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DFC Intelligence Analyst: 'PC games have surpassed console games globally'

I don't get why people dismiss MOBA. They are one of the most hardcore, pure game play focused games out there. The antithesis to dumbed down or streamlined

To some RTS fans, MOBAs really are "dumbed-down" RTS games.
It's interesting to note MOBAs rise as a spectator genre correlates with SC2's decline from the limelight.
 
My point was that where PC's and consoles compete for the same market, PC gaming always loses. Games released on both consoles and PCs sell better on consoles. The analysis is misleading because it is not an apples to apples comparison between PC and console gaming. Mmos and mobas don't compete with anything on consoles and are irrelevant from a competitive perspective. One might take that argument to its logical conclusion and say that both PC and console gaming is dead because Angry Birds was downloaded 2 billion times.

If you want to do a comparison do it on a platform\SKU basis. Lumping 2 or more console SKUs together and saying they sell more than the PC SKU means little.
 
Console gamers play every AAA game like gta V day one, why should they care if angry birds or LoL sells more? It's not Forbes here.

The only salty people are those who have been waiting their games for 6 months.

Having played Gta V for about 10 hours on the ps3 i'm not sure i would be so happy about playing those games day 1, would rather wait 6months for a decent version of it.
 
Console gamers play every AAA game like gta V day one, why should they care if angry birds or LoL sells more? It's not Forbes here.

The only salty people are those who have been waiting their games for 6 months.

Exactly, why should YOU care if PC is making more money then console gaming? Because clearly you don't care so much you're making unrelated defensive posts here ironically.
 
MOBAs and MMOs will dominate money making revenue because it keeps going. MOBAs are evolving into eSports, which is desperately needed.
 
PC gaming is so much on top that devs like Rockstar don't even bother releasing their games on the platform.

F2P and mobas do great, but big budget games are on consoles and they will always be because of piracy.

This would make sense if Rockstar weren't one of the few odd ones out in this industry in regards to their treatment of the platform. Outside of first party games, it's rare to see a AAA big budget games not make it to PC.

By the way, Rockstar do release games on the platform. They've released practically every game they've ever released on the PC outside of the handheld titles. GTA5 isn't out yet but there isn't any compelling reason to believe it won't come out on PC eventually.
 
If you want to do a comparison do it on a platformSKU basis. Lumping 2 or more console SKUs together and saying they sell more than the PC SKU means little.

Then again, PC sku doesn't mean much either. PC is not a brand, and each PC is different. Games that play on some Pc won't play well on others...
 
MMOs and MOBAs have very different revenue profiles from traditional game. I look at them more as services than games.
Nothing is stopping console makers or publishers from making games using the exact same model. We're probably closer to heading towards that rather than sticking with whatever "traditional" means. The new Fable game is considering it. Some of these revenue tactics are already implemented within games right now, they just happen to release annually/bi-annually while adding content. Why does it matter how the money is made though?

It doesn't get any bigger than League of Legends and it managed around $630m in revenues last year. That's roughly equivalent to a 10m seller on consoles. Last year alone, we probably had more than 5 console games do more than that across PS and Xbox (CoD: G, BF4, GTA5, AC4, FIFA). PC versions of multiplats are still dominated by the console versions of the same games (sales wise).
Why is a single platform (PC) being held to a higher standard with being compared to multiple platforms? It's not like Xbox and Playstation consoles use the same service or communicate with each other. Only two of the five titles you've listed have a chance of selling 10 million units on a single console so far anyways.

The sales discrepancies between versions are usually overstated. You have games like Borderlands 2 at over 3.1 million on Steam (shipped over 8.5 million overall) and Skyrim sold nearly 6 million on Steam (shipped over 20 million overall). That's far from being "dominated".
People need to stop acting like PC gaming is a giant monolithic platform that can be compared to consoles. The vast majority of it is MOBA/MMO services with the odd exclusive games like Civilization, Diablo, Starcraft as well as the multiplats more representative of the fraction of the PC universe that can be directly compared to consoles.
Supporters of PC usually think of it as a platform that can be as competitive to any other platform out there and shouldn't be ignored. It's not like anyone is contractually obligated to develop only on it (unlike consoles) no matter how big it gets.
 
screen-shot-2013-11-2d4rzj.png

That's roughly equivalent to a 10m seller on consoles. Last year alone, we probably had more than 5 3 console games do more than that across PS and Xbox (CoD: G, BF4, GTA5, AC4, FIFA).

Let me fix that for you:
Sources: http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/02/10/assassins-creed-4-black-flag-sales-reach-10-million
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Media/Slideshow/2013/12/13/10-Bestselling-Video-Games-2013?page=2

The vast majority of it is MOBA/MMO services with the odd exclusive games like Civilization, Diablo, Starcraft as well as the multiplats more representative of the fraction of the PC universe that can be directly compared to consoles.
There are an estimated 100 games with more than 1.4 million owners/players on steam alone, most of them PC exclusives. In turn "mid-tier" is as good as dead on console (Source: Ars)
Do their success somehow mean that PC gaming is here to dominate the future? Not a chance. They cater to very different audiences in very different markets.
To dominate, why should it matter how or in what market they generate revenue? And if you're talking about audience (amount of people or hours played), consoles aren't even in the same ballpark.
PCGA said:

My point was that where PC's and consoles compete for the same market, PC gaming always loses.
That's only true for a handful of AAA console games. Mid tier and indie games consistently perform better on PC.
Mmos and mobas don't compete with anything on consoles and are irrelevant from a competitive perspective.
Why?
One might take that argument to its logical conclusion and say that both PC and console gaming is dead because Angry Birds was downloaded 2 billion times.
Why should Angry Birds not count? It always depends on how you define success. I think the most common ones are hours played, active user counts or revenue. With $200M revenue in 2012 Angry Birds is no slouch, but can't compete with the top PC games.
 
Then again, PC sku doesn't mean much either. PC is not a brand, and each PC is different. Games that play on some Pc won't play well on others...

I can turn down the settings to try to get a game working on a different PC, can you find a way to get a 360 game to work directly on a ps3?

Edit: it's funny how the same arguement 'evolves' from all consoles vs PC to be PC isn't even a plateform you can put together.
 
PC gaming is so much on top that devs like Rockstar don't even bother releasing their games on the platform.

F2P and mobas do great, but big budget games are on consoles and they will always be because of piracy.

I think you are really going to enjoy the next several years of PC gaming.
 
I can turn down the settings to try to get a game working on a different PC, can you find a way to get a 360 game to work directly on a ps3?

Edit: it's funny how the same arguement 'evolves' from all consoles vs PC to be PC isn't even a plateform you can put together.

I can't run my recent pc games on my 10 year old windows 98 pc, unless i'm mistaken. Most games definitely won't run on older pcs. And recent gaming pcs are few and far between, according to Steam polls.
 
Then again, PC sku doesn't mean much either. PC is not a brand, and each PC is different. Games that play on some Pc won't play well on others...
How is that relevant to sales? A sold copy is a sold copy and when comparing sales of a game that is on PC, 360 and PS3 it's backwards to pit one SKU against two.
With some of the responses here, maybe this is why big publishers avoid providing platform breakdowns for their titles. Lumping the data as much as possible.
 
Found it:
top-10-superdata.jpg


That is insane

..... i can only confess i have never even heard of CrossFire....i must really suck at being a PC gamer lol..

...now i'm googling it, and i'm looking at some weird first person shooter that seems to belong on the nintendo 64

....what am i missing here? :confused:
 
PC gaming goes from strength to strength while the triple-A console market is imploding. Good news all around! Also, a pretty amazing turn of events considering the "PC gaming is dying" rhetoric of the mid-00s.
PC gaming also used to only be larger than one console, not all of them combined, which was always a detraction against PC gaming in these threads.
 
I can't run my recent pc games on my 10 year old windows 98 pc, unless i'm mistaken. Most games definitely won't run on older pcs. And recent gaming pcs are few and far between, according to Steam polls.

Can the equivalent console play modern games? 10 years ago was the ps2 and Xbox original. You example doesn't answer my question.
 
I can't run my recent pc games on my 10 year old windows 98 pc, unless i'm mistaken. Most games definitely won't run on older pcs. And recent gaming pcs are few and far between, according to Steam polls.

You're way off on a tangent here. You're responding to someone who is saying that it doesn't make sense to lump the sales of all the console versions of a game together and then compare it to the sales of the single PC version. The number of non-gaming/older PCs is completely irrelevant to what your apparently arguing against.
 
"b-b-but those games don't count! because reasons! so console revenue is still higher if you only count REAL games"

/s
Oh please.
Thing is, if you're using this information to answer the all-important question "Should this game be released for consoles?", you're not going to get accurate results. Because different genres and whathaveyou will show wildly different platform splits. You need more detailed data to make these kinds of decisions.

tl;dr: consoles not doomed after all?
 
How is that relevant to sales? A sold copy is a sold copy and when comparing sales of a game that is on PC, 360 and PS3 it's backwards to pit one SKU against two.

That's the thing though, the money doesn't come mostly from 'sold copies' here, it comes more from F2P models and wow subscriptions. That's why people say it's not the same thing.

If you look at sold copies, consoles still dominate.
 
It's always amazing seeing posters who've been banned in the past for spouting nonsense returning to spout more or less the same nonsense again and again. The blinding hatred they feel for PC gaming eclipses all common sense. One wonders what majestic things they could accomplish if they were capable of loving with the passion they instead channel into hatred.
 
I'd like to see a chart of Japan for this, which would probably be the only odd-one-out where mobiles and consoles sell higher than PC.
Hmm, hard to find. CESA has published an report but it is japanese and seems to be for pay: http://report.cesa.or.jp/
But If I remeber correctly PC gaming grew by ~10% but is still small, console gaming shrunk slightly, and recently smartphone games have breached the 50% of revenue barrier

I found this image via google search:
cyberzslide1-631x47322kz5.jpg
 
That's the thing though, the money doesn't come mostly from 'sold copies' here, it comes more from F2P models and wow subscriptions. That's why people say it's not the same thing.

If you look at sold copies, consoles still dominate.
I'm talking about cases where people bring up AAA multiplatform releases as showing how they sell far better on consoles than on PC. The problem with that is they adding the PS3 and 360 sales together and compare it to PC - this is a meaningless comparison and tells us nothing of importance. Yes, 2 SKUs together sell more than one - duh. The only way to compare is each platform by itself. Especially nowadays where publishers have different teams on the different console versions and each console version had its budget and offers its unique challenges and expenses.

Instead of PS3+360 vs. PC it should be PS3 vs. 360. vs. PC. The way people compare data here, if the PC was a wrestler, it would have always been booked in handicap matches from 2 vs. 1 upwards to 8 vs. 1.
 
Oh please.
Thing is, if you're using this information to answer the all-important question "Should this game be released for consoles?", you're not going to get accurate results. Because different genres and whathaveyou will show wildly different platform splits. You need more detailed data to make these kinds of decisions.

tl;dr: consoles not doomed after all?

But you can use this information to determine what game you're going to start working on/greenlight next. The big publishers aren't forever tied to making console games. They can decide to make a f2p game, moba or mmo at any time (and some have already tried with varying degrees of success).

The question isn't whether AAA console games will come to PC. It's whether those games will even keep being a thing at all.

That's the thing though, the money doesn't come mostly from 'sold copies' here, it comes more from F2P models and wow subscriptions. That's why people say it's not the same thing.

If you look at sold copies, consoles still dominate.

[citation needed], and good luck coming up with that citation as a vast majority of PC sales are digital which isn't tracked or released by anyone. So your claim is actually kind of baseless. Also see this:

screen-shot-2013-11-2d4rzj.png



Let me fix that for you:
Sources: http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/02/10/assassins-creed-4-black-flag-sales-reach-10-million
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Media/Slideshow/2013/12/13/10-Bestselling-Video-Games-2013?page=2


There are an estimated 100 games with more than 1.4 million owners/players on steam alone, most of them PC exclusives. In turn "mid-tier" is as good as dead on console (Source: Ars)

To dominate, why should it matter how or in what market they generate revenue? And if you're talking about audience (amount of people or hours played), consoles aren't even in the same ballpark.


That's only true for a handful of AAA console games. Mid tier and indie games consistently perform better on PC.
Why?
Why should Angry Birds not count? It always depends on how you define success. I think the most common ones are hours played, active user counts or revenue. With $200M revenue in 2012 Angry Birds is no slouch, but can't compete with the top PC games.
 
Kind of interesting that the most popular pc games aren't the most graphically intensive. I wonder if this means we'll see less of a focus on graphics on the PC side, since it really doesn't seem to matter to the casual pc consumer.
 
That is one example, another would be Crysis where Crytek smelled cash and went over to the darkside but in the end fucked themselves over cause no one was interested in the games they made and by fucking over PC gamers they lost that revenue aswell.
.

IMO crytek' problem was that they created a piece of software so far ahead of its time (crysis) that it was only accessible to small demographic of PC gamers thus limiting the amount of revenue that could be made from the game.

Now don't be unfair. Both cinematic third person action adventure games as well as first person multiplayer shooters with "Duty" in their title count. And I think we can all agree that this represents all important genres.

This post just proves that both sides of the fence are equally just as salty as the other.

Pretty pathetic man, I would expect a lot more out of you :(

all these salty console guys making it seem like all the PC revenue comes out of MOBAS... like if console gaming wasn't all about Call of Duty and shooters.

Times are changing folks, console are not what they used to be.

oh look another misinformed PC gamer.

PS3 top 5 highest selling games:

Grand Theft Auto V - 16.85 million
Gran Turismo 5 10.66 million
The Last of Us 6 million
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue 5.35 million
God of War III 5,197,632
 
But you can use this information to determine what game you're going to start working on/greenlight next. The big publishers aren't forever tied to making console games. They can decide to make a f2p game, moba or mmo at any time (and some have already tried with varying degrees of success).

The question isn't whether AAA console games will come to PC. It's whether those games will even keep being a thing at all.



[citation needed], and good luck coming up with that citation as a vast majority of PC sales are digital which isn't tracked or released by anyone. So your claim is actually kind of baseless. Also see this:

One could extrapolate numbers from active players on multiplayer. BF4, BF3 easily sold better on consoles, same can be said about the CODs.

Also from Steam statistics, as seen here, you will find most of the time games sell better on consoles.
 
IMO crytek' problem was that they created a piece of software so far ahead of its time (crysis) that it was only accessible to small demographic of PC gamers thus limiting the amount of revenue that could be made from the game.

And yet that piece of software sold the best which was my point, if going consoles is so profitable then why didn't the rest of the series sell as good as that first game that for the longest time was exclusive and the only version we got sales figures from (IIRC).
 
One could extrapolate numbers from active players on multiplayer. BF4, BF3 easily sold better on consoles, same can be said about the CODs.

Also from Steam statistics, as seen here, you will find most of the time games sell better on consoles.

The PC is the biggest platform on BF4 during European Prime time and is competative with the other times.

Also again with the multiple consoles vs PC sale comparison.
Edit: even worse its every console vs Steam as if Steam is the totality of the PC market.
 
F2P and mobas do great, but big budget games are on consoles and they will always be because of piracy.
Console gamers play every AAA game like gta V day one, why should they care if angry birds or LoL sells more? It's not Forbes here.

The only salty people are those who have been waiting their games for 6 months.
Then again, PC sku doesn't mean much either. PC is not a brand, and each PC is different. Games that play on some Pc won't play well on others...
Do you have a checklist of inane arguments you are working through or can you keep all of this in your head?
 
By the way, here is the steam top 100 from ars I talked about earlier:

(Starred ones released before steam counted time played)

In any case, I should go to sleep...

Clarification for the starred titles - there are potentially large discrepancies between player and owners count for these games as all data pre - 2010 is not recorded, so the people that didn't play the game after that point are recorded as not playing when many hours could have been put it.
 
The PC is the biggest platform on BF4 during European Prime time and is competative with the other times.

Also again with the multiple consoles vs PC sale comparison.

I've yet to see PC overtake PS4 numbers from here: http://bf4stats.com/
Also, one could argue that PC has the ''most platforms sold'' by far, yet still is outperformed by a newcomer such as the PS4.
 
This has been one of the most predictable threads on this forum. Almost every single unproven argument against PC has been used. Wherever this revenue comes from, the simple fact is that people are getting more and more interested in the platform.
 
I've yet to see PC overtake PS4 numbers from here: http://bf4stats.com/
Also, one could argue that PC has the ''most platforms sold'' by far, yet still is outperformed by a newcomer such as the PS4.

Depends on the game. BF4 isn't the be-all-end-all of games. How's CS:GO doing on consoles compared to its PC version? It's apples and oranges here.
 
And yet that piece of software sold the best which was my point, if going consoles is so profitable then why didn't the rest of the series sell as good as that first game that for the longest time was exclusive and the only version we got sales figures from (IIRC).


maybe because on the console front the competition was far far bigger than what it was on the PC for them, I really don't know. Maybe we should check and see what games were released both years that crysis 2 and 3 game out.
 
I've yet to see PC overtake PS4 numbers from here: http://bf4stats.com/
Also, one could argue that PC has the ''most platforms sold'' by far, yet still is outperformed by a newcomer such as the PS4.

BF4Stats16DEC2013.jpg


It's really tricky to compare BF4 for example if you can't see how it was around release as well. If I recall past GAF arguments PC players dropped the game much more quickly, but there isn't enough data to measure it properly against other BF titles or COD. Generally games like CS take the cake *on PC
 
maybe because on the console front the competition was far far bigger than what it was on the PC for them, I really don't know. Maybe we should check and see what games were released both years that crysis 2 and 3 game out.

While specific examples escape me atm, i'm sure it's not the only case of a PC developer falling flat on it's face when trying to go console.
 
I've yet to see PC overtake PS4 numbers from here: http://bf4stats.com/
Also, one could argue that PC has the ''most platforms sold'' by far, yet still is outperformed by a newcomer such as the PS4.

I see it beat the PS4 frequently (not by large numbers, mind you) depending on the time of the day, and sometimes the PC will drop significantly behind the PS4 and PS3 depending on the time of the day. The PS4 seems to have a better consistency across regions for BF4.

As for a newcomer (PS4) beating the PC - I don't think that says particularly much. It's also beating the PS3 and 360, and there's also the point that there are different environments for these games given the different audiences.

CSGO (Not a F2P game) peaks at 130k every day (currently has 112K). PC gamers don't necessarily play the same games as console gamers in the same numbers, CoD as one of the biggest games in the industry - gets a PC release the same as the consoles, the highest CoD game on Steam at the moment is 31st in player count, yet it'll be in the top #3 at least on the consoles.

It doesn't mean the players aren't there, they're just playing other games. Many of which either aren't on the consoles or simply aren't the same games on the consoles (e.g. CSGO and TF2).
 
jesus, the console only gamers flailing in this thread is comedy gold

feels like i'm posting in a thread from 07 with some of these arguments
 
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