Retail Sales of PC Games Drop 14% in 2008

[BenSkywalker]

Well the misrepresentation of PC game sales is going to fall on someone, whether it be NPD or someone else. You can only go on lying for so long. I realize they only report B&M sales, however it has become painstakingly obvious that, in doing so, they are no longer creating an accurate portrayal of PC game sales.

Is Steam not an online retailer?

Where is the lie?

They report what they claim to report, no misrepresentation is given. They also fail to report online sales for the consoles, and they don't report Wal Mart's sales either. None of this is dishonest as they never claim otherwise. As far as Steam is concerned, they do not make their sales data public. To deal with that you would need to talk to Valve, not NPD. What the NPD numbers show is the PC retail sales are declining at NPD tracked locations, that appears to be quite accurate.

To get an accurate representation of overall sales we need to check the financials of the various companies that report them, again Valve won't be included(however all of the non Valve games sold through Steam will show up as revenue for the respective publishers).

NPD is reporting accurately based on everything we have seen.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Piracy is an issue. Let's be honest. It's far harder to pirate console games, whereas any noob with a fast connection can download 5 gigs in a day or two.

Piracy is a bigger problem for PC gaming than most people think if you ask me. As well as for sci-fi tv shows I might add. STar TRek Enterprises dismal ratings were probably due to the fact that half of the people just pirated the show.

 

[PingSpike]

Piracy has always been an issue though. I guess you could argue broadband is more available now so that might be upping the numbers. Of course, that also gives you a larger audience for online only or online centric games.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

Originally posted by: StinkyPinky
Piracy is an issue. Let's be honest. It's far harder to pirate console games, whereas any noob with a fast connection can download 5 gigs in a day or two.

Piracy is a bigger problem for PC gaming than most people think if you ask me. As well as for sci-fi tv shows I might add. STar TRek Enterprises dismal ratings were probably due to the fact that half of the people just pirated the show.

"How to" info about pirating deleted- Anandtech PC Gaming Moderator DAPUNISHER

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: WaitingForNehalem

Originally posted by: StinkyPinky
Piracy is an issue. Let's be honest. It's far harder to pirate console games, whereas any noob with a fast connection can download 5 gigs in a day or two.

Piracy is a bigger problem for PC gaming than most people think if you ask me. As well as for sci-fi tv shows I might add. STar TRek Enterprises dismal ratings were probably due to the fact that half of the people just pirated the show.

"How to" info about pirating deleted- Anandtech PC Gaming Moderator DAPUNISHER

I guess it's probably better now than it was in the PS1 days. Everyone I knew had a mod chip, and there was no getting banned from the network to worry about. A game would be rented by one guy and suddenly 10 of us all have copies. It was awesome (for us).

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

Details deleted- No specifics about how to pirate, period- Anandtech PC Gaming Moderator DAPUNISHER

 

[skace]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
What the NPD numbers show is the PC retail sales are declining at NPD tracked locations, that appears to be quite accurate.

Ok fine, however the lie is going from "NPD numbers show PC retail sales declining at NPD tracked locations" to "Retail Sales of PC GAmes Drop 14% in 2008"