- Dec 13, 2000
- 4,362
- 11
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Steam Rakes in Nearly $1 Billion in 2010
- Thread starter GullyFoyle
- Start date
SunnyD
Belgian Waffler
I wonder what their margins are... especially since I'd wager more than HALF of their revenue comes from sales where titles are heavily discounted.
And would that even include retail games that use steamworks? E.G. I picked up Metro 2033 and SupCom2 for $1 a piece (no, you didn't read that wrong) at Wal*Mart during a clearance sale.
Well even with heavy discounts, their operating costs are going to be much lower relative to their b&m counterparts. So their margins on pricey games will be even higher, and they can probably afford to go for quantity over quality on discounted games. With fewer static costs per unit sold, even if they take a loss on X units it's going to be easier for them to hit their threshold to cross into the black.
Speaking of margins, I wonder if this figure includes the TF2 item store.
Speaking of margins, I wonder if this figure includes the TF2 item store.
Skurge
Diamond Member
- Aug 17, 2009
- 5,195
- 1
- 71
Ahh, forgot that part.
Still BC2 has been on their top10 list since it was released early last year.
Yup, you're going to have to add in the cost of bandwidth to the cost of the game itself. I might get so bad that people start to buy at B&M again. Not that I'm against that, one thing I miss when I buy games on Steam is the game box and directions etc.
Fuel costs, wear and tear on the car, and sales tax will make the cost of bandwidth be pretty high before people go back to B&M en mass. Not to mention the annoying problem of discs becoming scratched which makes playing the game impossible in many instances.
ViviTheMage
Lifer
ImpulsE69
Lifer
- Jan 8, 2010
- 14,946
- 1,077
- 126
I don't really agree with the fuel cost and war and tear. People go places, regardless. Hell, I put more miles on my vehicles now than I ever did 5-10 years ago. Not everyone lives in the middle of nowhere either.
Disc scratching I never understood. I never have had that issue with PC games. Music CDs, Console games? Sure, because I'm moving them around alot. PC games are usually install and forget about it (unless it needs to be in the drive) and even then its not like I"m swapping them out everyday.
Obviously digital is where it's going, I don't dispute it, but it's more about people being lazy and convenience than cost. Steam selling games for $60 is proof of that.
zerocool84
Lifer
- Nov 11, 2004
- 36,041
- 472
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My original BF2 disc is scratched to hell. I'm surprised my drive can still read it. I almost never took it out of the drive when I played it and I played it a lot. It's not Steam pricing the games. If it's $60 on Steam, it'll be $60 in retail stores. The only game I've bought in retail in the past three years was Starcraft II since it obviously wasn't released on Steam.
Nintendesert
Diamond Member
- Mar 28, 2010
- 7,761
- 5
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The biggest threat to the growth of streaming services and digital distribution are these data caps ISPs are trying to implement. Hopefully the Amazons and Netflix and Steams of the industry can pressure these caps out of existence. I love Steam and after a fresh install of windows I download a whole fucking lot. I have lots of games and games aren't going to start getting smaller in the future.
frostedflakes
Diamond Member
- Mar 1, 2005
- 7,925
- 1
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Valve offered Portal as a free download for a couple weeks last year. I wonder if this group did not consider this when looking at sales numbers and calculating revenue.
Would be nice if Valve just released more info on sales, profit margin, etc., but unfortunately all we can really do is speculate for the time being. They've definitely got a nice thing going with Steam, though.
edit: Nintendesert, you can back up your Steam games to a local disk. This is what I do, saves a lot of time and bandwidth. Even if you have a really fast connection you're going to spend like half an hour downloading a larger game, and if you're on an average connection like me you let a game download go overnight because it takes hours. Restoring a local backup takes like a minute, though. Nice to get started playing right away after a reinstall instead of having to redownload dozens of games.
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So the video game market is about a $20 billion market iirc, which means steam is almost 5% of the entire market. Well, they're doing better on the desktop than Linux is.
nitromullet
Diamond Member
- Jan 7, 2004
- 9,031
- 36
- 91
Not true, Black Ops is more expensive digitally. It's $59.95 on all the major digital distribution stores, but less at etailers.
$49.99 at newegg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-083-_-Product
$48.32 at Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Call-Duty-Blac...321408ZEZRHH0Y
This case is sort of doubly odd too because Black Ops is a Steamworks game, so you end up with the same thing anyway.
zerocool84
Lifer
- Nov 11, 2004
- 36,041
- 472
- 126
Those are sale prices NOT original prices. Original prices everywhere for Black Ops is $60. Steam has sale prices just the same. There's a reason why Amazon shows 59.99 then shows a line going through it.
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How do they ever estimate those figures?
Anyway, using that and NPD 2010 stats, retail PC game sales + Steam sales total about $1.7 billion, which is pretty decent. Numbers I seen for 360 are about $3 billion, and Wii and PS3 lower than that and not too much ahead of PC. Of course there is online from say Amazon but you can do that for any system so I'm assuming the majority of PC sales is retail + Steam while console is mainly retail.
I'm surprised Portal is that high up. Portal was never an expensive game and was very cheap at times, so it must have had some high volume!
And I wonder if MW2 and Black Ops numbers include every PC copy since they all require Steam, and BO is very high $. I went to buy BO at Walmart on release and they didn't even bother to stock a single copy for PC. On midnight release for MW2, the cashiers said they only sold a few PC copies (out of hundreds in line) and part of that was the two PC copies that my friend and I bought!
Anyway, using that and NPD 2010 stats, retail PC game sales + Steam sales total about $1.7 billion, which is pretty decent. Numbers I seen for 360 are about $3 billion, and Wii and PS3 lower than that and not too much ahead of PC. Of course there is online from say Amazon but you can do that for any system so I'm assuming the majority of PC sales is retail + Steam while console is mainly retail.
I'm surprised Portal is that high up. Portal was never an expensive game and was very cheap at times, so it must have had some high volume!
And I wonder if MW2 and Black Ops numbers include every PC copy since they all require Steam, and BO is very high $. I went to buy BO at Walmart on release and they didn't even bother to stock a single copy for PC. On midnight release for MW2, the cashiers said they only sold a few PC copies (out of hundreds in line) and part of that was the two PC copies that my friend and I bought!
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