pc-game-downloads posts

Electronic Arts wants to make a bet on PC gaming. At least that's the word from EA Games head Frank Gibeau. In a new chat at Gamasutra Gibeau praises the PC platform for gaming, particularly the downloadable business model for selling game titles.

Calling the PC game user base as "gigantic", he states, " ... PC downloads are awesome. ... The margins are much better and we don't have any rules in terms of first party approvals. From our perspective, it's an extremely healthy platform. ... It's totally conceivable it will become our biggest platform." He adds that EA is looking more and more to the free-to-play PC platform, saying, "I think that free to play model is coming to the west in a big way."

While those words sound good, we would also remind Gibeau that in terms of the PC platform in EA's multiplatform games they tend to treat the PC port poorly compared to a game's console counterparts, denying the PC users downloadable content and demos in games like Dead Space 2 and Need For Speed Hot Pursuit.

A new study of game software sales in the US claims that sales of PC and Mac games via download have a bigger market share than games sold in retail stores. According to the study by NewZoo, boxed sales of PC and Mac games totaled $2.1 billion in 2010, down 19 percent from 2009. However download sales of those games total $2.5 billion in 2010, an increase of 60 percent from 2009.

The study also looked at sales in several European countries. In those territories, boxed copies of PC and Mac games still outsell digital downloads of those titles. The study came up with its results via surveys of over 20,000 people in the US and Europe. It also showed that in the US money from MMO titles (which are mostly from the PC platform) totaled $2.7 billion in the US in 2010, a 27 percent increase from 2009.

According to the latest study by the NPD Group, more and more game purchases are being bought as digital products. The new study says that only 71 percent of game sales were of the boxed retail game variety while the other 29 percent were digital purchases (that includes casual and mobile phone games).

GameSpot reports that of those digital game purchases, 47 percent came from casual game portals or from digital download stores such as Steam. The study also claims that one in five gamers bought a game add-on in the last three months. As with all of NPD Group's study's on game downloads, its results come from surveys of people rather than collecting hard sales numbers from Steam and other download sites.

Last month Microsoft announced plans to revamp its downloadable PC game business via an upcoming new web site revamp. However game retailer GameStop has already launched a revamp of its own web site and put PC game downloads in its own section.

Aside from some major PC games like StarCraft II's launch last July, GameStop's PC game selection in its retail stores are pretty slim compared to console games, perhaps in part because GameStop doesn't accept used PC games as they do for console titles. However it looks like the company's revamped web site will give PC game downloads more clout. It features both high end PC titles like Fallout New Vegas to smaller casual games for download, including some that come with free trial versions.

The games industry has been in a downword trend in terms of sales of games in brick-and-mortar stores. This issue has apparently "caused unnecessary angst for many" in the games industry, according to a new blog post by NPD Group analyst Anita Frazier.

While sales of games in stores have dropped for both PC and console games Frazier states the obvious; those sales numbers "did not represent 100 (percent) of the consumer spend on the industry." Frazier states that a new report from NPD, "Games Industry: Total Consumer Spend" will record these other game sales sources, including downloadable game sales.

While we certainly think games sold via download are becoming a bigger part of the game industry, we do question whether the NPD Group will truly be able to get an accurate gauge of this portion of the game market since many downloadable game sites keep their sales numbers to themselves. NPD has relied on surveys of consumers for its examinations of the PC downloadable game market in the past and those numbers have been disputed by others in the industry.

More and more we are seeing the PC game industry move to a download business model. But according to the head of Take Two Interactive, this new way to distribute games doesn't mean that boxed game copies are going away anytime soon.

Speaking in a video interview on the Bloomberg web site, Take Two's CEO Strauss Zelnick states that while download game sales are growing, "Right now, digital distribution of our interactive entertainment represents something less than 15 percent of our revenue." Zelnick cites large file sizes as one barrier to having more downloadable games. Also cloud computing systems such as OnLive can still have latency issues. However Zelnick does state that OnLive is "doing a phenomenal job of addressing that challenge."

[Via Gamasutra]

Launched earlier this year, the UK-based PC game download web site Green Man Gaming tried something new in the digital download marketplace. It let its customers download and buy titles and then sell them back to the web site for credits to purchase future games. Apparently the service is doing very well, MCV reports that according to Green Man Gaming it has "exceeded all revenue and sales targets" since it went live last May (specific sales and revenue numbers were not disclosed).

The company is also expanding, hiring new people and launching plans to offer a mobile version of its service next year based on the Android operating system. It also says it is "looking to partner with a large US retailer."

One of the biggest problems with the growing amount of PC games available to purchase via download is the lack of hard info on the sales of said games. Now comes word that the UK will establish a regular PC game download sales chart with support from many of that country's publishers.

The trade group the ELSPA (that country's equivalent of our own Entertainment Software Association) has been working for the past year to try to convince publishers to share their PC game download sales data. Publishers like Ubisoft, THQ, Sega, NCsoft, Kalypso Media, and Square Enix have all agreed to participate with more publisher announcements expected. According to the press release announcing the deal, "All stakeholders have committed that sales data from third party resellers will be included, allaying fears that data from Steam would be missing from this chart. "

Chart-Track, which handles retail game sales reports for the UK, will also do the same for the new PC game download sales charts. MCV reports that the sales chart could begin as early as November.

At the moment, Valve's Steam service is the most popular place to purchase and download PC games. However is one of the biggest retailers on the planet about to step into the fray? According to a report on Gamasutra, Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian says, "Yes."

Sebastian says several new job opening at Amazon.com indicate that the web retailer is designing a new digital download service that would be comparable to Steam and other services. Amazon.com currently sells casual games via download but sells high end PC games via their standard mail order service. So far Amazon.com has not commented on their future PC game plans.

Earlier this month a UK-based company called Green Man Gaming announced plans to offer a PC game download service that would allow its users to trade in a PC game and get some of their money back. Now Gameindustry.biz has posted up more info about the service based on chatting with its founders.

The article (free to read with registration) says that the creators have created an algorithm that calculates a PC game's trade-in value via demand and the location pricing. When a person buys and downloads a title from Green Man Gaming that person is also given a price for the game as a trade-in. When a game is ready to be traded-in the gamer gets a credit that can go towards the purchases of other games on the site.

The creators of this upcoming service claim that the publishers will get a percentage of each PC game sold and re-sold on their site. The service is supposed to go live in the UK in March. A US launch has yet to be finalized.