I’m still wrapping up a new math-oriented post on which to test my newly acquired LaTeX capabilities (thanks again, Randall). But I wanted to make note of a story of interest to gamers and graphics geeks like myself. It appears that two of the most hotly anticipated games for the PC platform, Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3, have bombed spectacularly:
The simExchange reports that neither Crysis or UT3 managed to sell more than 100,000 units in their debut last month.
Crysis, which requires an unprecedented US$1500-$2500 in PC upgrades to play, sold 86,633 copies in the U.S., while Unreal Tournament 3 sold just 33,995 copies.
…
Are gamers abandoning the PC? Without jumping the gun, some believe the PC market is shrinking with exception to a few specific genres like the massively popular World of Warcraft MMO.
There are several factors behind this. First of all, as the story notes, console gaming’s price-performance ratio has improved drastically over the last generation, detracting from the appeal of high-end gaming rigs. Further detracting from that appeal is the fact that the technology is moving at such a fast pace nowadays that it has outstripped the ability or desire of large numbers of consumers to keep up. The market is such now that you can spend $1,000+ building a brand new gaming rig and games will run at framerates comparable to a flip book a year later when run on high settings. When you can spend $300-$500 on the latest console gaming platforms, which have consistent release schedules of games that are guaranteed to work and run smoothly, it’s no wonder more consumers are switching.
The final, and in my mind most important, factor in the drop is the game-devs themselves. If you haven’t noticed, not a whole lot of effort has been going into the game aspect of PC games lately. Whereas in the late 90’s you had innovation up the wazoo, with the notable exception of Half-Life 2 just about all big-name titles have been glorified 5+ hour tech-demos for a company’s latest engine release. Doom 3 certainly comes to mind when you think of this, as from my perspective it seems as though it was beginning of the trend. There just hasn’t been much new in first person shooters save for eye-candy and technical details of interest only to hardcore graphics geeks. While such things certainly have their place at, say, SIGGRAPH, it doesn’t really help to drop 50 million dollars onto a game development budget. It’s best to focus your resources on researching and developing the engine and then licencing it as middleware.
Now, contrary to much of the analysis going on out there on this story, I highly doubt that PC gaming is going to die. PC’s still own niche markets like the RTS and MMORPG genres. And there will always been an enthusiast market in PC’s for the same reason that there is always going to be an enthusiast market for cars. But I highly doubt that it’s going to continue to be a big player in the overall industry. The PC is still the proving ground for new methods and techniques in programming, and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future. What the PC loses in direct to market software it can probably retain in the middleware department while relegated to R&D purposes.
December 20, 2007 at 9:23 am
I think Crysis and UT3 are not representative examples. Crysis just scares people; no one knows if their machine will be capable of running it. It’s no surprise, then, that its sales haven’t been the best. But just give it time. I predict a long, slow rise in sales for Crysis.
And UT3, timing may have been a factor. So many high-profile shooters just came out (Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, Orange Box has been doing very well) and from what I’ve heard, UT3 doesn’t present many reasons for a PC gamer to pick it up over anything else. And, yes, I included Halo 3; if one likes shooters one is probably playing it whether one is a PC gamer or not.
Don’t count out PC just yet. I’ve got one word for you (and a number): Starcraft 2.
December 20, 2007 at 10:33 am
Starcraft 2 will certainly be a big boost, but it’s in one of the genres that can really only be done well on the PC (RTS). FPS’s use to be pretty much exclusive to PC’s save for the occasional lame console port of Doom or Quake, but they’ve figured out how to make them more viable on consoles. The PC just doesn’t have the death-grip on them it once had.
I hope you’re right about the sales, but I doubt we’re going to see significant gains in comparison to its console counterparts. One of the things that would help is that engine developers could focus a bit more on software scalability, which would take the pressure off consumers to keep up with the most expensive hardware. I think Valve has certainly shown the success of this strategy: I was able to get Half-Life 2 running on a freakin’ GeForce 2 Pro, for chissakes!
December 21, 2007 at 12:19 am
I agree, scalability would solve some problems. Allowing games to play on more diverse systems would certainly increase the market for PC. It might take a lot of development effort, but could reap a lot of rewards in increased sales.
As for shooters, you’re right. Consoles never used to have the control sensitivity to hold up against a mouse and keyboard, but now that sensitive analog sticks are the norm, shooters have found fertile ground in the console market. PC is still better for control, but there’s a far bigger audience for consoles so that’s where the developers go. And the industry is facing a dearth of exclusives on all fronts as development costs rise, so wherever the biggest audience is will be the focus of development. Right now that’s consoles.
December 21, 2007 at 3:00 pm
I don’t know if you’re a podcast listener, but the newest GFW Radio goes over all our talking points and more, but with more depth than we industry outsiders could hope to achieve. Give it a listen; it’s after their humorous discussion of the new Duke Nukem Forever trailer.
December 23, 2007 at 6:36 pm
I don’t know about the whole issue of PCs vs. consoles on a technical level. One thing this brings to mind, though, is a sort of “blockbuster syndrome” in PC gaming.
Hollywood studios spend megabucks on special effects, big-name actors, and glitzy production for a few movies in hopes that they’ll make a blockbuster, and record companies spend zillions on marketing. Amid all this fuss, they forget about the fundamentals of making movies (or records), so movies with utterly lousy scripts (or songs by weak singers/bands) get produced, and bomb. That’s the theory, anyway.
Folks like EA are kind of guilty of the same thing — putting together huge games with super-high-polygon-count models, gigantic maps, etc. The result looks awesome, but may not play awesomely if they haven’t thought as deeply about gameplay (or about the PC hardware real consumers have).
Meanwhile, Valve is making small games that work on crappy PCs, and Nintendo is making cheap Wii boxes, partly because those companies have to go low-budget due to their smaller size. And they end up being really fun, and within the reach of more consumers. It’s much easier for them to turn a profit with a smaller up-front investment, too.
Conclusion: maybe the future is in smart games that run on “weak” graphics hardware more than with behemoths that bank on hyper-detailed realism and production values. PC hardware isn’t the direction EA is going in, but it might be the direction where the profit lies. That’d be good news for small outsider developers if it’s true.
(Disclaimer: not a game expert and barely a gamer — although a friend forced me to try Portal and I’m making a note here, huge success. So my interest in gaming economics is amateurish and academic. :))