Retail Sales of PC Games Drop 14% in 2008

I bet Nintendo was responsible for 99% of that.

It's true in 2008 was the first year I bought all my games online. It's more convenient.
Great sites are Steam, Gamersgate and DirectToDrive. Eventually this will happen with consoles. Digital Distribution is the future.

I haven't bought a game that was not on Steam for 10 months or so. I don't plan on doing in the future. There is just no reason to open yourself to the hassle of disks and annoying bothersome DRM (as opposed to seamless easy DRM like Steam).

I feel it's time that NPD stops reporting PC Sales numbers all together until they can do it accurately.
Spare us the doom and gloom statistics unless your statistics include every form of PC sales. Most people will only read headlines: "PC Sales Drop 14% in 2008" and assume the platform is dying further. NPD sales reports only hurt PC reputation further. While Steam sits by quitely raking in the money not ever telling just how much they made this year. If they just added Steam numbers this total would double most likely and that's from Steam alone.
Now if they add subscriptions from WoW and such and all of a sudden it's 2 billion everyone is going to say it's only because of WoW subscriptions the totals look better.
I think they shouldn't add the subscrption totals and just calculate total sales of all online distributors. If they want to tally subscriptions let them do it in a defferent section.
Once everything is added properly for digital distributions and Retail the PC numbers will look nice and healthy. Come on Valve, it's time to show just how strong PC gaming still is and stop being so silent about the millions and millions you are making from the platform.

gamestop sucks

Is there a reason why Valve does not share their numbers? I mean nothing specific but something like "x amount of games sold this month" would be cool to see.

Just a thought, do you think that PC game sales are down because people are too busy with their MMO?

I know people who schedule their time to play WoW/WAR on days they don't already have commitments for. Also, I know a lot of people consider a MMO an investment of sorts. They feel like they waste money if they don't play the game x amount of time since they paid their $15 a month for it.

That $2 billion figure for "digital distribution" in 2007 may be misleadingly large if it includes monthly WoW subscription dollars, which could be as much as $1.8 billion by themselves (10,000,000 subscribers X $15/month X 12 months). This would mean all other digital distribution on the PC accounts for as little as $200 million.

Seems like your usual shack bullshit reporting of nothing to me.

Note the use of language in this piece, the oh so specific "PC games at US retailers" vs "console software"...

This place could do with replacing the idiots who post news for it.

Don;t forget, when they say NPD does not included digital distribution, they do not mean internet retailers like Amazon, Play.com, ebay, etc. So I believe sales of PC ARE down year on year, because I do not believe STEAM and other digital sellers account for much of the market when compared to the Amazon's, etc of this world.

With fewer PC titles being released, with practically no PC only titles being released and with retailers giving up on PC games because they do not sell when console games continue to sell MORE through retail each year shows that this 'PC games are selling so many via digital distribution that they make up for retail's decline' is just not correct.

At best you can maybe half the numbers given, so that 14% decline becomes a 7% decline , and 2007's 6% decline was a 3% decline, but that, in my opinion is the best it can be, because there are too many other signs to show PC gaming is declining in general.

I might point out that I say this with a heavy heart as a 20+ year PC gamer who has never owned a console.

ROBOFROG IS PISSED!

Oh something is up with the number or percentage , 701 to 910 is a 23% decline in sales figures.

Enough about these facts and stuff, let's talk about how awesome the frog is on that box.

Thought for the day

If (Non-used) PC retail sales are going down and online PC sales are going up
when will (used) PC sales start to drop?

This may end up jumping over to console games in the near future

~D
<Tosses handgrenade and runs>

As far as the NPD knows, I bought 2 PC games this year. In reality, I bought about 15 PC games this year but only 2 from stores that NPD tracks. I think I'm a fairly typical PC game consumer at this point (i.e. I buy well less than half of my games from NPD trackable sources).

I don't understand why NPD even bother reporting these numbers when such a huge portion of the market is missing. At least now they are prefacing it by saying they don't track everything and that the numbers are "a reflection of a shifting of distribution channels" which is better, but still, I question the usefulness of this data. I understand that any data has some usefulness, but the usefulness of this data as a market comparison has to be quite limited.

Hmmm its odd how brick & mortar shops again and again miss trends. Book stores, music, movie and now game retailers. Its just history repeating. Only few television broadcasters have barely managed to make the leap.

I haven't bought a game in a store for years. I order everything online.

Last year, NPD claimed that falling retail sales of PC games were no cause for concern, as the decline was seen as "a reflection of a shifting of distribution channels."

Unless, of course, you work in retail sales where crying over the impact of piracy gets you sympathy from lawmakers.

Must be tough to be a living dinosaur.

I want to register my Red Alert 3 and Fallout 3 on steam!!!!!!!!!!!!

Shrinking floorspace kinda does that.

Also I never buy PC games on a whim, pretty much because of DRM, or wondering what 5th circle of hell I have to visit to get it to run properly. It doesn't help either the ONLY PC games you hear about are the really popular ones too.