We delve a little further into why Consoles seem “the norm” in today’s gaming

By GrathiusXR

©2008 Arthur Kotsopoulos

Many believe and love to spread the word that PC gaming is dead, when in a way it actually isn’t. It’s just with such huge investments needed to develop a game for the PC and huge risks involved, that the PC has hit a halt in terms of gaming and defining it’s difference to consoles to warrant its ‘generally’ higher costs.

Funnily enough, It use to be the front force for game developers for years, giving developers the ability to push their titles to new limits in terms of size, graphics, content, and overall quality, yet this norm has changed. Consoles have entered the mainstream and developers now invest time and effort into making blockbuster and multiplatform games for both the Xbox 360/Playstation 3, seeing as that is where the money is at.

Over the past few years the gaming industry has made a huge shift from PC to Consoles. Back in the day when you talked about gaming you straight away thought PC or Computer with games such as Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Counter Strike, Starcraft, Warcraft III, and World of Warcraft etc… Yet in today’s world the moment you talk about games the first thing that comes to your mind is Xbox360/PS3.

You may well ask why ?  For these 5 basic reasons

• Exclusiveness
• Simplicity
• Community
• Piracy
• Development & Marketing Expenses

Exclusiveness:

Sith Lord Jim Says:

“More and more games are either coming out on the PC way after consoles, or simply not at all. For an example simply look up Battlefield Bad Company. The Battlefield series has been around on the pc for a long time, but the newest edition of the series is a console exclusive

Exclusives are what differentiate each console and PC gaming. In today’s world it seems that having exclusive games can be the thing that makes or breaks your console.

Gears of War, an Xbox 360 exclusive was released back in November of 2006 and after 10 weeks had sold 3+ million copies worldwide and was doing a good job in staying on the top of the most played XBOX360 game on LIVE, yet it took 1 year until after it was released to become available on the PC.

Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City and San Andreas were always on the PC and the PS2. Yet we have seen GTA4 released on the Playstation 3 and also with the Xbox 360 having access to exclusive downloadable content, which Microsoft paid $50 million to secure. In all this there has yet to be any sign or talk of a PC version.

Here are some statistics for GTA4 so far while it has been console exclusive:

• On 13 May 2008, GTA: IV broke the Guinness World Records for “Highest grossing video game in 24 hours” and “Highest Revenue Generated by an Entertainment Product in 24 Hours”. It sold 3.6 million copies on day one, which equaled roughly $310 million in revenue. For first day sales it also broke the record of “Fastest-selling video game in 24 hours”, previously held by Halo 3 at $170 million
• As of May 31, 2008, the title has sold over 11 million copies to retailers and 8.5 million have been sold through to consumers
• The game’s publisher, Take-Two Interactive Software have reported to have sold 6 million copies and raked in $500 million in its first seven days on the streets. On its first day of release GTA4 sold 3.6 million copies.

You talk Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 and you can straight away think of many games which are out on their own respective console. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Halo 3, Resistance, Gears of War and many others. Sure some of the Xbox 360′s games have been released on the PC but they were console exclusive to begin with and generated fame for themselves.

The PC has had a few titles that have been released as only PC exclusives, Crysis, World of Warcraft, every Sims game made and that is really about it basically. Every month if you look at the PC charts for best selling games it is dominated by The Sims and World of Warcraft. This goes to show that PC gaming has hit a halt in acquiring games that really define it.

No, the PC is not dead or dying in any way but instead it’s in a ditch trying to find itself from itself. In this interview with Cliff Bleszinski when he spoke to MTV’s Multiplayer-Blog he had this to say;

‘Gears of War’ Creator: Slams ‘Insular’ Game Developers, Puts Consoles As Epic’s Priority

Cliff Bleszinski:

I think people would rather make a game that sells 4.5 million copies than a million and “Gears” is at 4.5 million right now on the 360. I think the PC is just in disarray… what’s driving the PC right now is ‘Sims’-type games and ‘WoW‘ and a lot of stuff that’s in a web-based interface. You just click on it and play it. That’s the direction PC is evolving into so for me, the PC is kind of the secondary part of what we’re doing. It’s important for us, but right now making AAA games on consoles is where we’re at.”

As you can see Cliff himself states that Sims and World of Warcraft are driving the PC which goes to show that the PC doesn’t have those defining games to show everyone what it is all about, and the NPD sales charts for the past year clearly don’t show that.

Only recently with the announcement of Diablo III has the NPD charts changed slightly, yet you can still see The Sims and World Of Warcraft dominating the majority of the Top 10; Week of July 6 – July 12

1. Nancy Drew: The Phantom Of Venice
2. Spore Creature Creator
3. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe
4. Diablo Battle Chest
5. The Sims 2 IKEA Home Stuff
6. WoW: Battle Chest
7. World Of Warcraft
8. The Sims 2 Freetime
9. WoW: The Burning Crusade
10. Call of Duty 4

Simplicity:

Sith Lord Jim Says:

“The other reason I think is a big factor is the simplicity of consoles compared to PC’s. This is something that has many PC gamers turning to consoles. With a PC game you have to install it before you can do anything and that’s if you can even run the game. As we all know different games require different things to run them. This just means that PC gamers have to constantly be upgrading their PC’s if they wish to play the latest games. A console gamer only has to put the game in and away they go. There is never the issue of whether something will run on your machine.”

One area that console gaming used to have over PC gaming was the ability to stream the game off the disc without the need for an installation to be able to play it. While with the PC installing a game on its own can be a hassle. You buy a game only to come home having to wait 20-25 minutes for it to install. This means you are constricted in waiting that extra time by having to do something else, and with games being in excess of 7+GB installation times can only become longer since there is more data to install on the computer.

The Playstation 3 is the first in the Next-gen consoles to utilize its HDD in the same way as a PC by installing a big portion of a certain game onto it before you play, so that the load times are reduced. Only recently at E3 2008 has Microsoft announced this feature will go along with the new Fall Dashboard Update for the Xbox 360.

This procedure sets to eliminate as much loading as possible in certain games, yet on testing it out the load time differences in Devil May Cry 4 on the Playstation 3 are barely even noticeable, with at most an extra half a second shaved off, compared to the Xbox360 Devil May Cry 4. This makes you ask, is it exactly necessary to wait up to 15-20 minutes for it to install, for a measly split second faster load time?

What is interesting though it that apparently on testing with the Xbox 360′s install feature it seems to do it right. With up to 30 % improved loading times… Here are some things to look forward to when the new dashboard update hits. From the E3 New Xbox Experience Article over at Gamespot.

Gamespot Presents: E3 New Xbox Experience

• Up to 30% faster loading times
• The need of the disc tray to not spin while playing the game meaning there won’t be that grinding or jet sound overshadowing your sound
• Optional install meaning that you can choose whether you won’t to install the game or not
• Devil May Cry 4 took roughly 10 minutes to install the full game where as its PS3 brother took double that time.

One thing that is mandatory though is that the disc will still need to be in the disc tray so that the Xbox 360 knows the game is indeed real, and it is a sort of piracy check.

While the Xbox360 does contain PC hardware it is seen by the developers as an easy piece of hardware to be able to develop their big name titles for. Sure some call it a PC wannabe but with games such as Gears, Halo 3, and GTA4 that have created such revenue for the developer of the games who can really argue. Fanboys can, but they cannot see past the truth. If a game sells and makes money for the developers well then they have done their job.

The PS3 went the way of Cell Processor and Blu-Ray which various developers have stated is annoying and frustrating, because it means more time needs to be spent getting used to the hardware of the console as it is new technology and they do not have that excess knowledge for it.  It also means that the more time spent the more money needed to pay staff their wages etc… But alas you need to do something daring and bold to beat out your competitors which is all well and good.

“`Yes as of late, with MSG4, Resistance 2 and Killzone 2 the developer’s hard work are starting to pay off for the better, especially with MSG4 which even many XBOX360 gamers can appreciate and respect as  a highly engaging gaming experience and give respect where it is due. Only time will tell if their long hours and hard work will pay off for them with KZ2 and R2.

One main aspect that consoles have over PC is the fact that you never have to upgrade the hardware inside a console. With a PC one day you may spend an excess of $1500+ to get the best hardware for your PC when come next week newer versions are available that not only run faster and more efficiently but also cost around the same price.

PC Hardware accelerates at an alarming rate with new incarnations of graphics cards, processors etc being released while with a console you buy the console and you can rest assured that 2 years down the track it will play all the latest games in 720P and 1080P. Consoles are built to last a good 5-6 years and will cater to all your gaming needs, when with a PC finding correct products that will perform properly with other hardware is just the first step for buying or upgrading your PC.

John Carmack on PC and Console Gaming:

US, July 11, 2008 - Traditionally the company has focused on PC development and bringing new technologies to the market through high-end, flashy games such as DOOM 3 and Quake III Arena. Since QuakeCon 2007, however, id made it obvious it was shifting its focus, claiming its new Tech 5 engine technology was designed with multiplatform gaming in mind. Quake Live for PC was also announced, an updated version of Quake III that’s free to play and launched from a browser, a departure from the company’s traditional type of products.

We recently had the opportunity to talk with Carmack over the phone, and he filled us in on where he sees id’s role in the ever-changing console and PC markets. “While a high-end gaming PC is many times more powerful than current generation consoles and you could in theory do significantly greater things on it, the downsides of the platform have to support multiple generations of different hardware [and] driver interface layers.

I’ve got all sorts of details I could go into about comparative performance on the PC relative to the consoles on current id Tech 5 stuff but it comes down to developing games costs tens of millions of dollars now and the focus just has to be on the consoles where you’ve got the chance to move more millions of units there. The PC can at least still be profitably supported on there, but it’ll be interesting to see if that continues to trend downward.

So will we see a PC exclusive shooter from id that showcases an all-new technology like they’ve produced in the past? “No,” said Carmack, “at least not happening in our current development timeline.”

As you can see in this snippet of the interview with John Carmack of id Software, he clearly states that there will be no more PC-Exclusives for here on and that consoles are where the profit is to be made. Again it reinforces the fact that there are major risks you take on whilst developing for the PC, whilst developing for consoles allows you to take on minimal risks with room for great success.

Community:

The Xbox 360 features XBOX LIVE, which is it’s online service provided to the customer/gamers/owners of an Xbox 360. Play games online with people from around the world, download trailers, themes, gamer pictures and demos of certain games onto your HDD, and compare your statistics with other gamers on your friends list along with many other features it boasts, yes there is a fee but you pay for what you get. Although Australia doesn’t entirely get what it pays for… The True Australian Xbox Experience

How’s this for a community though:

• Xbox Live hit a milestone in July of 2004; it had achieved 1 million members. In March of 2007, it had achieved 6 million subscribers and then In August 2007, XBOX Live had over 7.1 million active users.
• Since starting up XBOX LIVE reached 10 million members for paying customers meaning GOLD MEMBERS, which was 6 months earlier than they had anticipated.
• On May 14^{th 2008} Microsoft announced that XBOX LIVE had reached 12 million members in total.

For a paying subscription that is a very impressive feat to achieve sure many of them are probably Silver members but 12 million is 12 million meaning it is a hit with gamers around the world.

Although I am yet to experience the features of the Playstation 3 I have heard that it does have a few promising features to be released alongside the Australian Dedicated Servers which is huge plus when you want to games lag-free such as Resistance which allows up to 40 players to play online which is an impressive feat. With Resistance 2 boasting 60 players online Australian Dedicated Servers are a major plus. It also features a free online subscription that in itself is another whole argument in wanting to pay to play or not.

There is one thing though that I must say the PC does very well compared to the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3, and that is the use of modding for certain games. Garry’s Mod is a modding program used with Half Life 2, Portal and also Team Fortress 2 and allows its users to do anything and everything with each character, and every single item available through all 3 games.

Many gamers on the PC have used this to create short videos, parodies, wacky vehicles, crazy contraptions, interesting mini games and so much more… Here are some Youtube videos of some of the things that can be done in Garry’s Mod.

The G-Mod Parody

Garrys Mod 10 – Huge, Walking Colossus.

Giant spider robot in GMOD10

Garry’s Mod 10 RC Car

Garrys mod 10 cannon

And the list just goes on… On another entirely different thought could this be something that should be introduced in certain popular games for the Xbox 360 to allow such user created videos? Of course Halo 3 has something while not quite as extensive, that allows users to take an existing level and strip away everything from it such as crates, barrels, boxes, weapons, etc, and place it where they want and create a whole new battlefield, races, and unique game types. It is very popular and there is a plethora of different game types available.

Piracy:

“PC PLAY – an interview with Crytek president, Mr Cevat Yerli”

PC Play: How do you estimate the current state of the PC gaming industry? Some say that it’s only a matter of time when it’s going to finally die-off; the others say that “the big one” is only getting its comeback pace. Considering Crysis is a PC-exclusive title, what do you think of its market reception and its future? Skeptics would say that it’s pretty risky going PC-exclusive with such a high-profile title.

Cevat Yerli: It is certainly. We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin; a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy.  To the degree PC Gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we won’t have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive anymore.

Piracy is one of the main reasons that developers seek to release their game either solely on a console making it console exclusive or make it a multiplatform game. As you can see in that little extract above, piracy has hurt the sales of Crysis despite them having sold 1+ million copies of the game.

Every game to be released/developed by Crytek will no longer be PC exclusive so after Crysis: Warhead which has been confirmed comes out, it is console/PC gaming all the way for Crytek.

Assassins Creed was released for XBOX360 and PS3 in November of 2007 and was released in April of 2008 for the PC, yet a month prior to the release the PC version of Assassins Creed, pirated copies of the game were available for download as a torrent file and during the month of March 2008, it was the most downloaded game on the net.

Although there are copies of Xbox 360 games available for download you take a big risk in owning a modified Xbox 360. You get banned from XBOX LIVE indefinitely rendering your account useless, meaning that you won’t be able to download anything from the marketplace, send messages to your friends, or play any of your favourite games over LIVE.  Yet on the PC there aren’t really any risks at all, just that you cannot play the game online with others on standard servers unless you have the proper copy.

With Warcraft III, a while back there were actually back-door servers that allowed users to play *DOTA for the hardcore fans* online against their friends from around Australia or the world for free without owning the original game all they had to do was download it. No matter what developers do, people will always find a way to work around the restrictions at hand and play for free without the need to pay.

Bioshock had an interesting dilemma on its hands. It featured a program called SecuROM, which basically meant once you bought the game or downloaded it off Steam it only allowed you to install it twice, and that was it. This was 2K’s vision on a way to stop piracy. ” Vision ” i say is because it still had many kinks that needed to be worked on before they should of released it.

Users upon uninstalling the game were still required to call up SecuROM to activate the game, the incorrect telephone number was included in the manual meaning Australians who called up were paying for International calls and also users upon re-installing the game on the same PC still had to activate it each time.

If every issue that plagued SecuROM was ironed out prior to its release along with Bioshock i believe that it would of been a great start to combat piracy. Although, because of these errors with it the number of installations was increased to 5 until being completely removed which now means that it is prone to piracy.

Codemasters latest racing title; Race Drive: GRID was released last month and already many different incarnations are available for download on the internet. Interestingly is that you can download one heavily compressed version of the game and upon installing it on to your computer have no need for a CD-Key, then go to play it online with the many PC gamers that either own it legitimately or have downloaded a copy for themselves off the internet without paying 1 cent for it.

“Mass Effect PC Developer Talks Ports, Piracy“

Shack:

What is your take on the PC piracy issue?

Albert Reed:

I think it’s a big problem at the sort of financial investment side, how much companies are willing to invest in the PC versions of their game when they’re worried that it’s just gonna be downloaded for free. It’s a problem for developers, because it affects royalties and those sorts of things. It’s something that we all need to stress about and worry about. But it’s not really my area of expertise. I don’t know what the right solution is.

Again as clearly stated in both interviews you can see the major risk of now spending time and effort along with expenses on developing a game solely for the PC. It has affected developers greatly and there is nothing worse than working long hours for months on a PC game only to see it one month before its release available to download on the internet and money gone to waste.

Development & Marketing Expenses

“`One of the biggest risks in developing a game for either the PC, Xbox 360 or PS3, is of course the overall cost – or expense to get it to the end user – you. Depending on how big a developers game may be and how much revenue it it is expected to bring in for them, the costs involved could be the make-or-break with regards to the future of that developer.

There are many factors that need to be taken into account while developing a game. Many of which slip past the eye of the average gamer, and especially the gamer who only see that they paying ‘way too much dude’ for any game in the first place, so they “steal” (read pirate) the game instead.

Some of these not only include that basic things such as wages – periodical payment to development staff working many long hours on project every day just to get it finished on time, but the huge array of auxiliary costs as well.

Many forget that voice actors still require solid payments for their work and appearances. Depending on the nature of the game it could be quite high due to their celebraty status. There’s also licensing fees, not only to the various company’s in the racing genre’ for example. Not only for the cars that appear in the game, but also for the various locations, stores, landmarks and cities that allow their “merchandise to be used in a commercial venture- which is what a game is.

Music doesn’t come cheap now either. With each subsequent title demanding higher and higher levels of fidelity by the end-user, us gamers, studios are now investing $$$ into huge orchestras the likes of major symphony groups. Black used the famous Hollywood Symphony Orchestra in it’s FPS, and you can tell when you listen to it. Did it cost, you betcha it did. Did youpay more for the game, nope, you paid the normal price at the time.

Everyone knows Lamborghini won’t just allow a devloper to show their car be smashed into a hundred little bits. They need to pay a certain fee to allow such damage to be shown, if at all and most of that is just superficial damage anyway, not structural. FIFA 08 would require payment to show the players get injured, tired and so on, as they have a ‘reputation’ to uphold, even within a game.

With some games now topping out at $US100mil to build from conception to arrival in the stores, you can see why RRP’s are the way they are. But of course, this brings out the worst thing that can happen to a developer/publisher – internet pirates. People who download the game illegally and play it for free with little thought as to the staff not getting paid for their work, yet will cry foul if the game has faults. But they have just contributed the the $US100′s millions lost each year on piracy that could otherwise go back into developing better games – dahhh – hello !

This hurts the developers extremely, as all their hard work and long hours of personal investment that have gone into their dream game, have seemingly been for nothing. Piracy hurt Crysis sales immensly, and is also one of the main reasons Titan Quest developer, Iron lore Entertainment was shut down…

THQ’s Michael Fitch Blames Pirates for Titan Quest Studio Closure

THQ’s Michael Fitch places the blame for the closure of Titan Quest developer Iron Lore Entertainment,  squarely on the shoulders of game pirates, though he does suggest that they may have had a bit of help from dumb players, hardware vendors, and one particularly stupid reviewer.

Of course it isn’t all dark times and desperate measures ahead for developers. GTA: IV apparently cost in excess of $US100+ million to both develop and publish. With a total of 1000 staff working on the game day in and day out for several years, yet look what all that dedication has achieved. It single-handedly broke all previous gaming industry records and brought in up to $US300+ million in revenue – so far for Rockstar/Take2, and it’s still selling.

Of course we need to remember that when developing games for a console it is a complete different battlefield. Your game has more chance to a greater number of units in comparison to the same game selling on the PC platform which is something Cliff Bleszinski commented on recently. If you craft a unique gaming experience and offer something ‘unique’ to the player, then your game has the chances of bringing back greater revenue for the publisher and developer as well as gaining critical industry acclaim.

Plus it can be built for one common set of architecture and can thus be optimized to the max, without the worry of taking into consideration of all the variable that must be taken into consideration with a PC game. Building a game that will run well on low end specs, yet turn the juice out on a full-blown gaming rig with the specs wound right up. These take a great deal MORE work than simply maximizing the single basic design of a consoles hardware.

EA Montreal boss Alain Tascan: Cost of games is “crazy”

Alain Tascan, general manager at EA Montreal, has said that the cost of making games is now “crazy” - predicting that booming budgets will drive a change in business models.

Speaking in a recent Q&A session, Tascan said, “I’m not sure that the model we have here will be the model in 15 years, and that the EA you know today will be the EA you know then.

“I’m sure we’ll do things differently, just because of the cost. The cost of games now is crazy.”

When asked whether he’d agree that it’s larger companies like EA which are driving bigger game budgets, Tascan replied, “I think a lot of [other companies] are spending even more money.

According to Tascan, bigger budgets don’t necessarily mean that smaller games companies are left struggling. “I think there are other ways to consume entertainment today – mobile phones, casual games… Games that take a shorter amount of your time are something where a smaller company can really have fun.”

Here is where things begin to get interesting. Many well renowned developers working through major publishing houses, can spend 3-4-5+ years on particular games or developing a new IP. They have access to the millions of dollars that the major publisher has to spend on its development. Many games are often well into development for 1-2 years before they become public/industry knowledge, and have had a significant amount spent on them already during the concept and incubation period.

So where does this leave the smaller “Indie” and AA title companies that make games that are not so well known ?

Perhaps they may not as good as your Gears of War, Halo or Metal Gear Solid series, but they certainly help satisfy a huge proportion of gamers desires the world over. Sure, they can spend less time in developing the game, meaning less development cost, but then the game would ultimately not be as polished or have as much innovation  or added effects allocated to it. IN doing so, it may well be rushed to the shelf depending on the publishers urgency to get it to market.

Rushing it would most likely lead to some of the promised content being removed (we’ve all experienced that at one stage or another with many games), which also result in it being unpolished graphically, full of glitches and game bugs appearing throughout the final product. And often with the storyline not being as fleshed out the way it should of been when it was first conceived – yes, we’re looking at you Dark Sector.

There are many examples of this, and while the promotional arm spends up big on getting the name of the game out there, we find that when we stick that all important game disc into the disc tray and hit Play, we often see what happens when a game is rushed to market and basically not had the right amount spent on it, rather than the promotional aspects of getting the game out.

If you’re a developer with no big game behind you in the past, or a dedicated cult following, rushing it and bringing it out with all the common symptoms, simply destines the game to failure within the gaming industry, thus not creating revenue for the developer. This either results in the smaller devloper shutting their doors down for good or needing to re-pitch their next IP/Title to different publishers in the hope of gaining support to bring their dream to fruition.

It’s not as cut-n-dry as many may think it to be these days where developers and their publishers need to have a steady stream of games coming out to not only satisfy their user base, but also the many shareholders that literally support the publishing arm of the industry, without whom many companies would fold overnight.

PC gaming DYING!?!

Again many love throwing around this phrase on the internet to get the blood of PC fanboys boiling to an extent, and many know that most articles are just biased towards the console or the PC and not really delving into any reliable information to back up why PC gaming is supposedly dead or why PC owns Consoles and vice-versa, yet the fanboys of both consoles and PC love them.

In closing, here is an extract from an interview with Doug Lombardi Valve Marketing Director that pretty sums up that PC Gaming isn’t Dead. Although if you know your market then you can create a classic hit on the PC that creates not only revenue but popularity, Steam and World of Warcraft along with the Sims come to mind in this category.

Shacknews Article: Doug Lombardi On PC Gaming Interview

Shack:

“Do you guys ever get tired of the same old “PC Gaming Is Dying” stories?”

Doug Lombardi:

“I mean, I think, we sort of laugh at it. Because we’ve been wildly successful–we’re very fortunate, you know. Our games have all done really, really well, Steam has taken off and become this whole other business for us, Valve has never been in better shape–and yet everybody is talking about how in the PC world, the sky is falling. And we’re like, we’ve been doing this for 10 years now–actually 12 years since the company started, 10 years since the first game came out–and we’ve never been in better shape, financially or otherwise. The company is over 160 people now–it was 20 people when we shipped Half-Life. We’ve got multiple projects going–we were always a one-project-at-a-time group.

We don’t understand why that story gets traction over time. I think people have finally started to clue in to the fact–there was a story last week where people finally looked at the online subscription revenues for WoW and all the things that look like WoW, and realized, wow, there was a butt-load of cash being made here that wasn’t being counted at the register, at retail, in North America, which is where all these stories come out of.

It’s hard to be able to have games that scale, and to write performance on the high end, and write performance on the bottom end, but you know, winning in any industry means some hard work.

NPD, god love ‘em, they release a US retail sales report, and people take that and say that’s the world picture. And it’s just not true. It’s not like NPD is trying to be evil. Their job is to report North American sales data. They’re doing their jobs. But people are taking that and discounting.. in Germany for example, retail sales of PC products crush all other games, with the possible exception of the DS. It certainly kills all of the next-generation consoles. So if people were looking at that and factoring it in, if people were looking at WoW’s subscriptions alone and factoring it in, looking at Steam sales and factoring it in.. Just look at what Popcap’s doing–Bejeweled and Peggle and all this stuff–they’re not in that NPD data.

If you go around and you look at all these different things that are happening on the PC, and you add them together, my hunch is that [the sales numbers] would actually be much larger than all of the consoles put together. Again, minus the DS, because the DS is this crazy thing by itself. But talking purely in terms of the Wii, the PS3, and the 360, if you added those together and looked at the whole picture, I’d bet you PC would be even, if not bigger than those three systems in terms of the money that’s changing hands and the opportunity for doing business.

So we always look at those things, and we always kind of laugh. We’re doing just fine, Popcap’s doing just fine, Blizzard’s certainly–they’re printing money down there. We always sort of shake our heads, and go, okay, sooner or later someone’s going to write the bigger picture story and perceptions will change.”

©2008 Arthur Kotsopoulos

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