NYT: PC gamers feeling effects of recession...

Any numbers you have not seen the methodology on should be taken with a grain of salt. For example PC games are regularly shown to be a rather niche market. This makes a lot more sense when you completely exclude the more diverse revenue streams that PC games have and simply go by retail box sales.

Now add in electronic distribution (heard of this little thing called steam anyone?) and MMO subscriptions and you have a much more robust sales model. These figures are almost never included in PC gaming numbers because it's not the traditional sales model and because these numbers are not regularly provided to the press.

But the true (albeit invisible) 900 pound gorilla in the room in my opinion is the free to play games. Advertising pays for all their costs and generates nobody knows what kind of cash. My soon to be stepdaughter can pull up and navigate the games at nick jr. by herself without being able to read. Thats an amazing new market and a new way to establish a presence with customers. And let's not talk about all the games on social networking sites like Mafia Wars.

PC games? I'm leaning towards much larger than the console market.

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The thing I'm noticing about the so-called declining sales of consoles
(Wii, PS3, XBox, etc) is that these sell real well at launch, most
of the time. Heck, thier sales records make national/international
news! So now thier sales are declining? And the makers are worried?
Exactly how many of these consoles does each house really need?

My main confusion is why are they concern? They sell 5,000,000
the first quarter, 6,000,000 the second quarter, 7,000,000 the third
quarter, then 4,000,000 the fourth quarter. The media looks at
the fourth quarter and go "OMG, THE COMPANY IS GOING UNDER!!!"
Anybody who has any lick of sense can see that this is a normal
pace for any given product. The target consumers has bought
thier products, and are using them.

I will add that I am strictly PC and do not own a single console,
table top or hand held.

edit: Before anybody debates my numbers, I made them up for
the sake of argument. I really don't know the true numbers, but
I have heard that they are high at launch.

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But the true (albeit invisible) 900 pound gorilla in the room in my opinion is the free to play games. Advertising pays for all their costs and generates nobody knows what kind of cash. My soon to be stepdaughter can pull up and navigate the games at nick jr. by herself without being able to read. Thats an amazing new market and a new way to establish a presence with customers. And let's not talk about all the games on social networking sites like Mafia Wars.

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The recent Nielsen study seems to indicate something similar; that a lot of people play games that are, well, outside the retail-in-a-box model.

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PC games? I'm leaning towards much larger than the console market.

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Spider Solitaire alone is probably bigger than the console market.

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The recent Nielsen study seems to indicate something similar; that a lot of people play games that are, well, outside the retail-in-a-box model.

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I don't remember the last time I bought a game from a store.

Half Life?

I think it was Half Life.

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The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

In the last year digital distribution has taken off. Since Steam Community launched people are using Steam a lot more than just to launch their Valve games. People see everyone on their friends list playing the hot new game and go and download it rather than going to the store. Another thing is weekend deals and the new releases popups. I rarely buy games retail now. Sometimes i get them from play.com when they are much cheaper but mostly it's Steam. That article is just a regurgitated console press release. If the writer had put any thought into it he would have noticed the trend to digital distribution.

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The recent Nielsen study seems to indicate something similar; that a lot of people play games that are, well, outside the retail-in-a-box model.

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I don't remember the last time I bought a game from a store.

Half Life?

I think it was Half Life.

[/ QUOTE ] I still prefer boxed copies myself. I like being able to take a PS3 game to my brother's house. Probably the biggest reason though is Warhawk for PS3. When my brother(and roommate) bought it from the Playstation Store you could only play the game on one profile! That means we had to share a username and stats. But if we would have bought a boxed version we wouldn't have had that problem.

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I still prefer boxed copies myself.

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I'm a big collector of various things and a huge fan of having a tangible object, but game packaging doesn't do anything for me.

It's like CDs- not very satisfying as objects, and basically useless once you extract their digital goodness to a lossless file.

In the case of music, my object fetishism has been (mostly) satisfied by the resurgence of vinyl.

Unfortunately games have no older, more appealing physical object to fall back on.

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The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

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I can see both sides. If the [censored] that publish games wouldn't be so damn restrictive with their software I would buy a lot more of it.

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In the case of music, my object fetishism has been (mostly) satisfied by the resurgence of vinyl.

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I've spent the past few years fighting the urge to start buying LPs again because I know I'll go crazy binge-buying.

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I just bought a usb turntable a few months ago, and I have like.... 500 or more albums to go through. When I'm done, I'm probably going to sell them. Of course, they're all *quite* old. I've been turntable-less for like, 13-15 years at least, I think the last vinyl I bought was some Tangerine Dream back when they were still good.

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I bought Spore for my stepdaughter, and was appalled that I had to have an Internet connection to register it before she could play it. Especially because I didn't haz Intarweb connection at the time, having been computerless for 2 years.

During that 2 years I purchased a 360, and oh how I wish, how I wished you were here. Console games are truly lacking in depth and long term playability. The only games I could find that were even close to my personal standards for gaming were ports of PC games, like Oblivion and Fallout3. Madden 09 is also a favorite of mine, but I would happily do without it if they stopped releasing to PC. In those 2 years I purchased 2 console games. Prior to my dark ages, it wasn't uncommon for me to buy 2 PC titles a week for when I needed a break from CoH.

Oh, and about taking a grain of salt when reading The New York Slimes, be careful, because the salt might kill the slugs that write it.

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I bought Spore for my stepdaughter, and was appalled that I had to have an Internet connection to register it before she could play it. Especially because I didn't haz Intarweb connection at the time, having been computerless for 2 years.

During that 2 years I purchased a 360, and oh how I wish, how I wished you were here. Console games are truly lacking in depth and long term playability. The only games I could find that were even close to my personal standards for gaming were ports of PC games, like Oblivion and Fallout3. Madden 09 is also a favorite of mine, but I would happily do without it if they stopped releasing to PC. In those 2 years I purchased 2 console games. Prior to my dark ages, it wasn't uncommon for me to buy 2 PC titles a week for when I needed a break from CoH.

Oh, and about taking a grain of salt when reading The New York Slimes, be careful, because the salt might kill the slugs that write it.

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Sacred 2, if they do anything similar to what they did on PC will be a new style for 360, different than people are used to.

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In the case of music, my object fetishism has been (mostly) satisfied by the resurgence of vinyl.

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I've spent the past few years fighting the urge to start buying LPs again because I know I'll go crazy binge-buying.

[/ QUOTE ]
I've tamed my own demons with an ironclad rule-
no buying anything I've previously owned (in any format).

a lot of the smarter labels give you a CD (or a code for a lossless download) along with the album- a nice touch.

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The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

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a lot of the smarter labels give you a CD (or a code for a lossless download) along with the album- a nice touch.

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Not listening! Not listening!

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haw!

=D

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The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
In the case of music, my object fetishism has been (mostly) satisfied by the resurgence of vinyl.

[/ QUOTE ]
I've spent the past few years fighting the urge to start buying LPs again because I know I'll go crazy binge-buying.

[/ QUOTE ]
I've tamed my own demons with an ironclad rule-
no buying anything I've previously owned (in any format).

a lot of the smarter labels give you a CD (or a code for a lossless download) along with the album- a nice touch.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not if 78's are your thing. I have a friend with two floor to ten foot ceiling walls of built in shelves packed with those things. I'm jealous. Reminds me of all the Decca 78's I had to let go during a move maybe 16 years ago. Some primo hard-to-find 1950's R&B.

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<Quick Reply>

CoX is, essentially, my only computer game. But I'm one of those silly kids that actually really enjoys the more decadent (read: self-indulgent ) style of console games. Games I read or watch as much as I play? Sign me up! Yes, I know how silly that sounds. I don't go out of my way to watch movies, but I pre-ordered Metal Gear Solid 4. I don't know why I like the color blue, either.

Console games are also more fun to play with my gamer droogs, even when we're playing single-player games. Heck, I enjoy watching one of my friends play Street Fighter IV more than I enjoy playing it myself (especially since he's more practiced, and brings teh pwnage). I enjoy watching him play SFIV more than I enjoy watching most TV shows, even.

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