Remember the recent story about the lackluster revenue generated by PC games? NVIDIA's Roy Taylor pitched in back then, pointing out that piracy was/is a major factor dragging down PC revenues. Others... they were not so sure, as can be seen in the related forum thread.

Roy Taylor dropped by at YouGamers, continuing the discussion of this subject by posting a new blog entry:

Looks like Roy did some research, and agrees with my take on the subject from a few weeks back. People are just not so interested in picking up boxes from retailers as they used to be, and there are many other places where people can spend their gaming dollars.

Roy also repeats what most of PC gamers already knew: STEAM-style digital download services are the future.

And, as a free bonus not mentioned by Roy, Steam's integrated anti-piracy feature is the most effective yet unintrusive solution available today. Instead of fiddling around with CD keys and DVD checks, you only need to perform a simple online authentication to play. Sure, pirates have cracked STEAM games as well, but doing so removes the added value of seamless automatic patching and STEAM community features, and there is no availability advantage. Boxes are known to get pirated off the distribution chain with torrents appearing before you can buy the game from a store. Pirated copies of STEAM games are never available before the paying customers can get their hands on them.

On a related note - Dell, Intel, AMD, Microsoft, EPIC Games, Activision and NVIDIA announced the PC Gaming Alliance at the recent GDC event. PC Gaming Alliance is working towards fixing the apparent problems with PC market today:

(Source: PC Gaming Alliance)

...and the CTO of PC Gaming Alliance is none other than Roy Taylor from NVIDIA. All this is good news for PC gamers as the problems of the PC market are being tackled head-on. Getting solid, comprehensive statistics about the whole PC games market is an important part of that.

Comments

	zed1138 2008-02-28 #1 I can't possibly imagine him publicly stating anything else.
	Jarnis 2008-02-28 #2 Well, earlier he did comment that Piracy was the major culprit for apparent PC gaming woes. It seems that his new blog blames inaccurate statistics instead of piracy, and includes some evidence to back that claim.
	Neeyik 2008-02-28 #3 Roy's comments are very good but they don't really explain why the main PC game publishers have all suffered a drop in PC games revenue in this fiscal year (and their figures will, of course, include online sales) (and in a few cases, a sustained drop over several years). What we really need to see our the revenue figures for titles purchased exclusively through digital distribution compared to the total revenue for any one publisher: it will at least show whether that particular companies fortunes have successfully shifted away from retail stores, at the least.
	Roy_Taylor 2008-02-28 #4 hi Neeyik, thanks for the comment. I wondered if someone would point to that. I read that with interest too but as Nick wrote, the data was somewhat hard to get at inside of the reports he looked into. For example subscription revenues dont show as PC game sales. The difficulty right now is that 98% of the data needed is unavailable. For example Valve is private and doesnt publish actual numbers and nor can you get the revenues for Direct3Drive. I am heading a sub-committe for the PCGA to look into this issue and together with representatives from the other members we are going to try and solve it. Please do keep the comments coming. zed1138, you are quite right I DO have a vested interest in PC gaming but that doesnt mean that anything isnt true, does it? ;-) Jarnis, piracy IS also a major problem as well. When you add poor reporting and piracy together it helps explain why PC gaming hardware sales (gaming PC, notebooks, components) are in great shape (SLI club membership keeps growing every month). I believe the industry and users need to get behind making piracy socially unacceptable the same way that drink-driving did. But I'll save that for another post.
	Unregistered 2008-02-28 #5 I've always been a PC gamer; I once had 30 PC games and no personal computer of my own. First few games that peeked my interest was Diablo (1) and Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall. I presently own over 100+ titles; feel free to browse most of them at www.larrytolman.com (under Computer Games). There was another thread somewhere about the state of PC Gaming too. I pointed out that for the year 2007 I bought at least 20 titles and spent over 500 dollars. I really dont know how people do it but apparently they do; getting full games without the need of a CD Key or rather they even have a program that auto generates a CD Key, how this is done is beyond me. My friend recently got Crysis; hacked however for some odd reason he ended up having to get a real copy. I heard that Crysis sales were low, which was surprising to me but who knows if people spent that much money on public relations. I know one game that got a lot of fame and this is probably due to having major commericials and such everywhere was "Assassins Creed"; plus people said it helped to have a HOT female publisher ROFL; however that wasnt what made me want this game. Ever play Thief: The Dark Project, I always wanted to scale walls in that game and guess what; I got my chance with Assassins Creed, I bought it for PS3 and I cant wait til it comes out for PC so I can see the graphical difference. Anyways whats also suprising is that since Windows Vista got released and even a few months after; everyone talks about how the PC gaming world is dying. What i dont understand is that I thought Microsoft had one good intention; Vista=Keep PC Gaming Alive. They have that slogan 'Games for Windows" they have a lot of built in features for those into PC Gaming they said retailers would have a section dedicated to "Games for Windows" and while it worked like the first 2 months after Vista was released I have not seen much anymore. But yeah as you or someone else pointed out; theres a lot of MMORPGs today; stuff from Lord of the Rings Online to EverQuest to World of Warcraft even to EVE and theres a still a decent number coming. That there is a decent way to show how PC sales are going down simply because you take the game price of 49.99 and with online games they hardly release expansions (take for instance World of Warcraft); all they get is the monthly income people put into the game; and we all know that the monthly cost is to keep the servers happy lol Anyways I once read an article saying that MMMORPGs were taking over the world (sort of speak) and in a sense thats what it seems; as the article points out theres over 10million subscribers to WoW; thats 10million x 15.00 (sorry for my rambling)
	NukemNazi 2008-02-28 #6 Wow, thanks for the post Roy. Didn't NPD just recently acknowledge on the record that they didn't track digital distributions? It was already a well know theory/fact anyway, but I found it interesting that they did infact admit it. Is Steamworks going to possibly help alleviate this problem some? When Activision/Blizzard was recently from some of their numbers were released. If I recall correctly wasn't like 1.29 billion or something in revenues and over a 1/2 billion in profit? That alone is a ridiclous amount for one company. Neeyik that post you made recently though, the downard decline seemed to concide with the quality of games a publisher released for the PC market. Actvision's, for example, quality releases for the PC steadily went down and so did their sales, did it not? I think the biggest thing right now is Microsoft's own success into the console market has crubbed their own enthusiam into actually worrying about the PC market so much. Developers can potiental make more money on the console market, so people are just excusing theirself from the PC development. Even though they can still make a profit on the PC market; its just possibly less of a profit. I mean look out how many developer's over just the past few years have changed their tune: Peter Molyneux/Loinhead, Mark Rein's out spoken comments as well/Epic, etc. Priacy is effecting all software not just PC games and any of us that do care won't do it and won't promote it. I am willing to bet though, as most of us probably are, the tracking and analyzing on just how much priacy is happening is being fudged. This is stating the obvious, but its still worth stating. BTW: Blizzard's profits are not 10 million x $15.00 a pop. In China for example the price of monthly subscriptions may only be more like $2.00 a month. Most of the subscription fees of MMOs are subject to the scales of encomy of the country they are charging prices for.
	mondena 2008-02-29 #7 i'm not sure why soo many people don't think piracy is that big of a problem. i have been to lots of different LANs in my life, most of them smaller scale (less then 20 people), and i would estimate that the people that i have met, and the games of theirs that i have seen that at least 60% of the games are pirated. while i would certainly never say that i think all of those represent lost sales, in fact i would think only a small amount of them are lost sales, they are still in fact lost sales. for every one guy i know that owns 50+ PC games, i know 5-10 others who have that many burned. Now most people seem to have some retail and some pirated, and i would also say that most of the people with pirated copies do not play online games much. as well i have sold computers for years as a hobby, and there are lots of PC gamers out there who have never been on forums like this, and don't have involvement with the online community nor did they directly download a game. so to keep track of the numbers from people like this would be nearly impossible since they don't directly download, and they don't play online or interact with only PC gaming forums. i have been PC gaming for about 15 years now, and over 10 years ago when i was in high school i would guess half my games were pirated as well. and only at about the age of 18-20 did i mature enough to say, even if i'm not going to be punished i'm not going to steal, and i'm going to support those that make the games i enjoy. since then i have only bought games and it doesn't take too many years to have a good collection of games. however i still work with high school students, and at least here, i would say that the majority of high school PC gamers play with pirated games, and i would estimate that only half of my peers over the last 15 years have also started buying their games. so i think piracy is a huge issue, because i see it in the PC gamers around me. and i have met quite a few different crowds of PC gamers and these numbers seem fairly common in my experience. obviously not ever pirated copy is a sale, but there is a lot less motivation for people to buy any games if they can get them for "free"
	NukemNazi 2008-02-29 #8 Your probably right, speaking of the above post, it just may be that bad. In my case though, I go to a more prestigious university for basically game design more or less, just to keep it simple. The few that do come through the door doing anykind of piracy are heavily pressured into understanding the paradox of exactly what they are doing. Why in the world would someone work hard enough to make it to a master's level of education, graduate school, wanting to make games and pirate other peoples' games? I guess you see the contridiction in that, so the environment I am in; it just doesn't happen near as often as your environment. Now, I personally frown upon it towards anybody I meet. Maybe some people don't like that pushy attitude, but people wouldn't like random people stealing money out of their check. Especially if its random people they could do nothing about. I wish more people could see it that way and probably would if they could see the incredible amount of work that goes into game development.
	Lith1um 2008-02-29 #9 I don't condone or participate in piracy, never have and never will. But myself, I find the gaming industry hypocritical. When their income levels drop they suddenly develop great concern for the industry. But for the last 10 years, I haven't seen them take one friggin' move towards shutting down any of the sites that sell the hax that ruin the online gaming experience of so many players. CoD4 is one recent game that comes to mind. Every idiot can find hacks with a simple google search, where are the gaming industry lawyers?
	mondena 2008-02-29 #10 Quote: Originally Posted by NukemNazi Your probably right, speaking of the above post, it just may be that bad. In my case though, I go to a more prestigious university for basically game design more or less, just to keep it simple. The few that do come through the door doing anykind of piracy are heavily pressured into understanding the paradox of exactly what they are doing. Why in the world would someone work hard enough to make it to a master's level of education, graduate school, wanting to make games and pirate other peoples' games? I guess you see the contridiction in that, so the environment I am in; it just doesn't happen near as often as your environment. Now, I personally frown upon it towards anybody I meet. Maybe some people don't like that pushy attitude, but people wouldn't like random people stealing money out of their check. Especially if its random people they could do nothing about. I wish more people could see it that way and probably would if they could see the incredible amount of work that goes into game development. yeah i totally agree with you, the more that people frown on piracy, the less people will do it, and i agree that education plays a role in changing behaviors. sadly in our world, there are so many places that have much bigger issues that need to be address and need education. as much as i am against piracy, many countries in our world have much bigger problems like poverty, war, oppression, and racism. and these things need education, money, time, and energy to change as well. in light of these things i hope countries choose to address them first.
	Jarnis 2008-02-29 #11 My personal opinion on piracy is that it will continue to be a problem as long as it's a better deal. Compare the situation for a "retail" boxed game. Retail copy: - Arrives usually late - especially in non-US markets. - Riddled with DVD checks and other intrusive "anti-piracy measures". - Costs money(!) - Is legal. Pirate copy: - Arrives early - usually if the game is a "big" title, everyone obviously wants to play it *now*. Torrent copy is usually the first place where it's available - legally or illegally. - No DVD checks, can be installed by just mounting an image, so no need to even have an optical drive. It "just works". - Doesn't cost money. - Is illegal. When your average gamer - especially younger one - looks at this comparison, pirate copy wins hands down just because of the price difference. But the major issue is that there are other downsides that a paying customer has to endure even if they part with their cash. DVD checks and the all-important delay in getting the game. US gamers might not consider this to be such a huge problem, but it can often take a week or two to get the game to a store shelf in a remote corner of Europe. Granted, distributors *are* getting better at this, but when it's a major game that everyone wants to play *now* (and some people are playing, and yapping about on the Internet), a single extra day of delay can feel like an eternity - and a torrent is just a few clicks (and couple of hours of download) away... The only way to make a dent at the issue is to fix the equation. Compare the situation with a digitally distributed game (in this example, think STEAM) STEAM-published game: - Available immediately on the second it's officially launched. You can often pre-load most of the data in advance to ensure that you don't have to wait for five gigabytes to trickle down after the launch. - No DVD checks, no need to fiddle with boxes and optical discs. Just works. Requires Internet connection/login to authenticate. - Offers community features and convenience of auto-patching. - Soon also offers achievement system similar to LIVE (already true for Valve's games) - Costs money. - Is legal. Pirate copy of a STEAM-published game: - Arrives later - assuming no copies from leaked retail discs end up floating around, STEAM-published game can't be pirated before the paying customers (all of them) already have access and are happily playing. - No DVD checks, but usually the install procedure is somewhat convoluted due to the hacks required to make the game work (depends on the game). Requires Internet anyway to get the copy. - No community features or auto-patching via STEAM. - Won't offer achievements. - Doesn't cost money. - Is illegal. Assuming publishers can ditch the silly "staggered" worldwide launches and don't feel like ripping off non-US customers with too obvious tiered pricing, STEAM is the tool that will actually make a dent in piracy simply because it fixes the broken equation of retail vs pirate copy so that you are actually being offered a better deal in return of paying for the game. Retail boxes constantly offer a worse deal, even if you could walk to a store and pick one up for free. Now it all depends on how digital distributors package their offerings. Direct2Drive is already on my shitlist for refusing to sell their wares to Europeans. I'm not entirely sure if it's true for all the games they sell, but I've visited them couple of times with the intent to purchase a game, only to find out they won't sell it to me because I don't have an US billing address. STEAM is much better in this regard, but even they have sometimes faltered on this (see: COD4 pricing US/Euro, Magically Changing Euro Pricing on Tomb Raider: Anniversary, and some region-specific availability issues). So far the only time I didn't get what I wanted from STEAM was when I tried to purchase COD4 (their Euro price was considerably more expensive than getting a box), and in that specific case I don't blame STEAM. I blame Activision for being clueless idiots on pricing. Personally I hope that STEAM & Direct2Drive and their like would grow a spine and tell publishers that they won't shift their wares unless; - It's a simultaneous worldwide launch. - Game available for purchase worldwide, no region lockouts. - Equal pricing before taxes - at least across US-EU-Australia markets. If the publishers want to sell cheaper in China, India etc. in local languages, that's fine. Selling the same English-language game at almost twice the price to Europeans is a rip-off. I'll accept a VAT on top of the tax-free US price (I blame European Union for that), but as soon as it starts crawling up from there, I cry foul. STEAM is close, but they have bowed to publisher pressure of zoning the customers into regions in some cases. Region-specific publishing and pricing is nothing but a scheme to rip off more money in markets that "can afford it". It's especially pronounced these days with USD-EUR exchange rate being what it is. I personally have skipped a ton of Xbox 360 games because local stores ask for 70 Euros for something that costs 60 USD in the US (Example: Xbox 360 Mass Effect). Even if you add our VAT (22% in the case of Finland) on top of the USD price, it's only 73,20 USD - approximately 49 Euros. The only reason I'm paying 70 Euros instead of 50 Euros for a Xbox 360 title is publisher/distributor greed and region lockouts.
	Roy_Taylor 2008-02-29 #12 Some great feedback here guys, thank you. I promise you that your comments are being read and noted. I am working on a blog about piracy now so keep it coming.
	BandofBrothers 2008-02-29 #13 The 2 things that annoy me the most personally are: 1) Staggered release dates (having to wait 1-2 months sometimes for the US games to come to the UK, and when they do, they cost more) 2) As others have said here, the numerous cd\dvd protection crap that clogs up your pc, and can cause problems with other software.
	valtterieranen 2008-02-29 #14 I don't think PC gaming will really die, though I believe it will wane down, as it already has. One might claim it's a good thing too. Let consoles have the consoley games and PC will keep the not-for-masses titles and remain as a niche market. Less crap ( yes, I'm pointing this towards console games, don't bother flaming me, it's just my opinion ) to wade through is always good in my eyes.
	Pimped Out 2008-02-29 #15 It sure as hell would be nice if games like Fight Night, Tekken, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, and other 2 player verses games were on PC. Alot of developers are missing out on serious cash by not making games like this for PC. I have two Corless Logitech Wingman Rumble Pads that only get used when I play Madden 2008, GTA SA, NBA Live 2008, or etc. I am not into all the console BS when I can run my PC to my projector and have a gaming system that does more than just game. A company really need to cater to PC Gamers on certant games.