Everyone praises Steam and its ilk nowadays, digital distribution is the big hot topic amongst developers, publishers and anyone else associated with gaming. Almost everyone is praising digital distribution as if it were the second coming. The voices of discontent are minimal, but there are issues to be considered. Digital distribution, is it really all that great?
Blizzard have entered the world of digital distribution via their swanky Blizzard Store.
Currently they have Warcraft III Reign of Chaos, the expansion The Frozen Throne and the Starcraft Anthology. Warcraft III and The Frozen Throne clock in at $19.95 each which is about £10 and Starcraft Anthology is $14.99 costing about £7.50. (Rock, Paper, Shotgun money changing)
Good to see more companies embracing digital distribution especially with classics such as these! Lets hope Diablo appears there soon!
You may remember that a couple of days ago I blogged about a game known as Stalin vs Martians a Real Time Strategy being made by Dreamlore, BWF and N-Game.
The game immediately grabbed my interest for the obvious possibilities of playing as both Stalin and some Martians all set in a fun action packed environment. I decided that I wanted to learn and sent off an e-mail to the information e-mail address on the Stalin vs Martians site. To my surprise I received a reply from Alexander Shcherbakov the head of Dreamlore and Producer/Lead Designer of Stalin vs Martians.
I have been exchanging numerous e-mails with Alexander over the past few days and have been able to glean a lot of information regarding Stalin vs Martians, other Dreamlore projects and his thoughts on digital distribution.
“PC gaming as we know it is dead… secure gaming is the future.”
That is what Chris Taylor said in coverage of a GDC conference by Gamasutra, this is following on from a recent interview with IGN where he explained that piracy is killing the PC.
Ex-Sony exec Phil Harrison agreed with Taylor;
Ex-Sony exec Phil Harrison concurred, saying, “There is a generation of kids who are already on the planet who will never ever buy physical media,”
The advocacy from two leading figures in the games industry for digital distribution shows the platforms like Steam are the way forward for the PC.
GameSpot is reporting that PC game sales at retail for 2007 in the US totaled $911 million according to NPD statistics. This is 6% down from 2006 which saw $970 million in PC takings. The US PC takings have been on a steady decline since the 2004 peak of $1.1 billion. The NPD however recognise that the rise in digital distribution has played a key role in the falling retail figures, as the NPD doesn’t cover digital distribution figures it is not known how much is missing from the total PC sale figures in the US. This is what an NPD representative told GameSpot.
“The PC games sales landscape is changing to one that is increasingly reliant on digital sources of revenue. Our sales reflect the retail climate but there is a lot of gaming sales activity that is generated from digital downloads and subscriptions. I think the PC market continues to be quite healthy and we’re continuing to work on how to get our arms around the spending that occurs outside of retail. A number of our [surveys] ask respondents to indicate which platforms they game on, and the results of those questions make it very clear that the PC remains very prevalent, if not dominant, in the total gaming picture.”
Sales figures from digital distribution must be substantial, Steam has over 13 million subscribers and there are countless other channels for digital distribution. If figures from digital distribution were to be included in the total PC sales then it is likely that total figures would be closer to what they were in 2004.