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PC gaming accounting for about 5% of industry sales

March 27, 2008 in Industry News comments 8

PC game sales were responsible for $911 million of all industry sales last year, according to an MSNBC report. Total sales reached $18.8 billion, meaning PC games took 4.8 percent of the pie. This, of course, does not include the massively successful World of Warcraft subscription revenues.

"We’re making the barrier to entry higher than it needs to be, and that is really is up to the industry," [says Kristen Salvatore, editor-in-chief at PC Gamer magazine]. "We’re not doing a great job about educating people of how easy it is to get into this hobby."
chautemoc via msnbc.msn.com »
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  • -1
    jmac353 Mar 27, 08
    Well if it doesn't include the "Massively Successful World of Warcraft subscription revenues" then I'd say that percentage is pretty damn *bleep*ing useless.

    By January 08 (according to Wikipedia) there were 10 million WoW subscribers. So we take the 10 million, we multiply that by 15 dollars for just one month, then we multiply that by 12 for the 12 months in the year (just for the sake of simplicity let's assume all these people have been paying for accounts since the beginning of last year) and you get $1,800,000,000. Now there probably weren't 10 million users at the beginning of last year but that's besides the point, the point is, WoW brings in a huge amount of money. So let's ad that 1.8 billion to the 18.8 total and we get 20.6 total billion dollars in the industry last year. Divide 20.6 by 1.8 and you get 8.7%, then add the 4.8 percent and you get 13.5% of the industry sales in PC gaming.

    What's this supposed to prove? That PC gaming isn't as profitable as consoles? Well I sure would hope so, console gaming is much cheaper in the long run, but the real question that this article is trying to poise is, is PC gaming going to die? The simple answer to that question is. No.
    • 0
      chautemoc Mar 27, 08
      Wow does not equate all of PC gaming. WoW is making 10x as much as all of PC games are selling. If you're saying the state of the PC market is fine simply because of WoW, well..that's just foolish. WoW is fine, I don't think PC games as a whole are, at all. It's just one game. In a sense it's dangerous that it's so successful..it's kind of a monopoly, and probably decreases revenues throughout the PC market overall since people are spending so much time and money on WoW, they're less inclined as a whole to put that towards other PC games. If Super Mario Galaxy was selling great on the Wii and everything else was selling 10x less, would you say the Wii is successful? I wouldn't anyway, I would just say SMG is successful.

      I wasn't trying to pose that question necessarily. Everyone's going to take from it what they want. I'm happy when any questions are brought up.
      • 0
        iLLmatic Mar 27, 08
        Um, I think his only point was that if you're not going to include all the numbers, then any conclusion that you draw from them is null and void.
        • 0
          chautemoc Mar 27, 08
          Yes, I know, and my response explained why I disagreed.
      • -1
        jmac353 Mar 27, 08
        WoW does not equate all of PC gaming? You're absolutely right, what on earth was that comment supposed to prove?

        No one game is all of the industry or a section of the industry. That comment has ZERO relevance. I think you meant something else, at least I hope you did, because that was just a useless comment.

        Point is, there's no reason to leave it out.
  • 1
    iLLmatic Mar 27, 08
    I guess I can see why they wouldn't include subscription revenue, since its not an actual game or content purchase, but still, I would think it should be included in the industry's overall profits.

    That being said, my god, has it became this bad for PC gaming? Of all companies, EPIC is even focusing Unreal Engine 4 on console development.
  • -1
    jmac353 Mar 27, 08
    Last year was only bad because it marked the growing of the new console wars. The Wii and the PS3 started to hit their stride. Now over the next couple of years all 3 consoles will start to whither and PC gaming will of course take the lead in technology yet again, yielding awesome PC games as usual and much higher sales than that of last years.

    Simple.
  • -1
    jmac353 Mar 29, 08
    I love how I get thumbed down just for being me. People are *bleep*ing stupid.

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