Newell says Wrath will save PC gamers (as if they needed it)
by Natalie Mootz 
Jun 10th 2008 at 7:00PM
Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve (bringer of Half-Life 2), says that the PC gaming industry is waiting excitedly for the release of Wrath of the Lich King to rescue its market.But, even though I breathlessly await Wrath, I beg to differ with Mr. Newell's comments. I don't think PC gaming is anywhere close to leaving the building, as some so-called experts in the field would have us believe. (Call me cynical, but I'm guessing a lot of those experts came from console manufacturers or optimistic mobile gaming companies.) The trouble with making these kinds of predictions is that there are currently no completely accurate ways of tracking the success of a game except to take press releases on faith. And in that case, you might as well believe the fox's promise to guard the hen-house. (Did you hear clucking? I thought I heard clucking.) Another problem with estimating market share for various games is that you're comparing Mana to Rage: each company can define "sales" and "subscribers" any way they please, making it nearly impossible to come up with clean comparisons of market share.
Blizzard makes approximately $120 million dollars a month. Compare that to Iron Man's opening weekend gross of $109 million. Blizzard beats that number every month, not just with one summer blockbuster per year. Also consider that most PC retailers have devoted entire sections of their hardware floors to gaming PCs. This devotion goes all the way up to the hardware manufacturers themselves. When I worked at Toshiba, we had a product manager whose sole job was to create and improve gaming laptops. (Oh, how I envied that guy!) Yes, Blizzard's release of the Wrath expansion will juice the market, but it's more like an injection of steroids, not administration of last rites.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Expansions, Wrath of the Lich King, Hardware
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Vidi Jun 12th 2008 11:04PM
PC gaming is dying?
Could have fooled me. I won't touch consoles. I hate them. If it's not released on a PC I won't play it, simple as that. I tried the whole Xbox live ting and it's just not for me. I need the persistent enviorments of MMORPG's and I cannot play one of these games with a console controller ( yes I know some people do but not me ) It's my PC or nothing.
jack Jun 10th 2008 7:43PM
it is dieing cus new games are looking better and better and need better and better hardware to run them, where as WoW doesnt need too much to run it, it'll keep a large amount of ppl playing on PC, be it only a few games, since it costs quite a lot to run the newer games smoothly, ppl just cant be bothered and just play games on a console where they know it can run them
Shadd Jun 11th 2008 2:25AM
According to many developers, the main reason for lackluster PC sales is the fault of piracy. The main reason that Crysis failed so badly was because it was massively pirated. The developers gave some astounding number on the amount of money they lost (I don't remember it offhand). In fact the Crysis developers swore to never release a game of that magnitude on the PC again.
Because of this, most developers prefer to make titles for consoles, not just because more people can stand to run it on their systems (some high end games are only usable on top end systems, which many people don't have), but becaues it is much more difficult to pirate console games.
Asa Jun 11th 2008 8:41AM
This is in response to Shadd ...
The RIAA uses the same excuse for the music market. The numbers they come up with for how much money they've lost to piracy they've pulled out of their collective asses in an attempt to make people feel bad for them. The truth is PC gaming is struggling because they're putting out crap games and no one's going to pay $50 for some P.O.S. game when they can just pirate it. Same thing goes for the movie and music industry. If these jackasses would stop blaming their customers and put out a decent product they wouldn't have slow sales.
As for the console vs PC market, neither one is going anywhere and IMO it's silly to think otherwise. There's always going to be subsets of people who just prefer one over the other. I for one, will NEVER play an FPS/RTS on a console, at least not until they come up with a better control scheme and on the flip side of that you'll never catch me playing a sports/racing game on a PC.
Angelus Jun 10th 2008 7:46PM
Being a severe addict, I have a real difficult time with his statement.
When (not if) I buy Wrath, I'll be playing Wrath and nothing else except maybe Second Life to chill out. I dont see myself investing in anything else unless I break my keyboard.
Angel Jun 10th 2008 7:46PM
Well his probably talking about a push in the PC market. Seeing as the console market is rising fast while the PC gaming community may not be small.. but the consoles are creeping higher and higher past others! Which is why he said its the "Rescue" for the PC gaming community!
But anyway sorry if i dont make any Logic :( it is 1 AM lol! Gona go sleep :D Also nice pic! TAUREN IN TEH SNOW!
Kaljin Jun 10th 2008 9:20PM
Its a taunka. And yea, your post is dead on, consoles are rising in sales, however the consoles can be bought, and not need to be upgraded. But with PCs, you need to buy more expensive equipment every 3-5 years if you want to run the newest games at max.
Alchemistmerlin Jun 11th 2008 11:01AM
@Kaljin
But, the same holds true for consoles. Every 3 to 5 years a new console comes out and you need to buy it to play the latest games. Take, for example, the Sony line. The PS2 came out in March of 2000 or so, the PS3 came out in 2006. This was 6 years, so a little over the mark you mentioned, but the cost was 600 dollars at the time. Compare that to how much it actually costs to drop in new RAM and a new graphics card every 4 years? My latest upgrade (About 5 years after my last one) cost me 200 dollars and that's only because I refuse to stop using RAMBUS RDRAM.
The more compelling argument is that most Americans don't give 2 shits about technology and don't really want to deal with "What's the right kind of RAM?" and "How do I turn this thing on?"
Consoles wrap everything up in a very nice easy to use package with BRIGHT colors and flashing things.
Angelus Jun 10th 2008 7:50PM
ahh yeah I must be sleepy too, that makes sense. and yeah it is a nice pic
Harlequinne Jun 10th 2008 8:00PM
Oh... let's throw numbers around.
Iron Man, according to it's Wikipedia entry, had a budget of 140 Million USD, plus a 50 Million USD Marketing budget. As of June 8th, it has grossed a little under 550 Million USD worldwide. For a month, let's round that down to about 500M. Substract the budget, marketing, royalties... Guesstimate about 200M, and you're looking at a profit of about 300M a month.
Of course, these numbers will taper off, the longer Iron Man runs, dying interest, other movies, etc.
Blizzard Entertainment's REVENUE (that is GROSS income) for Q1 2008 was about 300M USD (192M Euro) according to http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/vivendi-games-q1-revenue-down-24-1-per-cent . And I emphasize REVENUE. According to Vivendi's Q1 2008 Statement (http://www.vivendi.com/corp/en/publications/documents/2008/20080515_Financial_Report_and_Condensed_Financial_Statements_Q1_2008.pdf) Blizzard's income / earnings were 99M Euro (about 150M USD).
The biggest problem in comparing numbers like this is that movies are relatively maintenance-free. WoW on the other hand, as a MMORPG requires quite alot of maintenance (Oh, the irony of typing this a few hours before EU server maintenance).
I'm no economist, but I like a bigger net income than just gross income on my paycheck, and that counts double for publicly traded companies. Or would that be exponentially?
Nizari Jun 10th 2008 11:26PM
The problem with your analogy is that you're comparing the revenue/profits of one single blockbuster film to the revenue/profits of an entire company. Most films do not make the kind of profit that Iron Man made (and even those profit numbers are probably employing some fuzzy logic), and most lose money. You'd be more accurate if you compared Paramount Pictures revenue/profits to Blizzard's.
Harlequinne Jun 10th 2008 8:21PM
Oh, and another thing:
Here are the Minimum required specs for Assassin's Creed (PC):
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS
Assassin's Creed
Processor: Dual core processor 2.6 GHz Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
RAM: 2 GB
Video Card: 256 MB DirectX 10.0-compliant video card or DirectX 9.0-compliant card with Shader Model 3.0 or higher
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0 or 10.0 compliant sound card
HDD Space: 12GB
DirectX Version: DirectX 10.0
The Xbox360 has been out for about 2,5 years. To find a 3 year old PC that's capable of running that game...
The saving grace of WoW, a hugely popular game, is that it ignores the insane silicon arms race / e-peen competition that has pervaded PC gaming for about 20 years now. A stable platform for -+ 10 years is a lot healthier for nourishing a gaming culture (*cough* business) than a platform that changes twice during a game's development cycle.
And I can't believe I put stable in the same comment as Xbox360...
Fizzl Jun 11th 2008 5:22AM
x2's are about three years old now.
Its safe to assume everyone has a PC these days. They use it for work or collage or just internet.
To turn a 2-3 year old PC into the above you spend about £100 on a graphics card, £50 on some memory, if you don't want to do it yourself you could probably get someone else to for another £50.
So turn your home PC into something more powerful than a 360 for £200 and a 360 elite is £250.
PC games are £30, x360 games are £50.
The reason people don't do it is because its too confusing and gets no promotion.
Zura Jun 10th 2008 8:42PM
lolwot? Did you not read this article? Because you completely mischaracterize it. Newell was just making the point that the best way to improve the market is to release products people want to buy--he used WotLK as an example of that.
Badger Jun 11th 2008 11:35AM
"mischaracterize"
Sorry, I swear I'm not trying to be a jerk about this, but ... Is this a real word?
Zali Jun 11th 2008 12:56PM
Badger,
Yes, Mischaracterize is a word.
Faar Jun 10th 2008 9:37PM
PC gaming has taken many knocks and bruises in the last year or two, sales of titles (that aren't called WoW) aren't too good, and many games need crazy hardware to run well.
Crysis, a game which was hyped to high heaven, didn't do too well despite being a very high profile title. Now support for it has been dropped even as a new patch was on the way. I think most people aren't too surprised that there might be a connection there somewhere between hardware demands and lowish sales.
Consoles on the other hand always give predictable performance (unless the game in question is Orange Box for the PS3 ;-), and people know what they will get when they buy console games. It's not a mad gamble wether their console will be able to run the game without stuttering like crazy or crashing due to video driver bugs or whatnot.
Blizzard's been MONSTROUSLY successful from making games that people can actually PLAY on their PCs. Diablo2 was on the top-10 sales chart literally for 3 or 4 YEARS after release, and often near the top. In the end I don't even dare to think how many boxes that game sold, jeez. Must have been many millions. Good game that runs on many PCs = very large sales potential.
Gabe Newell knows this fact well; his company's been following the same concept for years now - ever since launch of Half-Life 2 - although their games demand somewhat more than Blizzard's.
Oh and by the way... Why can't we have Tauren that look like that pic in-game instead of the mad cows that run amok all over WoW right now? :(
Brett Griffeth Jun 10th 2008 10:22PM
Seriously, Zura is absolutely right. Did you even read the article? The whole thing is Gabe Newell defending the PC.
PimpyMicPimp Jun 10th 2008 11:45PM
PC gaming death alerts are about as valid as terror alerts.
Milktub Jun 11th 2008 12:08AM
As a teenager, I was a console kid. NES was my tutor, and SNES was my master.
Then I got into college. I realized that the computer was more than just a thing to do papers on. I started gaming on it. That's when I realized an average computer has more gaming life than an average console, thanks to the ability to upgrade.
The PC Gaming market death is coming. That's not a joke. Now that consoles can connect to the 'net, there are firmware upgrades available. There are already hardware upgrades, though most of them are now grey/black market. Once Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft open up their hardware specs to third market manufactuers, PC Gaming is going to have a real competitor. The life-cycle of their consoles will increase ... problem is, do they WANT them to increase? Right now, they have this wonderful market of console gamers who will buy the next generation. Extending the life of the last generation isn't in their interest ...
Ah, so I guess PC Gaming is going to keep lasting.