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View Full Version : PC sales only a fraction of todays gaming market.


rudedog
01-28-2008, 08:20 AM
The North American video game industry generated $18.85 billion in revenue for 2007l. The PC portion of that was a mere $910.7 million, close to 14%.

With that said, we the PC gamers make up a very small sliver of the overall gaming sales developers and publishers see.

If it weren't for the fact that they have to develop on the PC we might be in trouble. The only issues we are starting to see are really bad ports. An exception to that rule, is Call of Duty 4 (as far as we are concerned - Boishock was another great PC game) as it places number 4 in overall PC game sakes. IW has done a tremendous job of getting the PC side of that game right. - kudos to them :salute:

Lets hope that other developers realize that it only takes a small bit of planning to keep supporting the PC side of their games. If they do a good port we all win, the customers and developers.

Here are the numbers based on PC sales for 2007. Also note that Call of Duty 4 was released late in 2007, which in itself is remarkable.
World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade (Blizzard Entertainment) - 2.25 million
World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment) - 914,000
The Sims 2 Seasons Expansion Pack (EA Maxis) - 433,000
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Infinity Ward) 383,000
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (EA Los Angeles) - 343,000
Sim City 4 Deluxe (Maxis) - 284,000
The Sims 2 (Maxis) - 281,000
The Sims 2 Bon Voyage Expansion Pack (Maxis) - 271,000
Age of Empires III (Ensemble Studios) - 259,000
The Sims 2 Pets Expansion Pack (Maxis) - 236,000It seems that the only title EA can do right is the Sims with an impressive 50% of the overall slots in the top 10 game sales of 2007. Someone should get those guys working on the next FPS.

I would also point out these numbers do not take into account online sales like Valve's Steam and EA's Downloader. I have no idea why they still don't include those numbers. With Valve being a privatily held company, we are not going to see their overall sales numbers based on steam.

- Numbers sourced from shacknews (http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/50939)

Neil
01-28-2008, 10:09 AM
Yeah it is impressive that despite CoD4 was released late 2007 and the fact that there is quite a number of cracked copies being downloaded that it has done so well in the past few months.

2 thumbs up for Infinity Ward for the amount of work and support they have put into this title.

rudedog
01-28-2008, 10:21 AM
Neil you bring up a very good point. Look at the position this game is in (based on this NPD data) and then remember 402's little rant about piracy.

While piracey sucks, they are still doing a great job on "the list" and until we know for sure what those numbers are we can only speculate.

TBH, 402 got a lot of press (good and bad) from his comments. I don't think he will be saying anything else on the subject.

JIMBOUK
01-28-2008, 11:57 AM
Hi all....check this out about cod4 2007 sales http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7213009.stm