, particulary online distribution (and dollar amounts, ad revenue from online play, subscription models, etc.). I don’t even know how big a chunk of the market retail distribution is right now.
But…but…in Bejewelled 2, each level is a different alien planet! You’re exploring! IT’S SCI-FI! 🙂
Seriously though, yeah I can only play casual games in short spurts; usually during downtime while playing EverQuest, or waiting for downloads to complete. I don’t think all casual gamers will migrate to other games, but some certainly will. A lot of WOW players are new to MMOs, and Halo 3 marks the first FPS for many players. These people didn’t think they’d play such games, yet someone talked them into it.
But of course, there’s no way I’ll plop down $20 at Best Buy for the full version of Bejewelled 2.
I find it funny now that everyone is crying that the PC game industry is dying because crap like Crysis can’t sell a lot of copies. Come on that game is a very polished turd. Now if only some decent games were made the PC game industry would be strongly alive and kicking (see World of Warcraft, Blizzard et. al.)
WoW hit a serious concurrency slide in September of ’07 (disclaimer: unofficial warcraftrealms.com stats are being used for this tangent). They had nearly eroded their entire expansion bump 6 months later. Black Temple and summer play time seemed to give June a bump, but the slide eliminated that in two months and continued downward into September. Seems like ever since then, Blizzard has done an about-face on their previous lack of parity in reward structures for non-raid playstyles. Attunement/keying requirements have been lifted steadily and alternative advancement paths for solo and small group playstyles were added. It was shoehorned in and requires running recycled content on the PvE side and lagging two seasons behind on the PvP side, but it does wonders for casual BGing and dungeon running with friends.
The former exclusive ‘haves’ meanwhile (some, not all) collectively scream the equivalent of: all epics are belong to us.
The numbers since then have been on a steady rise, January was huge, possibly seeing 1m peak concurrency on the EU & US realms. I’m curious about February’s numbers to get a comparison to November since those months won’t be as swayed by holiday play time available. Of course, it could be none of this stuff has anything to do with it, I’m just an outsider after all :9.
However, I think its a fairly good analogy of what we’re also seeing on the wider scale of gaming.
What is retail?
PC Games Are Not Dead!
PC Games have been declaired dead more times than I can remeber!
Every time there is a new console, people predict that pc games are dead and then they
games industry releases tons of games that are Killer on the pc.
But the games as we know it, do need to change
Take a look at the Wii which has really shaken up the console world. By the same token you should say
all taditional gaming is dead. For even the console mega block busters cannot compete for long with the
web based games.For all the same reason PC Games are dead.
I love having media in my hands that i own. I hate not having physcial copy, its mine I own it an Nobody can take that away, And Games don’t die look at all the People bying old games On xbox and wii (albiet they are on online but if you got cool packs with good software (collectors editions you would get more. I think games sotres could be like amazon.
Heck I even own a copy of POP CAP chuzzle (although not with the push toy 🙁
I’m with the people who think that this is just a reflection of retail dying, and I particularly like the question of ‘how long until this happens to consoles?’, because when you look at it that way, PC gaming isn’t dying, it’s evolving ahead of the other mediums.
PC is moving to downloadable content through Steam, Fileplanet, Direct2Drive, and web based games, while consoles still require their customers to go to the store. Our business models may have to change to reflect reality, but it’s not a predictor of any tough times for the future of PC developers or gamers. The facts simply point out that everyone is getting their content without getting in their car.
@Slyfiend: As someone who has tried many times to try and get my Lineage 2 friends to come check out the Flash games on Kongregate, you are 1000% and a half correct about your assessment of how people judge casual games, web games, and anything that doesn’t require an XBox 360 or a sweet-ass new graphics card to play.
Still the biggestdown side to web content is that if not enough people are playing it is it going to be still available.Think of all the MMORPG’s that have gone the way of the dinosaure. Do those players have a way of still acessing that world?
NO They don’t.
Samething with online gamming. If someone deciedes to say not enough people are playing bang it is now gone!
This is why I Think we do not want distrributed games. If i can download and burn it to disk and use it with no issues great! IF not then I say Forget it!
I like playing older games from time to time (grate classics never die!)
A tear came to my eye reading that article, and I played through deus ex, simply because I had thought of it for no particular reason, at that time, and I would rather play that a hundred times over than go near Halo 3.
You know, Slyfeind made an interesting point without, perhaps, realizing it.
We all used to play all those old, primitive arcade games. Pac*Man, Space Invaders, etc… we played ’em lots. Embarrassingly lots.
Now, we have new primitive games. Bejewelled, Peggle, etc… and people are playing them lots. Embarrassingly lots.
Maybe it’s really just that the more things change, the more they stay the same?
@Argyle: what’s clear is that the hardcore AAA titles which used to cost a few million dollars to make (and now cost $30-$50 million to make) are not being made with the PC market foremost in mind anymore. The console versions of those titles are the cash cows for developers and publishers. for FPSes, they will still put out a shiny PC version, and for other genres they will still port the console version to PC to get a few extra sales. But as recently as 5 years ago there were lots of “PC developers” in the mainstream games industry. Nearly all of those have abandoned the PC now and are “console developers” instead.
This is NOT about the retail market dying. Retail is not dying, it is doing better than ever in the mainstream games market! CD stores are not dead either, and I’m always amazed to hear people claim this (I can think of 3 large CD stores within easy walking distance of my house. Oh, and 3 or 4 games stores too).
To get a pretty good idea why all the former “PC developers” are now “console developers”, read this recent rant by Michael Fitch (when Iron Lore shut down): http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=42663
I’ve been a gamer for many years, and all I’m playing these days is WoW and Sims. When I ponder why, a few things come to mind.
First of all, I rarely come across retail outlets selling PC games any more, and after a dismal experience with digital download, these days I tend to just mail order them. I can sympathize with the stores, who wants to keep a big inventory of profit losers sitting around getting dusty. And no, I don’t live in the boondocks, I live in a large city where EBX is down to two outlets (mostly selling console) and PC Express just held a going out of business sale.
Second, Sims and WoW have community. Many people don’t realize just how much player input is involved in Sims, but with thousands of people making meshes and skins and hacked objects and player written challenges (in addition to the stories posted on the official site), playing Sims opens you to this world of creative people sharing their characters and sets with each other. I also note that Sims and WoW have a lot of other female players, which brings me to my next point:
Women make up the largest market share of the gaming audience. We do not want to play games in which we are exposed to tiresome immature sexism or a “boys only” kind of environment. Ignoring us is fiscal suicide. Indulge us and we will pop a game to the best seller charts and stick with it, faithfully, for years. Dismissing a monstrously popular game like Sims as a boring casual game sounds a lot to me like being a Betamax repairman sneering at DVDs and claiming they’ll never catch on. /rant
When you have games like Sins of a Solar Empire selling 100k copies in it’s first week of launch, yet many have no clue what it is, I fail to see how PC games are dead.
I believe what we’re witnessing is the death of poor business. The music industry has and contiues to suffer from trying to sell hit singles as with the Mega-Publishers wishing to capitalize upon the next bag of sliced bread.
People don’t want hit singles, they want good albums at reasonable prices. And on the other hand we have games like Crysis…which was another attempt to be a hit single.
Pirating of intelectual properties will never cease. The term in its self has broad implications while many may never agree on all of the definitions. Would anyone have thought a game developer/publisher who openly admited and bragged about their game not having copy protection nor requiring the disc in the drive would have sold 100k copies in a single week – sold more then UT3 & Crysis combined!?! Can’t be true…
Stardock/IronClad is proving how to do it right with Sins of a Solar Empire.
The only comment, I feel I can make to this is that, SimCity Societies shouldn’t be considered SC5, it’s just one of those games with a name similarity but the devs all decided to pass the Peace Pipe which happened to be laced with Prozak and cheap crack before the made the game just to make a bit of money trying to deceive the player base. Typical EA strategy I know, but still, it’s a far cry from a true Sim City evolution, more like Sim city’s lil red haired cousin that should be locked in the attic.