I learned a long time ago to ignore anyone who hailed the death of the PC. Surely by now, the PCs detractors have learned that the PC as a gaming platform is never really dead, it just evolves.
Despite ample irrefutable evidence to the contrary, every year without fail someone wheels out the old chestnut: “The PC is dead.”
This year will be no different. In fact, MCV reported that PC boxed sales have declined a record amount over the course of last year. Going on old logic this would see to indicate that the old chestnut might just turn out to be true this time. However, anyone who would suggest that would be a fool.
PC gaming is seeing a definite shift away from physical product. There are several reasons for this and all of them are excellent reasons to become a PC gamer (if you haven’t already).
The first and most telling reason is the rise of digital downloads. With Steam leading the way, many seasoned PC gamers have made the switch from buying boxed discs to digital downloads. In fact, Steam has made PC games terrifyingly easy to purchase. Once your credit card details are stored on Valve’s servers, it takes just three clicks to buy a PC game; just a short wait for the game to download, and it is yours for life.
Coupled with the ridiculous ease of purchasing, Steam also has the lead on the crazy sales. They regularly slash titles sometimes as much as 80-90 percent, allowing canny Steam customers to make a killing on PC games. I myself purchased Torchlight (3.49 GBP), Left 4 Dead Game of the Year Edition and Red Faction Guerilla (both for 6.79 GBP) over the Christmas period and there was much more there for people to splash out on.
Daryl Still, 1C’s director of international sales, said to MCV that PC games sales would be predominantly digital by 2011.
This puts everything in the right perspective. Right now, games charts are only measured on retail sales alone. The PC sales may be on decline at retail but Steam and their competitors have yet to submit their sales figures to the likes of NPD and ChartTrack. This will start to change this year in the UK as ChartTrack has struck a deal with some digital download services to integrate their PC sales figures into the UK charts. Steam, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are still yet to agree to submit their figures but based on the success of ChartTrack’s initial trials then deals may be struck.
Digital downloads were the big theme of 2009 and it will interesting to see just how the addition of downloads will affect the UK games charts.
This is not the only area where the PC is changing and thriving. In fact the PC’s main strength currently is the MMO market. Obviously, World of Warcraft is huge and continually expanding but other MMOs are catching up. China is a massive market for MMO games and EA Sports announced earlier this year betas of Tiger Woods Online and FIFA Online 2 to be tested there. NCSoft’s Aion launched very successfully in the Far East and the West this year, yet again showing the strength of the PC as a worldwide games platform.
Sneaking in quietly are the free-to-play browser based games. Bigpoint, OGPlanet and the very stealthy Runescape developers Jagex are all seeing amazing volumes of players. Jagex are especially surprising as they refuse, point blank, to engage in marketing. Runescape in particular is still going strong almost into its tenth year making the Cambridge-based developer/publisher extremely happy.
Yet again, the PC has the chops to silence the critics and does it without the pomp and ceremony associated with the soap-operatic console market.
The PC has been around for a long time. It has seen off the PlayStation and PlayStation 2, the NES and Super NES. It has pre-empted the online gaming revolution with DOOM, 3D gaming with Quake, and has constantly been the hardware benchmark that the consoles continually aspire to.
Retail sales are down. Who cares? The PC is still going strong and don’t let anyone say different.
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