PC gaming revenue tops $13 billion in 2009. Digital downloads now 80% of PC market!
Is PC gaming dying? Not at all says a new report by the PC Gaming Alliance as prepared by the DFC Intelligence, which takes into account retail sales, downloadable sales, subscription and microtransaction fees and online advertising, all of which are sectors NOT included in NPD’s reports and tracking numbers for the PC market.
Thus this report gives a more complete and accurate picture of the state of the PC gaming industry, they contend.
They found that worldwide PC gaming software revenue was up 3%, to $13.1 billion, in 2009 over 2008. Despite certain aspects of the industry slumping, such as “high-end” subscription revenues (where the fee is $10 or more a month), which they say is due to fewer major releases using the high-end subscription model, and more players cancelling their accounts to older games.
The biggest hit came in the retail PC sector from games that you’d buy at a brick-and-mortar store (I presume). This traditional distribution method might now be considered officially the dinosaur way of doing things, as revenues in that sector accounted for less than 20% of total PC game software revenue, making digital downloads EIGHTY PERCENT of the current market! That is quite a high number, although it should surprise absolutely no one. When was the last time YOU walked into a store and bought a PC game off the shelf? It’s happening less and less nowadays.
Additionally, retail sales of PC games were down 10-15% for the year over the year before, in Europe and America.
To that end, they also surveyed people about how they buy PC games, and the number of people who are comfortable buying PC games digitally has, naturally, only grown. 70% of North American and European players surveyed say they have purchased a PC game digitally, whereas 50% have purchased a virtual item in a PC game using real cash.
The PC Gaming Alliance is made up of some major key players in the PC games industry, including Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Epic Games, and Capcom. The group was kept busy last year, as Activision Blizzard departed whereas eight others joined, including Gas Powered Games and GameStop.
Via GameSpot
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