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Pugnate
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Kinda Depressing:
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/02/13/gears-of-war-creator-update/
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/02/13/gears-of-war-creator-update/
If Gears of War sells 4 million on the 360 and a year later sells 1 million on the PC, then is that really bad considering most people have already played it?
Secondly you take UT3 and you realize that it was basically the same game in a shiny new engine. The singleplayer was an embarrassing joke.
http://www.thesimexchange.com/search.php?string=unreal+tournament+2007
As you can see, UT3 sold virtually the same on PS3 and the PC, despite the PS3 market having far fewer shooters. So the point is, maybe there was something wrong with the game? In the end, yes, we do still have a problem here, but I don't think UT3 was that good of a game to begin with.
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/02/13/gears-of-war-creator-update/
“I think people would rather make a game that sells 4.5 million copies than a million and “Gears†is at 4.5 million right now on the 360. I think the PC is just in disarray… what’s driving the PC right now is ‘Sims’-type games and ‘WoW‘ and a lot of stuff that’s in a web-based interface. You just click on it and play it. That’s the direction PC is evolving into So for me, the PC is kind of the secondary part of what we’re doing. It’s important for us, but right now making AAA games on consoles is where we’re at.â€
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/02/13/gears-of-war-creator-update/
If Gears of War sells 4 million on the 360 and a year later sells 1 million on the PC, then is that really bad considering most people have already played it?
Secondly you take UT3 and you realize that it was basically the same game in a shiny new engine. The singleplayer was an embarrassing joke.
http://www.thesimexchange.com/search.php?string=unreal+tournament+2007
As you can see, UT3 sold virtually the same on PS3 and the PC, despite the PS3 market having far fewer shooters. So the point is, maybe there was something wrong with the game? In the end, yes, we do still have a problem here, but I don't think UT3 was that good of a game to begin with.
Too big sig. 500x80 plzkthx -- Echo
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PC gaming by and large is World of Simcraft.
Which is why Sins of a Solar Empire is so great. It feels like a last bastion of PC gaming.
What will be interesting is what numbers UT3 pulls on the 360.
3rd person shooters I think are less fun to play on the computer as well as 3rd person action adventure games (DMC, GOW, etc.) because of the control scheme, but the PC is better for for RTS style games, MMOs etc.
FPS shooters are good on both.
Also requisite 'people care too much about cliffyb' comment.
Hold on.
I think Bioshock, World in Conflict, CoD4, all the Orange Box games, Sins of a Solar Empire, Supreme Commander, and pretty much every mod ever deflate his argument no?
He's looking at the PC gaming market through a tube which is focused primarily on console-to-PC ports. What did he expect Gears to sell? More than 4.5 million? A year after it was released? After everyone had played it?
I know the guy has been a bit out there in the past, but lets take this latest bit of moaning with a bit of salt
I'm pretty sure Bioshock and COD4 sold better on the console than on the PC. That's his point.
All of this.
Alright, I won't deny that console has a much large sale rate than PC. That's what it was made for, the mass market.
But I still don't think his 'PC gaming in disarray' argument doesn't hold water. There has never been a better time for PC gaming. There is such a large selection of games, a wider scope than the consoles I'd say, and more coming that to say anything besides "The PC gaming market is on the up and up" just sounds silly
"THIS IS AN OUTRAGE, HOW CAN HE SAY THIS?"
Well, the issue with PC gaming is that certain genres don't seem to be performing as well as they used to; particularly shooters, due to increased competition from consoles and excessive system requirements. For his company's particular niche, pure console development looks like it would be a better financial move. Other PC developers don't have this problem, because they have a different philosophy/genre/whatever. PC gaming isn't dead, or even dying, but it is having issues in some previously strong areas.
Valve seem to be doing great. They're almost like the anti-Epic.
Seems like Epic doesn't really want to change its ways. To compare to Valve again, Valve have evolved and changed their engine to be suited to a wide range of computer specs, and it still looks great. Epic seems primarily concerned with just making a good looking game (albeit the same looking good game). If you throw in every latest graphical tweak, pump up the polygons to insane levels, and expect everyone on the PC to instantly go out and buy it regardless of their comp specs, then yes the console market is for you.
I don't have a problem with that so much as him equating to the PC market to MMOs, family games, and browser stuff just because his company (which has had great success on the PC up until Gears and UT3) had bad PC sales on games that were made for consoles
2 Million of those are people making a 2nd account to get themselves a healer to follow them around. :P
PC sales - 77k
XBox 360 sales - 490k
That's over 6 times as many sales on the 360 than on the PC. I imagine there's many reasons behind this, but I'd imagine the two biggest ones would be piracy (which is rampant on the PC, but not so much on the console side, at least outside of Asia) and just the fact that consoles are so much more popular in the US. This isn't the case everywhere: PC games tend to do very well in Europe and when I was living in Taiwan, I noticed that PC games were substantially more popular than console games (but there, you run into serious piracy problems).
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
*This really isn't the flamebait it sounds like.
if your buying a graphics card every year or even every couple years, that's pretty idiotic especially paying 500 bucks, I see cards that will do fine almost every game that's released for around 200 bucks but you don't even have to pay that every couple years, at least we know your argument is totally wrong.
I think this is a mistake for epic to do in some ways but as long as they still release the games for PC than it's all good.
Yes. Yes it is whether you intended it or not.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Does that count Steam purchases? I'm pretty sure Bioshock stayed at the top-seller list in Steam for a few months.
I am almost 100% sure that it doesn't include Steam Purchases because from everything that i've read is it's only retail purchases of PC games since there's not really any numbers released through digital distrubution.
Well, it's meant at saying that the xbox360 market is largely 20-30 male, who like playing shooters. If you've got a 10 million install base that's mostly that, it's not surprising that games that will appeal to 20-30 year old males that like shooting each other will be wildly successful.
I don't think any of the other consoles are as heavily dominated by that single demographic, although Wii mom's might be close.
I don't think piracy is a significant enough problem to explain a gap that big. It is far more likely the system requirements were just too high (I know my X850 Pro couldn't run it at all, because the game does not seem to accept any AGP cards).
Other companies like Valve (as Prosthetic mentioned) and Blizzard have completely side-stepped the problem by taking an artistry-over-fidelity approach to their graphics that is paying off to an almost alarming degree. That said, there is still a demand for games with extremely advanced graphics; they just don't sell well enough on PC to justify the expense. This is one area where consoles are taking a big chunk out of PC gaming. For a company like Epic, which takes a fidelity-over-artistry approach, the move is completely natural.
Cliffy's comments were a bit over-generalized though. Somehow I doubt Mike Morhaime or Gabe Newell are thinking the same thing.
And that's fine. But stating it as simply "a giant demograph full of easy to please gamers" is asking for a bitch-fest, disclaimer or not.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Yeah, that's what I thought. Now I'm not saying that that will make up for the 400K difference, but I'm sure it's not nearly as high as a 6:1 ratio as it seems.
I agree, I think it's alot closer than anyone actually thinks.
Which gets me thinking - Why doesn't Steam release their sales numbers? Are they afraid it might spark the industry to come up with a competitor? It seems odd.
Various theories*
Steam sales are actually quite small
Publishers don't want to annoy retail
Developers want to keep the rights to online distribution, don't want to let Publishers know how much business they're losing if they'll agree to retail only deals
Steam sales are actually huge, but Valve doesn't want to awaken the sleaping beasts of EA/Microsoft etc.
I mean, there's a lot of reasons not to release the figures, and not many reasons apart from blowing your own horn to release them, and as a private company (I think) even that is a pointless exercise.
If Gears had been initially hyped and released for the PC, it would have sold well, because it was a great game. UT3 is not the same caliber of game as Gears.
PSN:RevDrGalactus/NN:RevDrGalactus/Steam
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/02/07/steam-hits-15-million-users/
Steam has 15 million active users.
Yes
15
Million.
Xbox 360 has sold 17 million worldwide.
So that's pretty comparable, no?
The two numbers aren't really comparable. There are certainly more PCs than Xbox 360s, and you never have to pay for STEAM. It's pretty meaningless to draw any conclusions out of that.
iirc blizzard records 'accounts' as active accounts and individual billing addresses.
so conceivably the amount of people playing wow could be a lot higher or a lot lower than 10 million. there is no way to accurately find out though, as is the nature of mmos.
i had two accounts when i played. i now have none.
Steam doesn't cost 300 dollars. In fact, Steam is free.
They should release the number of users, that have spent over a certain amount.
PSN:Hakira__
Limed because it's a big deal
Sure, retail sales are puny, but I would love to see how the Steam sales (and hey, throw in some piracy figures, especially on a single player only game) close that gap.
Yes, if you like to run it on thin air.