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[Arthea]

980 is overkill and the least cost efficient gpu if you don't count power per watt.


You only need a 950 or Radeon 285 to firmly have better than console performance.

60 fps 1080 p high settings.

I don't get this logic, why would I care about console performance, I bloody don't. When I buy a PC I care about what I can get of it and what games I play now and will in nearest future have what demands, if it's gaming PC that is. It has nothing to do with any console and why would it?

 

[Felix Lighter]

Nothing really surprising here.

Of course PC hardware revenue is going to surpass consoles as long as the two are even remotely close in number of consumers. Even a mid-tier PC is going to run around the same price as a console or more. But the 'mainstream' market is only about one third of PC gamers. The rest of the market is spending $1000+ on their rigs, when you include monitors and peripherals. So that's really just common sense when you consider all the variables.

But publishers still don't target PC for the most part. Why is that? Well, first is that it's much harder to target and market to PC gamers. When 'enthusiasts' and the like are almost 60% of the consumer base, they demand higher quality products and lower price points. A PC game can't be 'just as good' as its console counterpart, it must be better. Yet, the vast majority of PC sales don't come from the first few months when the game is $50-$60. (Or as low as $35-$40 at discount digital stores) They come over the entire lifetime of the product when it's selling for $20, $10, and $5. So even if a game sells as much or more on PC, the publisher actually makes significantly less revenue and profit from PC sales. The math is pretty simple. What's better, selling 3m units at an average consumer price of $45 or selling 6m units at an average consumer price of $15? Don't bother answering that, because it's not common for a PC game to sell double it's total console numbers, even over the entire lifetime of the product. Your typical AAA game sees somewhere between 50%-20% of their total sales from PC, even after a few years of $10-$5 sales.

Plus, PC gamers are spread out everywhere. The largest PC market is actually Asia, whereas the biggest console market is NA/EU. And what works for everything from marketing, to business models, to design standards in Asia doesn't necessarily work in US or Europe.

And, there is near-unlimited competition. If I release a game on PS4, I'm competing against other PS4 games - which is, comparatively, an extremely limited number of titles (even if you were to consider I'm also competing against, say, Xbox One games as well, it's still a relatively short list). If I release on PC, I'm competing against nearly every PC game ever made, many of which are $5 or less. I'm competing against League of Legends and World of Warcraft, as well as nearly every AAA port, as well as hundreds of thousands of indies, as well as free to play games, as well as games from 3, 5, even 10 years ago. The market is not only spread out geographically, but also across every genre, style and type of game. Consoles are a much more focused and cultivated market.

Then there's also compatibility and testing. With a console, you are targeting a known specification. On PC, who knows what the hell kind of a Frankenstein configuration the user has.

And until all that changes, or becomes easier for a publisher to swallow, PC ports are going to remain a secondary concern for most major AAA publishers.

You paint a dire picture but recently, aside from notable exceptions like Batman AK and MK X, PC port quality has improved drastically, as has the availability of games that at one time were only ever released on consoles. I'm sure major AAA publishers still don't prioritize PC but from an end users perspective, the platform is getting the games and the port quality is high in the majority of case. So whether or not PC is a secondary concern to major AAA publishers doesn't really matter to me. It's a big enough concern to result in an exceptionally good platform for games.

 

[Lonely1]

Mobile rising is something that was inevitable. Rather than looking at it as something sad, I look at it with excitement for what developers on the platform could deliver as handheld experiences on them.

My problem with mobile gaming is that it has been taken over by F2P skinner box model and shows no sign of stopping.

 

[Arthea]

Nothing really surprising here.

Of course PC hardware revenue is going to surpass consoles as long as the two are even remotely close in number of consumers. Even a mid-tier PC is going to run around the same price as a console or more. But the 'mainstream' market is only about one third of PC gamers. The rest of the market is spending $1000+ on their rigs, when you include monitors and peripherals. So that's really just common sense when you consider all the variables.

But publishers still don't target PC for the most part. Why is that? Well, first is that it's much harder to target and market to PC gamers. When 'enthusiasts' and the like are almost 60% of the consumer base, they demand higher quality products and lower price points. A PC game can't be 'just as good' as its console counterpart, it must be better. Yet, the vast majority of PC sales don't come from the first few months when the game is $50-$60. (Or as low as $35-$40 at discount digital stores) They come over the entire lifetime of the product when it's selling for $20, $10, and $5. So even if a game sells as much or more on PC, the publisher actually makes significantly less revenue and profit from PC sales. The math is pretty simple. What's better, selling 3m units at an average consumer price of $45 or selling 6m units at an average consumer price of $15? Don't bother answering that, because it's not common for a PC game to sell double it's total console numbers, even over the entire lifetime of the product. Your typical AAA game sees somewhere between 50%-20% of their total sales from PC, even after a few years of $10-$5 sales.

Plus, PC gamers are spread out everywhere. The largest PC market is actually Asia, whereas the biggest console market is NA/EU. And what works for everything from marketing, to business models, to design standards in Asia doesn't necessarily work in US or Europe.

And, there is near-unlimited competition. If I release a game on PS4, I'm competing against other PS4 games - which is, comparatively, an extremely limited number of titles (even if you were to consider I'm also competing against, say, Xbox One games as well, it's still a relatively short list). If I release on PC, I'm competing against nearly every PC game ever made, many of which are $5 or less. I'm competing against League of Legends and World of Warcraft, as well as nearly every AAA port, as well as hundreds of thousands of indies, as well as free to play games, as well as games from 3, 5, even 10 years ago. The market is not only spread out geographically, but also across every genre, style and type of game. Consoles are a much more focused and cultivated market.

Then there's also compatibility and testing. With a console, you are targeting a known specification. On PC, who knows what the hell kind of a Frankenstein configuration the user has.

And until all that changes, or becomes easier for a publisher to swallow, PC ports are going to remain a secondary concern for most major AAA publishers.

That's really great post and it's mostly true, but I wouldn't be so sure that console gamers are buying everything full price, because waiting for discounts is universal and not exclusive to PC. Not like we don't have PCs and consoles, and not that we don't have too many games already, we can wait for discounts, unless it's a game we want really badly right now, but that's very small part of library of any platform, for any of us, even more so that very big part of the world can't afford full priced games even if they wanted them all day one.

 

[Occam]

You guys haven't done your homework.

And you haven't read the entire thread: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=178078424&postcount=131

Be that as it may, since all accounts that log in at least once during the month in question are counted as "active", this really isn't a very precise number as far as unique users are concerned; there is no way to tell how many users have multiple accounts, and how many accounts were also used in the preceding month.

It's unfortunate that Valve is so secretive; I'd love to see some internal (non-estimated) figures regarding sales, revenue, attach rates etc.

 

[rambis]

Not that surprising considering GPU prices but I would love to see this broken down more.

 

[Gipsy Danger]

And you haven't read the entire thread: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=178078424&postcount=131

Be that as it may, since all accounts that log in at least once during the month in question are counted as "active", this really isn't a very precise number as far as unique users are concerned; there is no way to tell how many users have multiple accounts, and how many accounts were also used in the preceding month.

It's unfortunate that Valve is so secretive; I'd love to see some internal (non-estimated) figures regarding sales, revenue, attach rates etc.

Steamspy is as close as you're going to get. It's far more information than console manufacturers are giving out and a lot of indie devs have stated that the information is extremely accurate.

 

[Nzyme32]

And you haven't read the entire thread: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=178078424&postcount=131

Be that as it may, since all accounts that log in at least once during the month in question are counted as "active", this really isn't a very precise number as far as unique users are concerned; there is no way to tell how many users have multiple accounts, and how many accounts were also used in the preceding month.

It's unfortunate that Valve is so secretive; I'd love to see some internal (non-estimated) figures regarding sales, revenue, attach rates etc.

That's a funny conclusion since this is ultimately the same way that active users are determined for every service. The numbers are almost always fudged to skew on the larger side for PR purposes. Even Steam has been sketchy with this, changing how this was reported in 2014 in order to also include the growing amount of gamers that only play F2P, but indeed are actively using Steam without purchasing (such is the value of the metric), increasing the active numbers by several million - but also opening the door to someone logging in to a passive account once, as being an active user.

Out of all the companies, Valve are at least the most open in this regard. Their concurrent numbers have always been public throughout, and public crawling of data via something like SteamSpy is unhindered in providing the good and bad of the service (other than preventing payment for more info as they tried - apparently it is against Steam's TOS).

 

[wildfire]

I don't get this logic, why would I care about console performance, I bloody don't. When I buy a PC I care about what I can get of it and what games I play now and will in nearest future have what demands, if it's gaming PC that is. It has nothing to do with any console and why would it?

Because you don't represent the majority but you were talking as if you were.

Nvidia and AMD make most of their sales with gpus ranging from $100-$200.

These people aren't playing with 4K in mind. They are playing with 1080p or 1440p as their render goal. These people also don't care or don't know about the benefits of playing above 100FPS so 60 fps is their other performance goal but they can settle for 40+.


Anyway something that should concern people is that while pc hardware sales have gone up, discrete gpu sales have gone down year over year. If it continues to trend downward next year even if VR takes off then there will be some short term problems like Nvidia and AMD doing more rebrands to save costs.

 

[Placiibo]

I blame Steam sales.

 

[Saty]

Nothing really surprising here.

Of course PC hardware revenue is going to surpass consoles as long as the two are even remotely close in number of consumers. Even a mid-tier PC is going to run around the same price as a console or more. But the 'mainstream' market is only about one third of PC gamers. The rest of the market is spending $1000+ on their rigs, when you include monitors and peripherals. So that's really just common sense when you consider all the variables.

But publishers still don't target PC for the most part. Why is that? Well, first is that it's much harder to target and market to PC gamers. When 'enthusiasts' and the like are almost 60% of the consumer base, they demand higher quality products and lower price points. A PC game can't be 'just as good' as its console counterpart, it must be better. Yet, the vast majority of PC sales don't come from the first few months when the game is $50-$60. (Or as low as $35-$40 at discount digital stores) They come over the entire lifetime of the product when it's selling for $20, $10, and $5. So even if a game sells as much or more on PC, the publisher actually makes significantly less revenue and profit from PC sales. The math is pretty simple. What's better, selling 3m units at an average consumer price of $45 or selling 6m units at an average consumer price of $15? Don't bother answering that, because it's not common for a PC game to sell double it's total console numbers, even over the entire lifetime of the product. Your typical AAA game sees somewhere between 50%-20% of their total sales from PC, even after a few years of $10-$5 sales.

Plus, PC gamers are spread out everywhere. The largest PC market is actually Asia, whereas the biggest console market is NA/EU. And what works for everything from marketing, to business models, to design standards in Asia doesn't necessarily work in US or Europe.

And, there is near-unlimited competition. If I release a game on PS4, I'm competing against other PS4 games - which is, comparatively, an extremely limited number of titles (even if you were to consider I'm also competing against, say, Xbox One games as well, it's still a relatively short list). If I release on PC, I'm competing against nearly every PC game ever made, many of which are $5 or less. I'm competing against League of Legends and World of Warcraft, as well as nearly every AAA port, as well as hundreds of thousands of indies, as well as free to play games, as well as games from 3, 5, even 10 years ago. The market is not only spread out geographically, but also across every genre, style and type of game. Consoles are a much more focused and cultivated market.

Then there's also compatibility and testing. With a console, you are targeting a known specification. On PC, who knows what the hell kind of a Frankenstein configuration the user has.

And until all that changes, or becomes easier for a publisher to swallow, PC ports are going to remain a secondary concern for most major AAA publishers.

Out of touch.

1. In many cases, a 60$ console game purchase brings as much as a $30-40 PC purchase. You have it the other way around, the PC is has the best ratio of revenue and profit which is why even at low prices they can bring in more money than a discounted console game.

2. Of course, the age-old argument of 'the game on PC won't sell more than what it would sell on 2 to 5 other platforms combined, so THERE!'

3. But the most hilarious comments are: "But publishers still don't target PC for the most part" and "And until all that changes, or becomes easier for a publisher to swallow, PC ports are going to remain a secondary concern for most major AAA publishers". :lol

Dude, in what world do you live that makes you say those sentences as a fact? Baffling. Am i going to get a list of niche Japanese games that aren't even released on the Xbox consoles? Are you going to clinch unto FF XV not having a PC version announced yet as your basis for those comments?

 

[Gumbie]

Nothing really surprising here.

Of course PC hardware revenue is going to surpass consoles as long as the two are even remotely close in number of consumers. Even a mid-tier PC is going to run around the same price as a console or more. But the 'mainstream' market is only about one third of PC gamers. The rest of the market is spending $1000+ on their rigs, when you include monitors and peripherals. So that's really just common sense when you consider all the variables.

But publishers still don't target PC for the most part. Why is that? Well, first is that it's much harder to target and market to PC gamers. When 'enthusiasts' and the like are almost 60% of the consumer base, they demand higher quality products and lower price points. A PC game can't be 'just as good' as its console counterpart, it must be better. Yet, the vast majority of PC sales don't come from the first few months when the game is $50-$60. (Or as low as $35-$40 at discount digital stores) They come over the entire lifetime of the product when it's selling for $20, $10, and $5. So even if a game sells as much or more on PC, the publisher actually makes significantly less revenue and profit from PC sales. The math is pretty simple. What's better, selling 3m units at an average consumer price of $45 or selling 6m units at an average consumer price of $15? Don't bother answering that, because it's not common for a PC game to sell double it's total console numbers, even over the entire lifetime of the product. Your typical AAA game sees somewhere between 50%-20% of their total sales from PC, even after a few years of $10-$5 sales.

Plus, PC gamers are spread out everywhere. The largest PC market is actually Asia, whereas the biggest console market is NA/EU. And what works for everything from marketing, to business models, to design standards in Asia doesn't necessarily work in US or Europe.

And, there is near-unlimited competition. If I release a game on PS4, I'm competing against other PS4 games - which is, comparatively, an extremely limited number of titles (even if you were to consider I'm also competing against, say, Xbox One games as well, it's still a relatively short list). If I release on PC, I'm competing against nearly every PC game ever made, many of which are $5 or less. I'm competing against League of Legends and World of Warcraft, as well as nearly every AAA port, as well as hundreds of thousands of indies, as well as free to play games, as well as games from 3, 5, even 10 years ago. The market is not only spread out geographically, but also across every genre, style and type of game. Consoles are a much more focused and cultivated market.

Then there's also compatibility and testing. With a console, you are targeting a known specification. On PC, who knows what the hell kind of a Frankenstein configuration the user has.

And until all that changes, or becomes easier for a publisher to swallow, PC ports are going to remain a secondary concern for most major AAA publishers.

Great post, I'm assuming you work in the industry so I'll ask...since the consoles are x86 now has this made porting to the PC a more viable thing than it used to be in the cell and xenon days or is it mostly financial reasons that hold back ports?

 

[IchigoSharingan]

Nothing really surprising here.

Of course PC hardware revenue is going to surpass consoles as long as the two are even remotely close in number of consumers. Even a mid-tier PC is going to run around the same price as a console or more. But the 'mainstream' market is only about one third of PC gamers. The rest of the market is spending $1000+ on their rigs, when you include monitors and peripherals. So that's really just common sense when you consider all the variables.

But publishers still don't target PC for the most part. Why is that? Well, first is that it's much harder to target and market to PC gamers. When 'enthusiasts' and the like are almost 60% of the consumer base, they demand higher quality products and lower price points. A PC game can't be 'just as good' as its console counterpart, it must be better. Yet, the vast majority of PC sales don't come from the first few months when the game is $50-$60. (Or as low as $35-$40 at discount digital stores) They come over the entire lifetime of the product when it's selling for $20, $10, and $5. So even if a game sells as much or more on PC, the publisher actually makes significantly less revenue and profit from PC sales. The math is pretty simple. What's better, selling 3m units at an average consumer price of $45 or selling 6m units at an average consumer price of $15? Don't bother answering that, because it's not common for a PC game to sell double it's total console numbers, even over the entire lifetime of the product. Your typical AAA game sees somewhere between 50%-20% of their total sales from PC, even after a few years of $10-$5 sales.

Plus, PC gamers are spread out everywhere. The largest PC market is actually Asia, whereas the biggest console market is NA/EU. And what works for everything from marketing, to business models, to design standards in Asia doesn't necessarily work in US or Europe.

And, there is near-unlimited competition. If I release a game on PS4, I'm competing against other PS4 games - which is, comparatively, an extremely limited number of titles (even if you were to consider I'm also competing against, say, Xbox One games as well, it's still a relatively short list). If I release on PC, I'm competing against nearly every PC game ever made, many of which are $5 or less. I'm competing against League of Legends and World of Warcraft, as well as nearly every AAA port, as well as hundreds of thousands of indies, as well as free to play games, as well as games from 3, 5, even 10 years ago. The market is not only spread out geographically, but also across every genre, style and type of game. Consoles are a much more focused and cultivated market.

Then there's also compatibility and testing. With a console, you are targeting a known specification. On PC, who knows what the hell kind of a Frankenstein configuration the user has.

And until all that changes, or becomes easier for a publisher to swallow, PC ports are going to remain a secondary concern for most major AAA publishers.

This is thinly veiled console leaning armchair analysis drivel 101.

PC gaming has been pretty big for a while before those games came out.

Money is money. Not sure why people are picking out specific games to try and make\justify an argument. Even still, the margin on low end systems like that does not make 10s of billions.

Oh we all know why.

 

[derExperte]

Great post, I'm assuming you work in the industry so I'll ask...since the consoles are x86 now has this made porting to the PC a more viable thing than it used to be in the cell and xenon days or is it mostly financial reasons that hold back ports?

If anything it has made porting PC games easier, a growing percentage of console releases are now ports. I mean except Twisted Metal this month's PS+ lineup consists of nothing else and it's been like that for a while. Which isn't meant as a criticism btw, the more exposure great midtier PC games like Styx, Shadow Warrior, Payday or Talos Principle get, the better.

 

[Arthea]

Because you don't represent the majority but you were talking as if you were.

Nvidia and AMD make most of their sales with gpus ranging from $100-$200.

These people aren't playing with 4K in mind. They are playing with 1080p or 1440p as their render goal. These people also don't care or don't know about the benefits of playing above 100FPS so 60 fps is their other performance goal but they can settle for 40+.


Anyway something that should concern people is that while pc hardware sales have gone up, discrete gpu sales have gone down year over year. If it continues to trend downward next year even if VR takes off then there will be some short term problems like Nvidia and AMD doing more rebrands to save costs.

I'm pretty sure you are in a wrong here and PC gamers (can't say for all, but I suppose majority) don't base their PC builds on consoles in any way whatsoever, nor they think about it the way you do.
Also you assume that only sales Nvidia and AMD make are of gaming PCs, what's 100% false.

 

[Beerman462]

Nothing really surprising here.

Of course PC hardware revenue is going to surpass consoles as long as the two are even remotely close in number of consumers. Even a mid-tier PC is going to run around the same price as a console or more. But the 'mainstream' market is only about one third of PC gamers. The rest of the market is spending $1000+ on their rigs, when you include monitors and peripherals. So that's really just common sense when you consider all the variables.

But publishers still don't target PC for the most part. Why is that? Well, first is that it's much harder to target and market to PC gamers. When 'enthusiasts' and the like are almost 60% of the consumer base, they demand higher quality products and lower price points. A PC game can't be 'just as good' as its console counterpart, it must be better. Yet, the vast majority of PC sales don't come from the first few months when the game is $50-$60. (Or as low as $35-$40 at discount digital stores) They come over the entire lifetime of the product when it's selling for $20, $10, and $5. So even if a game sells as much or more on PC, the publisher actually makes significantly less revenue and profit from PC sales. The math is pretty simple. What's better, selling 3m units at an average consumer price of $45 or selling 6m units at an average consumer price of $15? Don't bother answering that, because it's not common for a PC game to sell double it's total console numbers, even over the entire lifetime of the product. Your typical AAA game sees somewhere between 50%-20% of their total sales from PC, even after a few years of $10-$5 sales.

Plus, PC gamers are spread out everywhere. The largest PC market is actually Asia, whereas the biggest console market is NA/EU. And what works for everything from marketing, to business models, to design standards in Asia doesn't necessarily work in US or Europe.

And, there is near-unlimited competition. If I release a game on PS4, I'm competing against other PS4 games - which is, comparatively, an extremely limited number of titles (even if you were to consider I'm also competing against, say, Xbox One games as well, it's still a relatively short list). If I release on PC, I'm competing against nearly every PC game ever made, many of which are $5 or less. I'm competing against League of Legends and World of Warcraft, as well as nearly every AAA port, as well as hundreds of thousands of indies, as well as free to play games, as well as games from 3, 5, even 10 years ago. The market is not only spread out geographically, but also across every genre, style and type of game. Consoles are a much more focused and cultivated market.

Then there's also compatibility and testing. With a console, you are targeting a known specification. On PC, who knows what the hell kind of a Frankenstein configuration the user has.

And until all that changes, or becomes easier for a publisher to swallow, PC ports are going to remain a secondary concern for most major AAA publishers.

I'm on my phone so I can't really get to far into it, but game revenue on PC vs console is alot more nuanced than what you are portraying. A $60 retail game for consoles only sees about $27 go to the publisher. (Google. Anatomy of a $60 video game) On PC they will generally get $40 through digital store fronts like Steam. $60 if they sell through their own store like Origin.(small percenatge of sales) You also don't take into account the nature sales past the front loading on console. Most of the sales past the first few months are used sales that they see $0 from. Digital on consoles will probably change this if it hasn't already time will tell.

So I guess maybe your thinking here is a little dated. Publishers are targeting the PC alot in the last few years. Outside of timed exclusives and exclusity deals most multiplatforms come to PC. Finacially PC has become a strong third pillar. Second pillar if you lump the consoles together.

Now if you want to talk targeting hardware then I can somewhat agree, but even in most cases you can take a PS4 release that runs 1080p/30fps and get 1080p/60fps, better shadows, textures, AA, SSAO or if you really have the power 4k at 30 or even 60fps. So I don't see that as an issue for the time being.

 

[Dec]

Maybe we'll start getting some fucking NHL ports eventually.

 

[Durante]

You paint a dire picture but recently, aside from notable exceptions like Batman AK and MK X, PC port quality has improved drastically, as has the availability of games that at one time were only ever released on consoles. I'm sure major AAA publishers still don't prioritize PC but from an end users perspective, the platform is getting the games and the port quality is high in the majority of case. So whether or not PC is a secondary concern to major AAA publishers doesn't really matter to me. It's a big enough concern to result in an exceptionally good platform for games.

Yeah, I agree with that. Especially if you take a bit of a longer-term view, over, say, the past decade, both the number of console ports to PC and their quality has improved drastically.

Whether AAA publishers are ultra happy with the platform or just sufficiently happy to provide ports ultimately doesn't matter to me. I might even be tempted to argue that them not being perfectly happy is a good sign for me as a gamer

It's unfortunate that Valve is so secretive; I'd love to see some internal (non-estimated) figures regarding sales, revenue, attach rates etc.

SteamSpy is really more accurate and up to date data than what we get on any other platform. It has a margin of error, but at least that is clearly stated.


Oh by the way, when I read W!CK!D's reply on the first page this morning my first thought was "I thought he was banned". I didn't have time to reply back then, and now it's outdated.

 

[derExperte]

Maybe we'll start getting some fucking NHL ports eventually.

EA drove Sim City and The Sims into the ground like there's no tomorrow and are sitting on their own Football Manager license doing nothing. Everyone says they love money but it's starting to look like they're somewhat allergic to dosh from PC gamers.

Oh by the way, when I read W!CK!D's reply on the first page this morning my first thought was "I thought he was banned". I didn't have time to reply back then, and now it's outdated.

He didn't get banned but deleted his old, slightly differently named account including all posts.

 

[Durante]

EA drove Sim City and The Sims into the ground like there's no tomorrow. Everyone says they love money but it's starting to look like they're allergic to dosh from PC gamers.

Not to mention that they have a massively popular (on PC) franchise which they don't sell on Steam.

 

[wildfire]

I'm pretty sure you are in a wrong here and PC gamers (can't say for all, but I suppose majority) don't base their PC builds on consoles in any way whatsoever,

To be clear, I wasn't even talking about consoles at that point. PC gamers target their specs based on their displays.

Also you assume that only sales Nvidia and AMD make are of gaming PCs, what's 100% false.

The only false assumption was your own about my outlook on what they sell.

 

[Kezen]

He didn't get banned but deleted his old, slightly differently named account including all posts.

His second account is now banned as well, maybe at his request.

 

[Chezzymann]

Awesome in general, but this bit stood out to me

Why can't gaming PC look elegant and simple instead of ostentatious and garrish? I know there are custom PC case manufacturers who actually know how proper design works, but why is this "sports car" motif pushed by pretty much every big company?

The demographic they're targeting thinks it looks cool. They factually have bad taste though.

 

[ghibli99]

I put a lot of money into my PC upgrade this year. Dual 970s, new mobo, CPU, RAM, and had it not been DOA and souring me on the current crop, a G-Sync monitor would have been part of that total. I have the most games for PC (530 was my last Steam count), and yet it's the system I play games on the least.

It's weird! It's like consoles and handhelds win out due to convenience or me (for whatever reason) wanting trophies/achievements on those platforms more than Steam's.

Software-wise, I spend a fraction per game on PC mainly because it's all digital and usually bundled. I'll pay full price day one on physical console releases, but wait -- usually a long time -- for PC purchases. It's a strange dichotomy between things that are in essence pretty similar.

 

[nkarafo]

It wasn't too long ago when we had a bunch of "PC gaming is dead" threads around here huh?

 

[XiaNaphryz]

Shouldn't be a surprise. NVIDIA has long reaped the benefits, their consumer sales are what help fuel their higher-end/professional development.

 

[Curufinwe]

My gaming PC is eight years old and the only hardware I've changed is adding a GTX 460 when the original GT 8800 died.

I probably won't get a new one till I move into a bigger house unless it completely dies.

 

[ScatheZombie]

In many cases, a 60$ console game purchase brings as much as a $30-40 PC purchase. You have it the other way around, the PC is has the best ratio of revenue and profit which is why even at low prices they can bring in more money than a discounted console game.

I'm on my phone so I can't really get to far into it, but game revenue on PC vs console is alot more nuanced than what you are portraying. A $60 retail game for consoles only sees about $27 go to the publisher. (Google. Anatomy of a $60 video game) On PC they will generally get $40 through digital store fronts like Steam. $60 if they sell through their own store like Origin.(small percenatge of sales) You also don't take into account the nature sales past the front loading on console. Most of the sales past the first few months are used sales that they see $0 from. Digital on consoles will probably change this if it hasn't already time will tell.

I'm well aware of the different break downs between retail sales and digital. With the exception of EA and Origin, most of your digital PC sales will come from Steam - which takes 30% plus other fees like charge-backs, etc., relatively comparable to your margins in retail, though slightly better - and moreso over the long-term. The Anatomy of a $60 Game you are talking about is a little off (which isn't surprising since I believe the one you are referring to is 5 years old and from OnLive, not an actual publisher), things like 'platform royalty' on that have actually gone down, 'returns' I assume refers to transaction insurance and charge-backs which happen on digital too, and the publisher take is closer to $30-35 (depending on distribution contracts and region) than $27. But I digress. The difference is the front-loading on sales. The metrics are really clear on this. When +90% of your sales on console are coming in the first 3 months, you get the maximum value from each of those sales. The after-market effect 6+ months down the road are largely immaterial. Speaking of which, used game 'sales' don't actually count as a sale from a publisher perspective and aren't counted in any metrics. Versus on PC, +80% of your sales come from after that first 3 month boom. PC gamers are, seemingly, way more willing to wait for sales than console gamers are. So even if they are comparable in number, you will always make significantly more from your console sales than from your PC sales. Yes, even accounting for everything. In order for PC to come out ahead on revenue and profit, sales need to vastly exceed what you would get on consoles - at least for AAA games, indies might have a different experience due to their initial lower price points and margins.

Dude, in what world do you live that makes you say those sentences as a fact?

I've worked for multiple AAA publishers on PC and multi-platform projects.

So I guess maybe your thinking here is a little dated. Publishers are targeting the PC a lot in the last few years. Outside of timed exclusives and exclusivity deals most multi platforms come to PC. Financially PC has become a strong third pillar. Second pillar if you lump the consoles together.

So, 'releasing (ported) games on PC' is not the same as 'targeting'. The availability of PC ports hasn't honestly changed all the much in the past few years. It has changed a ton since, say the PS2 era, however, if that's what you mean. In targeting, I mean that for your average AAA publisher, the PC version of any multi-platform game is going to get the least amount of development time, development money, marketing dollars, and priority compared to any other version of the project. And that should be clearly evident in a number of AAA PC ports in the last few years.

Great post, I'm assuming you work in the industry so I'll ask...since the consoles are x86 now has this made porting to the PC a more viable thing than it used to be in the cell and xenon days or is it mostly financial reasons that hold back ports?

It's still mostly apathy. It's somewhat less expensive from a development standpoint but not much since most multi-platform projects for the past two generations or so have been developed first on PC anyway or with a ton of wrappers making transitional development between platforms easier. Optimization has always been the major cost. And that's still existent in the new architecture. The biggest thing holding them back is weighing not only the potential cost of development, but also of marketing and distribution - though digital helps this a lot - compared to the potential short-term gains. Most publicly-traded publishes are not looking at launching on PC and determining valuation based on a potential 10 years sales figure, they want short-term returns they can drag in front of investors. And if that energy of development, marketing, and distribution has better valuation in doing console DLC or another project, well, then the PC ports gets put on the back-burner, cancelled or outsourced to a different studio.

 

[Mass_Pincup]

Out of touch.

1. In many cases, a 60$ console game purchase brings as much as a $30-40 PC purchase. You have it the other way around, the PC is has the best ratio of revenue and profit which is why even at low prices they can bring in more money than a discounted console game.

Source ?

 

[DontBeThatGuy]

I feel like like last-gen lasting as long as it did had some people looking elsewhere for "next'gen". (and also things like the rise of Twitch, gaming Youtube, and free to play)

 

[Buntachan]

There's too much conversation on this without substantial data used to support positions.

An important question is, if PC gaming hardware (including accessory) sales are increasing despite the shrinking overall PC market, is it due to higher average sales per gaming customer or more gaming customers as a whole?

If top line graphics cards are increasing in price over the past 5 years, and demand is relatively inelastic, you'll see hardcore gamers shell out more and more money to remain in the 99th percentile every year. That still contributes to larger total hardware dollars.

I think the biggest clue is still that Steam is breaking concurrency records every year, from 5m concurrent 3-4 years ago to 8m now.

There's a real gain in number of players on PC, partially due to expansion of untapped markets in Europe and Asia, and partially due to the shrinking suppliers on PC creating a hardware market of lower variety that makes compatibility issues a lot more tolerable than they have been 3-4 years ago. One other issue, is the incredible prices you get on Steam and other digital platforms, compared to PSN and XBOX Live.

Overall I still think it's good news for core gamers. We need the core market across all platforms to remain large for the kinds of games we want to play to remain viable. Mobile and its types of games so far are still quite different from console/PC games, but fortunately most Western console/PC developers are not shifting to F2P like we're seeing in Japan.

 

[ElTorro]

Gaudy?

Fuck me.

I need a photo of that single weirdo who bought this lovecraftian atrocity.

 

[qa_engineer]

Awesome in general, but this bit stood out to me

Why can't gaming PC look elegant and simple instead of ostentatious and garrish? I know there are custom PC case manufacturers who actually know how proper design works, but why is this "sports car" motif pushed by pretty much every big company?

I'm with you, man. Why can't we have something that looks like an ASUS Zenbook UX501/ASUS G501JW, Define R5, Corsair 550D but still pack the power of some of these UFO looking monstrosities?

 

[Darkstorne]

Surprisingly, PC gaming is has overtaken the console market consumer wise. Sadly, mobile gaming is enjoying a meteoric rise as well...

None of that is a bad thing. Console sales might be the weakest of the three, but they also happen to be stronger today than they ever have been in the history of gaming. I play on PC, PS4, and my mobile phone. All are great for different reasons.

I'm with you, man. Why can't we have something that looks like an ASUS Zenbook UX501/ASUS G501JW, Define R5, Corsair 550D but still pack the power of some of these UFO looking monstrosities?

Hehe. I always think my Fractal case is what a gaming PC would look like in a suit.

 

[qa_engineer]

None of that is a bad thing. Console sales might be the weakest of the three, but they also happen to be stronger today than they ever have been in the history of gaming. I play on PC, PS4, and my mobile phone. All are great for different reasons.



Hehe. I always think my Fractal case is what a gaming PC would look like in a suit.

I have the 550D, define R5 was my next choice but opted not to go with a window case.

 

[EternalTruth]

Maybe we'll start getting some fucking NHL ports eventually.

This, I don't understand how EA fails to release all their sports titles on Origin, don't they get a larger cut of profits from their own digital store on PC?!

 

[Enter the Dragon Punch]

Gaudy?

oh come on posting lian li is practically fucking cheating

they make a train case for god's sake

 

[SneakyStephan]

Mobile rising is something that was inevitable. Rather than looking at it as something sad, I look at it with excitement for what developers on the platform could deliver as handheld experiences on them.

Skinnerboxes with energy systems (now poisoning regular gaming thanks to their success on mobile)
Games targetted at kids with gambling mechanics (shameful practice)

That's about the contribution of mobile gaming to the industry...
Yeah there's a few decent games (and I've tried the ones recommended in the gaf mobile threads, turns out they were equivalent to the better newgrounds or kongregate games, wow... totally worth the other 98 percent of mobile gaming poisoning our hobby /s)

EA drove Sim City and The Sims into the ground like there's no tomorrow and are sitting on their own Football Manager license doing nothing. Everyone says they love money but it's starting to look like they're somewhat allergic to dosh from PC gamers.



.

They are burning through some of their IPS trying to find the best way for new monetisation schemes in AAA gaming (again after seeing the success of whale factories on mobile)
It's totally worth it to them to gather data, it's just them sending out feelers to see what they can get away with ,how to best implement it, how gradual their changes have to be for the audience to accept them.

The reason they use popular IPs is because people might be more perceptive to these changes when they come along with 10-20 years worth of goodwill towards a series. They can get it 60 percent right and people will still eat it up, while if they do it with a less known or new IP people aren't to want to rationalise these things away.
Put horse armor in an elder scrolls game? Sure! It's only cosmetic! nothing bad could happen from this!
Introduce it in some random new IP get lost
Energy system timers in mgs5? It's still a great game yada yada I love mgs yada yada
Energy timer in some random new or less loved IP? lol get lost

Once they figure out how to do it it shows up in every game and they slowly start turning up the intensity.

Dead space 3? failed attempt at microtransactions, too much too fast not subtle enough
bf3 and AC 4 successful attempt
Now they're in pretty much every single new game

I'm sure they did the math and found that it's worth sacrificing some of their brand value and established IPs to find the recipes for monetisation.
I'm also sure that they're not exactly happy about throwing away sim city (they are greedy motherfuckers afterall and the voices in their heads chant 'opportunity cost' over and over during their every waking moment) but it's just operating costs to them at this point.

If things don't progress as they projected or backfire harder than they assumed it's probably some analysts getting replaced (as well as the developer getting thrown at the wolves ofcourse now that their IP is worthless (hard to feel sorry for them ofcourse because they were willing to get in bed with these publishers and to be used as expendable probes into their fans' wallets to begin with), but to a publisher like EA a developer is just an expendable commodity.
The ones that can't do their own probing just attend a dice conference and attend some workshops by the cunts who now made a career out of teaching others how to exploit people.

This is what the AAA industry is now... you can accept it or you can let it go and move on, but this is how things are going to be going forward.

 

[family_guy]

I didn't want to upgrade my gtx660, but my hair dryer PS4 really is really getting on my nerves.

 

[Enter the Dragon Punch]

I didn't want to upgrade my gtx660, but my hair dryer PS4 really is really getting on my nerves.

That reminds me. I should probably invest in Noctua fans.

Skinnerboxes with energy systems (now poisoning regular gaming thanks to their success on mobile)
Games targetted at kids with gambling mechanics (shameful practice)

That's about the contribution of mobile gaming to the industry...
Yeah there's a few decent games (and I've tried the ones recommended in the gaf mobile threads, turns out they were equivalent to the better newgrounds or kongregate games, wow... totally worth the other 98 percent of mobile gaming poisoning our hobby /s)

What else am I supposed to do, though? Be sour or angry about it? Yeah, the majority of mobile gaming business practices suck. But I don't support them, and I can't do anything but continue to support the more quality mobile games.

 

[Saty]

I'm well aware of the different break downs between retail sales and digital. With the exception of EA and Origin, most of your digital PC sales will come from Steam - which takes 30% plus other fees like charge-backs, etc., relatively comparable to your margins in retail, though slightly better - and moreso over the long-term. The Anatomy of a $60 Game you are talking about is a little off (which isn't surprising since I believe the one you are referring to is 5 years old and from OnLive, not an actual publisher), things like 'platform royalty' on that have actually gone down, 'returns' I assume refers to transaction insurance and charge-backs which happen on digital too, and the publisher take is closer to $30-35 (depending on distribution contracts and region) than $27. But I digress. The difference is the front-loading on sales. The metrics are really clear on this. When +90% of your sales on console are coming in the first 3 months, you get the maximum value from each of those sales. The after-market effect 6+ months down the road are largely immaterial. Speaking of which, used game 'sales' don't actually count as a sale from a publisher perspective and aren't counted in any metrics. Versus on PC, +80% of your sales come from after that first 3 month boom. PC gamers are, seemingly, way more willing to wait for sales than console gamers are. So even if they are comparable in number, you will always make significantly more from your console sales than from your PC sales. Yes, even accounting for everything. In order for PC to come out ahead on revenue and profit, sales need to vastly exceed what you would get on consoles - at least for AAA games, indies might have a different experience due to their initial lower price points and margins

Well obviously if you're going to pit potentially up to 5 console versions against the single PC version then the latter would 'need' to sell a lot more to win out. But that kind of a comparison is meaningless in guiding decisions. Of course sales of several SKUs together are going to be more than any other single SKU.

Maybe you can expand on that, but i believe pubs don't plump all the console versions together in their considerations and budgets. Often there are separate teams working on the PS4 version and another on the XB1 and so forth, so each SKU has to hold it's own weight or else you just don't make that SKU (case in point the Wii U).
So it's when you compare sales on PS4 vs XB1 vs PC that things get more interesting and insightful, even in the initial 3-months period. But yes, your summary is sound.

I've worked for multiple AAA publishers on PC and multi-platform projects.
So, 'releasing (ported) games on PC' is not the same as 'targeting'. The availability of PC ports hasn't honestly changed all the much in the past few years. It has changed a ton since, say the PS2 era, however, if that's what you mean. In targeting, I mean that for your average AAA publisher, the PC version of any multi-platform game is going to get the least amount of development time, development money, marketing dollars, and priority compared to any other version of the project. And that should be clearly evident in a number of AAA PC ports in the last few years.

Yes, generally these games are designed and marketed around the console players. I don't see it as a slight that these games are getting PC versions that by and large are more comprehensive and advanced, so it doesn't matter much to me how long or how much the spent on the product (are you factoring the time that all games are developed on PC in this assessment?).

It's easy to pick the edge-cases ports and make an argument around it. I could too about how those games that target consoles ship out a mess. BF4, Unity and so forth. The list goes on and even includes exclusive games that have all their resources devoted to one SKU but are released in a broken state like MCC.

Regarding the availability of PC ports, i disagree. The argument was never about total quantity of games that are getting PC ports but about numerous of 'AAA' franchises that didn't and those games were always hold over the head of the PC platform in discussions about building a PC gaming or about the health of the platform in general.

Nowadays, the PC does get Resident Evil; it gets MGS; it gets MGS; it gets fighting games; it gets an increasing amount of Japanese games. And all are mostly competent ports. This shift has been key in how the platform is perceived by the longtime console user.

It's still mostly apathy. It's somewhat less expensive from a development standpoint but not much since most multi-platform projects for the past two generations or so have been developed first on PC anyway or with a ton of wrappers making transitional development between platforms easier. Optimization has always been the major cost. And that's still existent in the new architecture. The biggest thing holding them back is weighing not only the potential cost of development, but also of marketing and distribution - though digital helps this a lot - compared to the potential short-term gains. Most publicly-traded publishes are not looking at launching on PC and determining valuation based on a potential 10 years sales figure, they want short-term returns they can drag in front of investors. And if that energy of development, marketing, and distribution has better valuation in doing console DLC or another project, well, then the PC ports gets put on the back-burner, cancelled or outsourced to a different studio.

Again, who are these big publishers which are 'holding back' on making PC versions of their games? Pretty much everything out there is being also made on PC and releasing alongside the console versions. Not only that, but pretty much every AAA publisher has PC-centric or exclusives IP's that are making them handsome money.

 

[ANDS]

I'm curious how that scratch is spread out across the globe.

 

[TaterTots]

I'm not surprised. People are complaining a lot about the current gen hardware. On top of that, maybe there are more people like me. I do not own a XB1 or a PS4 and my laptop is on the way out. Instead of spending $500+ on a PS4 and a few hundred bucks on a laptop, I've decided to kill two birds with one stone. A budget gaming PC can take care of all my needs. I mostly play fighting games and Gears, so not that demanding.

 

[ScatheZombie]

Well obviously if you're going to pit potentially up to 5 console versions against the single PC version then the latter would 'need' to sell a lot more to win out. But that kind of a comparison is meaningless in guiding decisions. Of course sales of several SKUs together are going to be more than any other single SKU.

Maybe you can expand on that, but I believe pubs don't plump all the console versions together in their considerations and budgets. Often there are separate teams working on the PS4 version and another on the XB1 and so forth, so each SKU has to hold it's own weight or else you just don't make that SKU (case in point the Wii U).
So it's when you compare sales on PS4 vs XB1 vs PC that things get more interesting and insightful, even in the initial 3-months period. But yes, your summary is sound.

All of that is true. However, when I was talking about 20% being on PC versus console, that wasn't necessarily lumping all the consoles together. If you take a typical AAA next-gen title and release it on PS4, Xbone and PC, your overall sales first-3-months sales breakdown is likely something like 50-35-15, respectively. Or 45-35-20. Individual platforms generally still win out against PC in the short term, when margins are their highest. It isn't until factoring in the longer lifecycle of the product that PC meets, and eventually exceeds the other platforms. And by that time, the average revenue per sale is way, way down. I only lump together consoles when talking about what's more profitable. Because your margins for PS4 and Xbone are roughly the same, so any sales between the two will ultimately contribute to your revenue in the same percentages.

Again, who are these big publishers which are 'holding back' on making PC versions of their games? Pretty much everything out there is being also made on PC and releasing alongside the console versions. Not only that, but pretty much every AAA publisher has PC-centric or exclusives IP's that are making them handsome money.

I don't know if 'holding back' is the term I would use. In most cases, publishers with PC-exclusive IPs are in genres that don't perform well on console (RTS, MMO, Sim) rather than shifting focus off of console development in favor of PC. I'm not saying AAA publishers completely ignore PC development; only that for the majority of their major franchises, PC is secondary to consoles even when the versions are marketed together and released simultaneously and giving a list of reasons why that is. Because console development is, on average, more profitable - for the reasons I listed earlier: harder to target with marketing vs more concentrated audience, multiple geographic and cultural boundaries vs primarily NA/EU, smaller margins and long-term sales vs larger margins and front-loaded sales, huge library of competition vs small library of competition, and difficulty with compatibility vs single spec.

 

[SneakyStephan]

That reminds me. I should probably invest in Noctua fans.



What else am I supposed to do, though? Be sour or angry about it? Yeah, the majority of mobile gaming business practices suck. But I don't support them, and I can't do anything but continue to support the more quality mobile games.

Nothing. You're not the target audience anyway.

 

[alexandros]

This thread is amazing and I am enjoying reading the reactions to this news. That is all.

 

[Kinthalis]

Again, who are these big publishers which are 'holding back' on making PC versions of their games? Pretty much everything out there is being also made on PC and releasing alongside the console versions. Not only that, but pretty much every AAA publisher has PC-centric or exclusives IP's that are making them handsome money.

Yeah... I'm not sure if he's basing this only on whatever projects he has worked on or what, but overall, the narrative is strikingly different from what he is portraying.

 

[shiftplusone]

other than the stupid logo I think both of the Razer NZXT Cases look pretty good

I'm a simple "black monolithic structure" kind of guy, though

this is what I currently use.

I never had the transformer case. I had some of those fucking 1950's light up juke box cases, though. Nowadays I cant stand that stuff

EDIT: in reference to the actual topic, I'm glad that the industry is getting bigger and that there's more eyes on it. Finding out specifics of the ports ~10+ years ago wasn't always easy and was based on a lot of what someone said in a message board.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

Mother of god, my wife would probably leave but I want that train case in my life

 

[Steel]

Awesome in general, but this bit stood out to me

Why can't gaming PC look elegant and simple instead of ostentatious and garrish? I know there are custom PC case manufacturers who actually know how proper design works, but why is this "sports car" motif pushed by pretty much every big company?

Because they think they can charge more for it if it looks overdesigned.