i figured id start this thread out of curiosity about the video game market.
I recently read IGNs review of the current market and it looked pretty bleak sales wise unless your world of warcraft or its contempary.

Has the sales market altered in its structure alot? i guess more ppl are buying mmos but some fps are still selling. And why is this what do people want out of video games these days

I must admit i seem to see fewer games that im interested in each passing year. Maybe standards and ideas in the gaming industry are dropping or maybe its just me seeing the past thru rose tints. Theres been a few good games - orange box, stalker, Defcon but i seem to remember years when there would tens of games that i wanted. And there also seem to be fewer games people are obsessional over.

Has the pc market become duller over the past decade? and how will this effect ns?

i could be exhadurating as none of this is based on fact but what do people think will happen to ns2 when it hits the shelves? and Why?

Well, are you talking PC and Console sales?

Many analysts believe that 2007 was one of the best years for gaming, ever. There's been literally over a dozen amazing titles competing for sales. As far as PC gaming, I think it's mostly an issue of rising development costs, and of course, marketing as well. It's simply more profitable to move onto consoles or do a multi-platform release involving PC, PS3 and 360.

People have been predicting the death of PC gaming for the last decade, and I still don't think it's going to happen. A major issue is that many individuals can't keep up with rising system requirements, and games are constantly trying to push the envelope in graphics (although not often in gameplay!) and it has put up an intimidating barrier for gamers. Remember Crysis? It was marketed as THE FPS game, and they even said it probably won't run on your computer. People simply didn't turn out to buy it unless they were running powerful rigs (and chances are they just pirated it anyways!)

I see the problem being that developers are trying to push new engines too fast on the PC. Eventually they'll get to the point that just because technology is progressing so quickly, doesn't mean it's being adopted quickly. I bought my computer less than 2 years ago, mid range gaming rig, single core. Newer games are already being designed with Quad cores in mind. I can't upgrade that quickly. Especially when you figure that the major market for gamers is 18-25, but also extending into the early thirties. A console purchase for $400 every 5 years is simply a better option for many consumers.

Games like World of Warcraft are extremely successful because there is a low barrier to entry. Sure, it's a fantastic game, but even a 8-10 year PC can run it, and that's why it's successful. If it required a high end video card, and it had more advanced graphics, it wouldn't have anywhere near the subscription rate it has now.

Anyways, NS2 will have a great audience, and seeing as it's on the HL2 engine, it will be more successful than if it was on a brand spanking new engine. (all costs considered) If it manages to have a low barrier of entry (including learning curve which will hopefully be an important focus), it can have a greater market penetration.

Also those sales often don't take into account purchasing games online, such as through steam. I don't buy many "boxed" games these days but I still buy a fair amount of games.

Could you give me a link to the IGN review? I have some questions about sales figures and who is the source of the sales figures, who is doing the counting and what they are counting.

Reason being, if the information is only coming from the US market, and only from retail, and only from big box store chains, say, Walmart...

I am sure some of you already see what I am getting at. The figures may be in favor of a particular market whose purchasing power has been steadily dropping over the years, not in small part to the big box store chains that pay their employees low wages and no benifits, further reducing their purchasing power.

PC Gaming, Entry level, is probably as cheap as it has ever been. Even a mid-level PC, and I am talking CDN prices, not even US, is only about $1500 (included monitor in estimate) plus extras. A mid level PC in 2001 cost me approximately $2500.

Technology is getting cheaper, even the latest games I have seen on the shelf have a price drop, but maybe that is a reflection of my CDN dollar value - I remember new releases costing around $70, now they cost around $50.

I don't think its the games that are necessarily the problem, though those silly high system requirements for a graphical upgrade with lil' game play value to show for it IMHO is an issue, I think the real issue is people's expendable income is dropping. People's purchasing power is dropping.

I know this is going to start sounding political, but bear with me please. When a place consists of mostly poor people, a lot of potential customers are going to be, well, low income earners. As those masses' purchasing power drops, so does the sales of the things they like to buy. You know how I was mentioning the Canadian dollar earlier right? I am pretty sure its not a case of our dollar getting better, but a US dollar getting worse. The warning signs have been there for years, it seems like the jobs that made low income earners into middle income earners are going away. Poor are getting poorer and more people are joining the ranks of the poor. This affects the market place, including our beloved games.

Plus, console games are mostly sold by retail, yes? While sales of games for the PC, in my experience, is increasingly becoming more widely accepted as a safe purchase over the internet. If we want to project The Market to which NS2 plans to be sold, we need numbers, and how those numbers were gathered, from Steam itself. Seeing as how more and more non-Valve games have been surfacing on Steam for purchase, that seems like a growing market to me, and the lower prices than retail plus the knowledge that someone on Steam surely has a computer that meets certain minimums already, also improve its chances at removing barriers for consumers. The only thing I would hope that Steam implements to further improve The Market would be an automatic System Requirements checkers, such as the one that can be found here:

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srl

If you understand The Market on some level, and don't mind politics, which I hope you don't seeing as they try to pass laws against our games and other things that affect our lives, I hope the US citizens check out some hope for their political future with some past integrity: Look up info and ask questions about these guys running for President - Ron Paul & Mike Gravel.

I hope you understand me bringing it up, I support politicians who support my gaming, who interestingly enough understand market forces enough to want to improve that purchasing power again. Pretty sure you will see improved sales of PC Games then...

I honestly don't believe any change (assuming there is one) is due to a loss in expendable income. Consoles have still been selling well, and with relatively high attach rates. If the numbers I can recall are accurate, the 360 for example has an attach rate of almost 7. That's an average of 400 + 55~*7. That's quite a bit of money when you consider that it's only over two years.

Casual games have been selling extremely well, and if you look at the Wii, DS and PSP systems you'll see that they're all selling remarkably well. In fact, the gaming industry has steadily been growing and if I remember correctly, is a market with some of the biggest gains over the last few years. What I think is happening is that many consumers are drifting away from expensive gaming rigs, to home consoles and buy PC games sparingly. Especially if you consider that many of the successful PC games have a long shelf life. (Usually due to the MP aspects usually found in PC games).

So for instance, when a developer creates something for a console, with or without MP, the typical individual may play it for a few months, put it down and move onto something else. From my own experience, PC gamers tend to make few purchases, but play them longer. Maybe in the range of years. The market is just changing and the appeal of super fantastic amazing graphics that PC games offer has lost its appeal because graphics are hitting the point where they're less and less important. Having a quad SLI video card in order to play Crysis with high shader effects and better real time lighting just isn't worth it for most people. And a lot of PC developers are reaching that point where having bigger better graphics just isn't enough to sell a game.

i agree with sirus that pc gamers tend to play games longer. but it hink the replay value of pc games may be falling especially in the pc market. i cant comment on crysis cos my wont run it, but Q4, FEAR, and DOOM were all high market games with low replay values in the FPS catagory. HL2 and STALKER are the only recent fps that ive been able to play thru more than once due to their more open ended play style and for hl the avaliabiltiy of mods and a serious multiplayer. If i think back a few years to AVP and DEUS X i must have played each of those from start to finnish in excess of 8times each. On multiplayer games ive played ns of and on for the past 3 years, cs/css for the past five and before that tribes 2 quite alot. But i could get along with the newer battelfield games. I guess NS has a complexity and depth level that gives it a high replay value, but replay value is not really marketed compared with graphics or the weapons arsonal.

ps i think the ign article is this one http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/842/842883p1.html

There are a couple of things that you have to bear in mind when talking about the video game market. First of all there are 2 "sub markets", the console and the pc.

The console offers:
-Stability; no crashing or unexpected lag.
-Optimized gaming performance; the game will run at its best on the console.
-Acceptable loading time.
-Hassle free gaming experience for the users; no need to change video options, audio, controls, etc.
-Standard controls (or at least extremely easy); you won't have to waste time learning the controls.
-Portable; you can easily pickup your console and take it to a friend's house.
-Multimedia station.
-Long expiry date.

The pc offers:
-Superior graphics.
-Work station from A to Z.
-Short expiry date.

I'm a pc gamer, now i might have missed a couple of points here and there, but my point is that you can easily see how consoles tend to be a better choice for the average person when it comes to gaming. You have to be "knowledgeable" about pcs if you want to enjoy gaming on them.

Now if you're an average person that doesn't know much about computers, you might find that it hardens and complicates your gaming experience. Just because you own a pc doesn't mean that you can actually play games on it. You might go and buy a game only to realize that it doesn't work well on your pc. Maybe your video card is not strong enough, maybe you don't have enough ram or maybe your cpu isn't strong enough. Being an average person, how would you know what video card you're supposed to buy and how much ram you need (the system requirements on game are the bare minimum) and what kind of cpu you need, given that you KNOW what these things mean in the first place...
Now let's assume that the game did work but it's choppy, how would you know what settings to change and what to set them to in order to make the game run better. Maybe once you do change them and see the consequence on the game (lower graphics) you won't like the game anymore.
You could see how this can be somewhat of a hassle.

On the other hand, if you own a console, you can rest assured that ANY game you buy will work at its best hands down. There's nothing to it, power up your console, insert the disk and you're gaming. You don't need to know nothing about anything.

That might explain why the console market has grown so much recently, and frankly there aren't that many interesting games on the pc these days. I mean it's the same stuff over and over again except with better graphics (not all of them of course, but most).

I could probably name a couple of games off the tip of my head the really impressed me, world of warcraft, supreme commander, team fortress 2, coh, ns (before and during the very beginning of combat), war3 (for the diversity of its world editor), portals, hl2 (physics engine was impressive) now of course i won't go into the old stuff like sc and total annihilation, etc.

I have what you can consider and old pc, amd athlon 64 3000+, radeon x800 pro, 1gb ram.
If there's a game that i would upgrade my pc for, it would have to be sc2, i can't say anything about ns2 for now cause we haven't seen anything from it yet (except that dynamic infestation, which is so cool), and maybe, just maybe supcom (if they improve the game play).

So for me, there's aren't that many interesting pc games out there right now.

3 points I would like to make:

1) I need to disagree, from people's experiences with the latest generation of consoles, XBox 360 especially comes to mind, they don't even perform to those points. The only real strong point consoles have going for them IMHO is that a developer always knows what the player is going to be using for hardware, it allows for plug & play more readily. That's it. It doesn't beat PC in cost, number of games, backwards compatibility (emulators), distribution, community experiences (such as these forums) or add ons... and the list goes on.

2) I disagree with short expiry date for the PC. In my own experience, had a computer that was supposedly mid level in 2001 when I bought, I saw 3 different generations of consoles come and go before it's hardware failed, and even then the still working parts just got recycled into other friend's machines.

3) There are more than 2 sub sets to video games. Hand held systems: Gaming exclusive, PDA, and cell phones all come to mind.



Absolutely, we need to beat the console on that, for sure. I could have sworn I read some where about hand held scanners that work with like a USB drive that you carry your complete PC specs around on it, plug it in to the scanner, scan the bar code, it pops up telling you how well your PC can run this game. Its like link I put up earlier. Put that in every PC gaming aisle, a way to know how it will run before you buy and I think that could get rid of a lot of that hassle.

i def think that game quality is dropping - UBISOFT and EA for example make a game, then they change a few weapons or cars and call it a sequal then they change some more things and call it a franchise. Or they will come up with a brand new idea that at first does seem very cool, but for some reason they only ever explorer 10% of its poptential which makes a game great for the first 1-2 hrs and then you are just doing the same old thing agian.
The worst thing is that bugs from the old version usually still exist in the new one. Then you have unfinished games that need constant patching.
To me it seems like the gaming world is being pumped with utter crap and its getting harder to find decent titles, let alone original ones. (and for this reason alone ns2 will be awesome even if it turns out sub par).
Now i'm not saying that they don't sell, people will buy any old crap if its marketed enough. but that doesn't make the item in question a good one.

It has always kind of been this way although perhaps not on the scale that we see it now. Much of it is due to the fact that the very core gamer can be very discriminating over time. New gamers aren't nearly as critical, and aren't necessarily as observant of glitches. So part of it comes from the fact that many of us have been playing games for years, good and bad, and we start to discriminate based on our own interests.

You use EA as an example, I'm assuming you're mostly referring to EA Sports, seeing as they have yearly iterations. Well, yes, in many ways they don't fix all the bugs, or add many features, but also keep in mind that they're presented with 2 options: Two developers working on a 2 year schedule, One developer working on a one year schedule. Either way, it's tremendously difficult to produce a gamer's concept of perfection under these circumstances. On top of that, franchises such as the Madden series is still one of the biggest selling games every year.

I'm positive that developers and marketing execs want to deliver a good experience for customers, but they're not altruistic enough to hold or delay their series to touch up the programming. They're running a tight schedule, with likely short QA time and the problem is that customers want their Madden every year, at the same time.

Especially since that bug has been in all of the previous multi-million copy sellers(it's practically a feature now), what project manager is going to pay to have it fixed(gasp!) and take responsibility for it(double gasp!) especially since they can pass the buck to the next guy or let it die when the next engine is built in a couple of years.

ya got it in one unscene.

so when are we removeing bunny hop...J/K

yeah EA games have stuff all replay value for me, the entire battle feild saga is a BS franchise loaded with stat ######s.

for everyone person that fights serious there ten more willing to step on you to get a kill, the momment you get your stats thats it its done what is there no ones fighting for the map or really to win, they are all fighting for there own stats and to keep everyone else down, thats not a fun game, or at least a game i want to play, it basicly means every single player has the ability to recycle your base if it suits them before you can eject.

honoustly pick up a copy of quake 2 new players, find a still active server and gib till your hearts content, why this game still has more replay value than the latest UT ill never know.

The amount of jade, hyperbole, and ignorance in this thread is astounding.

Fact: 2007 was a remarkable year for games. 17% industry wide growth, which is an unheard number in a major US industry(especially in the entertainment field) right now, as the average US market growth was 4%. Furthermore, nearly every company is doing well.

Opinion: The amount of quality content released by major publishers this year was amazing, as well. EA released skate., Crysis, Command & Conquer 3, and published The Orange Box.

Ubisoft released very few games in 07 at all, but one of their highest profile games, Assassin's Creed, was certainly quality(and if you disagree, well, too bad, because a very large amount of customers disagree with you. The sales numbers for this- especially with it being a new franchise- are nothing short of insanely good).


There is NO REASON WHATSOEVER to think anything bad is going on in the Games Industry right now, unless you are either Midway or Atari.


What we have to learn from this is exactly what Sirus pointed out: NS2 can capitalize on both the relatively low amount of high profile games coming out in '08, and the rising prominence of small, or independently created games. Furthermore, with already widespread support throughout the games industry for NS in the past, garnering large support for NS2 would not take very much at all. Hell- the original infestation video for NS:S made it on Digg's front page, and into the 9th spot in the top 10. The time is right, now its just time to get that tech release out for the mappers, give 'em a good 6 months, have 'em be done by August/September, playtest and release by October 31st as an homage to the original, or at least in early november.

-edit- nvm that