GfW initiative saves PC gaming!

Who do they think they’re kidding?

[Microsoft] also claims that the Games for Windows initiative is helping to drive sales of PC games, pointing to NPD data that showed branded titles accounted for 20 per cent of all PC game sales in the US during November.

“Games for Windows-branded titles were among the most popular Windows-based games purchased as gifts this holiday,” said Bob McKenzie, senior vice president of merchandising for GameStop.

“Microsoft’s efforts to revive Windows-based gaming have helped grow the category.”

WTF? Retail sales of PC games are at an all-time low, relative to console games, and GfW titles only make up a big percentage of them because the logo gets slapped on any old game that would have been released anyway!

Hooray for the integrity of gaming journalism!

well, they’re quoting a GameStop excecutive who says there was a sales growth - should they call him a liar?

(I agree with Chris’ points, though)

Lawdy, my head’s spinnin’!

And here I thought that the GfW initiative was suddenly about to give out brand new PCs with 8800GTs in them for free to everyone!

I think that’s really the only way to save PC gaming at this point.

meh. PC gaming is doing fine:
http://au.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=25632718

Actually they aren’t. There has been an upswing in retail and online sales of pc games in 06 and 07.

Nice statement. Got any data to back it up?

I wonder if the general trend toward laptops instead of desktops is dealing a serious blow to PC gaming. I know I haven’t bought a new PC game since making the switch to a laptop in 2004 because the damned things just can’t be upgraded, at least not easily or much. Even a high-end gaming laptop will be obsolete and useless for gaming in just a couple of years.

I’d love to be able to play Bioshock on a PC simply for the ghosting, mods, etc. you can do. But it ain’t happenin’ on THIS laptop.

Got any data to back up the opposite statement? All I see in Chris’ post is that he thinks PC game sales are at an all-time low compared to console games, but I don’t even know if that is true!

As usual, PC game sales may be doing just fine, but no one wants to hear that or has the information that proves one way or the other.

Fact! GfW the Official Magazine is saving PC gaming on a monthly basis.

I’m going with my gut on this. It says PC gaming, which used to be my everything, sucks mightily right now.

More like almost-weekly. The Brodeo is the best gaming podcast around. PS Jeff hurry up already kthx.

I dunno. I just started The Witcher. Doesn’t seem to suck.

I’d think PC gaming was more d0med if I didn’t see the problems with the current gen consoles:
[ul][li]Wii: OK price, but game selection, erm, aimed just right at my 8 year old.[/li][li]PS3: Still expensive, still very few games I want.[/li][li]XBox 360: Best of the three, but not enough variation in the games to attract me. Too much emphasis on war/killing/“action”.[/ul][/li]Against that backdrop, PC gaming can hold its own.

Orange Box (Portal!, TF2!, HL2:Ep2!)
Bioshock
Call of Duty 4
World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade
STALKER
The Witcher

And that’s not even to mention a number of other genres and other games that appeared on both PC and other platforms that I can’t remember like Timeshift!

This year has been a great year for PC gaming and your gut deserves a kick in itself.

Er, what about the recent NPD sales charts with the abysmal performance of Crysis and UT3? Even in Europe where the 360 doesn’t totally dominate, the charts are usually full of Nintendo titles with just the occasional PC game.

World of Warcraft is hugely profitable and Steam is apparently sustainable, but beyond that it’s a wasteland. I’m not sure how you can dispute that without inventing staggeringly massive online sales that somehow aren’t tracked by anyone (NPD does track Amazon).

Sure, you get low-budget titles out of Eastern Europe and the usual late & buggy ports… if that’s good enough for you, fine.

How’s your large intestine looking these days? I’m guessing you have a great view of it where your head is.

Hey, maybe if their performance wasn’t so abysmal on common-place hardware then more people would have been interested after playing the demos. Instead, people went and bought Orange Box off Steam.

I’m not really sure those are the bestest examples ever, Chris. Every article that was ever written about Crysis contains at least six thousand warnings that only a supercomputer from the future could possibly hope to display the main menu and UT3 was released a month after most of us were playing either TF2 or CoD4, or both! What did UT3 have to offer? It’s more of the same with prettier graphics, which might have worked in the summer but this Christmas season you had to do a bit more than that.

I can buy a PC anywhere. I still cant find a shop that will sell me a wii.
1-0 to the PC.