The State of PC Gaming in 2008

[Ginger_Ale]

Two quality articles that address the nature of PC gaming have been published recently. The first covers a presentation given by Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock, at the currently-underway Game Developers Conference 2009 in San Francisco. With the title "PC Games Still Viable", it describes the current PC gaming market and looks towards the future:

"First-person shooters are not dominating the PC market," said Wardell in defense of his company's preferred genre. "You'd think that strategy games are a niche. They're not. Civilization IV would kick the butt of almost every FPS in terms of actual sales." [...]

The average hardcore gamer is also over the age of 25, which Wardell believes can translate into a lower-than-average piracy rate.

"The piracy rate with hardcore gamers, believe it or not, tends to be less," he said. "The reality is that people who are 25 or older don't [mind paying for games], because they have what are called 'jobs.'" [...]

"As it turns out, multiplayer is not as hot of a thing as we thought. Of people who are into strategy games, they tend to want to have that single player experience, which is kind of nice."

The second publication is entitled "The PC Gaming Industry in 2008" (download it directly here) and written by the PC Gaming Alliance. A 33-page PDF report, it focuses primarily on major trends in PC games as well as their influence in developing countries:

• The PC is the largest single platform for games with annual worldwide revenue of about $11 billion. This is more thanany of the console and portable systems from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.
• In emerging markets such as Asia and Eastern Europe the PC has become the de facto platform of choice for games as console systems have not had major penetration in most countries.
• Even in North America and Western Europe the PC is the leading single platform for games with over $6 billion in combined revenue from those markets.
• Broadband penetration has been a key driver of growth and revenue growth for PC games, and is directly tied to growth in broadband penetration.

 

[Abaddon]

Interesting insight. I hope they take this and develope games under these ideas. Not get swept along on mass-market-apealability-ness

 

[MqsTout]

DRM by the publishers, coupled with sub-par repeat titles that PC gamers don't want (that console gamers do), and poor, bug-ridden console-to-PC ports are what hurt PC gaming more than anything.

 

[Arlborn]

DRM by the publishers, coupled with sub-par repeat titles that PC gamers don't want (that console gamers do), and poor, bug-ridden console-to-PC ports are what hurt PC gaming more than anything.

Exactly.


Nice site by the way(the first). The article about Hellgate:London, which I could click from a banner in the right part of the site, gave me quite the (un)pleasent memories! Flagshipped indeed!

 

[Monthar]

Some good info in those articles. I e-mailed them to my "Game Design: Intro to the Industry" professor.