US PC download sales surpass retail sales, says NPD

haha about time then!!

I’m not from US but even I buy PC games only on Steam.

I’m sorry did I hear something? PC gaming dying did someone say?…. I didn’t think so.

Wheres loki?

@3: Isn’t that sort of argued by the text in the article Yoshi?

“However, sales of downloaded and retail games combined were down by 21 percent, with unit sales down by 14 percent year-on-year.”

21% decline is no joke. Not dying, but possibly not that well.

@5 The console sector isn’t exactly going up either, to be honest.

Software sales for the console sector are down 8.8% YTD. Not great, but a fair chunk less than the PC sector.

(That 8.8% decline is also without taking into consideration downloadable games / DLC on consoles)

Boxes are old hat.

I wonder if there is anyway to know if the DD games from Wiiware/VC, PSN, or XBL have increased or in anyway impacted or cut into the 8.8% deceline in retail software sales for the consoles?

In other words maybe this is just the result of the econemy. Maybe too many high priced games with DLC. Maybe just burnt out audiances tired of sequels. Or maybe it truely is a result of the Online MP masses not needing/wanting new games because they are content with playing Online.

Giga said it.

@2 Ditto. Except for a few indies and what not. I get pretty annoyed if I have to go around Steam.

@Psychotext I’m pretty sure you know there are a lot of factors in that. I can’t think of a single PC blockbuster so far this year, beyond Starcraft 2. And that pony isn’t gonna win the race on it’s own.

I’d wait and see once the big FPS’s start hitting. I expect Civ 5 to do alright as well.

US PC download sales surpass retail sales, it is not very hard

“…it is not very hard” – loki

Funny, that’s what his girlfriend said. hmm…..

Giggety!

This is bad news to be honest. The digital distribution revolution didn’t do much for consumer rights, it even got worse.

@SwiftRanger

Unless you use steam, where you’re pretty well looked after. The best game sales ANYONE has, Valve offering a service that lessens the need for DRM for publishers, encouraging them to get rid of it, etc.

The beauty of steam is that if you purchase a downloaded game, its still stored there to redownload should you need to reformat or get a new hard drive.

The only problem arises are with different launch dates. Look no further than the Total War farce this year when the game was released in the USA but the people in the UK got their copies 3 days early but couldnt install it due to the dates.

Thankfully after FIVE hours of community pressure, the DRM was lifted and we managed to play the same time as our friends across the pond.

Digital downloading is a great service but ISP providers need to up their limits in some cases because 1 game could eat up your limit in one hit.

Any negative comments should considering that this is US only sales result and not representing the rest of the world because of very different gaming culture and technology. We will never ever be able to buy any of those pc games sold in steam, even if we want to, due to slow internet connection in almost all household, unreasonable payment method(having a credit card? its way too “high class luxury” for us) and very high game price(man, 1 AAA games price would be more than enough too feed me for a month here) .

Bcos of that, we in Indonesia (or maybe asia,except for Japan of course) are always love to play online game for free(yes, its almost all online games are free to play here without any important restriction)at the local game center.

Just imagine that steam would open a local server here, with a decent price and online activation that can be only done with local IP number. Than we can pay the games by our cell phone deposit,bank transfer or prepaid voucher(it’s all common paying method here). I’m very sure PC games sale (especially AAA titles) will arose all over the world and defeat any consoles game sales!

Just whimming, really! Don’t mention it !

EDIT: fix some mispelling

Hard to believe considering the comments made by the DD folks earlier this year IIRC. And 21%? Ouch. More fuel to the PC is dying fire. I’ve only bought 3 pc games this year thus far myself, though.