I now have both a reasonably good PC and an Xbox 360. But there aren't many games for the PC...! I don't play WoW anymore, and I've never played the Sims. I don't like distribution models like "Steam", because if my internet goes down I can't play that game. And I simply don't like any of the stupid copy protection software, and am not going to support the companies that employ them. So while I'm patiently waiting for a few titles like Age of Conan, I'm buying and playing lots of Xbox 360 games.

In all of 2007 I bought one PC game; Hellgate London (but I wish I hadn't wasted my money...). And since mid October I've purchased 8 Xbox 360 titles. So about 11% of my purchases where for the PC.

Now this doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to see better games on the PC. However, I don't really expect that to happen. Because, regardless of what you think about this, the "bean counters" at some of these Development Companies will look at these figures and won't allow management to target a game primarily to the PC. And no amount of "noise" by any of us is going to alter that fact.

Yeah, the title of this post should read "Only 14% of 2007 RETAIL game revenue came from PC titles"... big difference... makes the statistic misleading... and almost meaningless - except for developers who read meaning into such skewed statistics and use it as a rationale to focus more on the console market

Not surprised at all.

2007 was a crummy year of PC gaming overall. Only a handful of decent jewels and tons of crap.

While the figures do not incluide MMORPG or network transactions revenue (Steam etc). I doubt that network transactions fare that much better overall then their retail counterparts.

The current generation of young gamers grew up on N64, PS1, PS2. They have more of a connection with gaming console then they do with gaming PCs.

The majority of hardcore PC gamers (users that grew up on 80s and 90s PC games) have other priorities with life and just do not have the time or energy like they did in their earlier years.

Us...pc gamers have a big problem....every 6 months or less there is a new hardware out...an example is the new 45nm E8400...

We got to spend a lot of money..to build a powerfull enough PC...only to be out 6 months or one year later with an obsolete hardware....

PC gaming will be always alive...the problem is in our Pockets.....average user can't spend US$500 or US$1000 every 6 months...some of us have responsabilities...but there's nothing we can do....at the end...we win...

I always said...that us the pc gamers...we are more techinical gamers than any Console gamer...we know things that consoles gamers never will never imagine....so once again...

The problem is in our Pockets.....that's the reason for which pc gaming is not more stronger...

definitely a skewed number, and very strongly biased toward consoles

firstly, developers are idiots, piracy is an excuse, not a problem; in fact the copy protection costs more than any losses from piracy (remember 90% of pirates have NO intention of buying the software, so no "lost sales")

secondly, developers are lazy, most PC games by established companies just plain suck because of lack of content; a great example is NFS: pro street, you spend lots of time farming cash in battle machine instead of actually progressing through the game; whereas most wanted had an entire city to explore GTA-style, more race types; and the music choices went to progressively cheaper groups throughout the underground-prostreet line

thus comes the REAL problem with pc games, nobody wants to make a game that works without installing loads of malware on your box (starforce and securom drivers are malware and potential security threats) and the entire industry wants to do like the RIAA and MPAA and simply shovel us the same crap they did last year (which is really manure from the year before that), nothing really innovative or original

okay so for people wondering about the whole "but it doesn't include online sales like WoW, etc" then here's two links that will act as a bit of a prediction of sorts (sorry for linking to gamespot):

http://gamespot.com/news/6142571.html
http://gamespot.com/news/6151871.html

first report was $953m for PC sales
revised ~4months later to $1.4b
which equates to a roughly ~47% difference

...NPD will be launching its new definition of the US PC game market this spring, which will include a combination of sales from retail, downloads, and both casual and MMO subscription revenues. We expect this will add significant dollars to the PC game market size.

i'll see if my google-fu can dig up the 2006 numbers...
but i'd say by the look if it you'll see the final numbers in May (for 2007 that is)

This is a really brain dead and misleading statistic. Why do services even report it?

A couple of people said this already but...

1) These are retail sales only. I, for instance, purchased $300 or so on Steam (good system) and EA download (bad system, won't use it again), and nothing (or just a few $) on retail. So, what percentage of PC game sales are excluded from this number?

2) What is the point of comparing PC to 8 or so other platforms combined? I mean, you could say " xbox only accounted for 15% of retail sales" just as well.

The point is: 14% is o.k. given the above factors. The author, Cyril (and Shacknews), describe it as puny. Why? What does he expect, PC retail sales are limited to WOW and Sims and other Walmart fare.
I think Cyril should save his money and take some college courses so he can write intelligent articles. Hmm, maybe he is writing trash so that Rupert Murdoch notices him. Cyril, you may have a future with the Sun...

Am I the only one who finds it odd that Sim City 4 Deluxe was listed on the top 10 games sold? That game is nearly 4 years old and honestly, I don't consider it to be such a great game compared to the other Sim City games.

14% is good .tacking into consideretion theat the console market is very big.(Wii, XBOX 360 , PS 2 ,PS 3 ,XBOX, Nindeno ,PS Portable,nintendo ds )

Just to make sure it gets past the flury of "PC gaming dying wowzers!" posts...again, this figure does not count online sales. Steam, ongoing MMORPG subscriptions, Amazon...

These numbers really only tell half of the story. As others have stated NPD only counts retail sales so these numbers exclude revenue from steam, Amazon or MMO fees.

So while the PC industry may still not be as large as consoles (with regards to software) I don’t think it's as dire as the numbers indicate.

Point of interest (excluding hand helds):
Avg. cost per title
PC - $25
Con - $42

To bad people have such a poor taste in games. :-)

Take out the WOW numbers and I think I hear the FAT LADY warming up.

Steam is starting to rack up some impressive numbers. As a private company Valve can hold out a long time without releasing sales data, but they're going to be under increasing pressure to do so.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=14060

Well I have to say this.

They're comparing one PC platform (Windows) against seven or eight console platforms? (PS2, PS3, Xbox, 360, GBA, DS, Wii, PSP)

Individually if you look at it, PC will most probably feature in the top 3. In other words, it's far from being a niche market.

Halo 3 the top selling game of 2007? Not by a longshot. Guitar Hero 3, if you include consoles other than the PS2 outsold it by far in terms of both quantity and money.

Hmmmmm. I'm not sure what to say really. I suppose that I was disappointed in a number of the "big" titles this year, but I still bought quite a few. I think I picked up 10 PC games, 3 360 games, and 1 Wii game.

I think there's a lot more to PC gaming than the newest game releases though. There are large communities out there for basically every series of games since the beginning of PC gaming. These folks may not be interested in the newest games, for various reasons, and may not even use recent hardware. IMO the PC platform has way more to offer than the current consoles simply because of the freedom on it and what I've seen folks create for games they love. I don't really care if 5 million people like Halo3 or Gears. They aren't my thing, nor is most of what the consoles are offering, honestly.

For example, although it was a really terrible game at launch for the most part, I'm still messing with Oblivion because the modding community is really something else.

Like others here have noted, this analysis of game revenue is skewed toward new product sales.

I spend many hours a week playing a MMO that I purchased in 2005. I've spent a lot more on my monthly subscription in the last 3 years than I've EVER spent on individual PC games.

This just in: the majority aren't hardcore gamers. The Sims 2 series sell well? SHOCKING.

I think the problem is that PC hardware was to expensive this year. 2900 xt when it cam out 500 bucks, 8800 gtx at the beginning of the year was 600 dollars, not until last couple of months did decent video cards became affordable.

Even at 300 dollars(8800 gt)(ati 3870) that is a lot of money considering and entire console only costs 300. There are a lot of poor people in the united states. Plus kids now days dont know how to build cheap oc'ed gaming rigs.

I played Halo 3 on xbox last night for the first time. What a joke. It's feels, looks like last gen FPS on computer. Very boring, poorly set up.

THe games i played most in 2007

by amount of hours spent.
most:
day of defeat source
counter strike source
Team fortress 2
warcraft 3 tower defenses
guildwars
unreal 3
conquerclub.com <-- online risk
wii sports, wii play
10 DS games
portal and HL2
crysis
least:

didnt really play any other games

i have mario galaxy, wii zelda - but i don't play them, once you go online FPS its hard to play anything else. It's the top of the food chain.

That's because, for the most part, PC GAMING SUCKED!
Just my humble opinion.
Edit:
Portal, Hellgate (somewhat), UT2004 and Civilizations kept me going this year.

I'd recommend that you look over the ShackNews article again. This is only retail sales and does not include digital downloads. Personally I bought 2 games at Gamestop this year and 4 on Steam.

While this paints a portrait of big-business games and the direction they are likely to head (consoles), the advantage is this opens the gates to small innovative game developers, like what ID used to be. Release a good PC game with all of the major developers targeting consoles, you have a wide-open market.

I am not talking hugely immersive realistic environment games, but innovative and clever fun games that big game businesses shy away from normally.

Now to wait for the brood of basement game developers to get out from the font of their Xbox and Wii and start doing something constructive with their time. Ha! Yeah, right.

-Mark

I don't find it surprising. In a time where developers prioritize consoles over PC and then they even bother with a PC version, they just port it from the console version, why would PC Gamers be happy ?

Piracy is just an excuse for them to focus on consoles, which targets more people. All they need to do is create a quality game and people will buy it. Sure it will most likely be pirated anyway, but the sales will go up. That happened before, so it's nothing new. Quality games sell. Mediocre console ports, don't.

I'm happy to see that Bioshock is not in that list. They created an out of this world protection system and called PC Gamers "funny", because they didn't like it. Well there you go. It was sure worth it. As a regular in 2K's forums, I can tell you they didn't learn their lesson. It's just one of those companies that does NOT deserve my support.

Not surprised. WoW will be the only PC game left. That is, until Xbox 360 supports mouse and keyboard.

I think some of this is due to the fact that many games for consoles have ported PC versions, but often times the PC version comes after the console version. If you have a 360 and and a computer and you wanted to play Assassin's Creed, more often than not you wouldn't wait for the PC version to come out and you wouldn't buy the PC version if you already had one for a console.

Personally I think it's absolutely ridiculous how long we have to wait for ports, like Halo, and then have to have high end hardware so it'll look as nice as on a console.

14%? Sheesh! Pretty soon, we'll know what it feels like to be a Mac fan!

I kid but, upon further reflection, given the devotion of many PC gamers, the comparison might be fair.

Take in mind that this data doesn't include online revenue.

Games like WoW for instance are a big cash cow, Blizzard claims to have more than 10 million subscribers.

Does this count the disgusting amount of cash generated by 10 million WOW subscribers every month?