Yes, I'm sure this adds up to more than 1% of the PC gamer population. Do you realize how many people don't even know about tesnexus or other sites, let alone post on the forums? You're trying to extrapolate tens of thousands of users based on a few dozen posts?

Anyone who cries about Steam really is annoying by the way.




I wonder what Steam's fees are, or rather how their pricing model is structured. Wonder if Beth has to pay per patch over Steam, or if it's a subscription on their side. Or some sort of $ per MB of patch.

Back to the point of the OP, I think PC users are just fed up with Call of Duty. Whether Skyrim sold well or not that series is on its way out I think.

PC gamers know a side of Call of Duty that many console gamers don't, they've seen it from the start. I know I have, and the last CoD game I purchased was the first Modern Warfare (CoD 4) for PC.

I don't wanna say every PC gamer is fed up with the same old formula being repackaged for us, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case either.

@ Above, me too ... kind of. I actually got Modern Warfare 2 when it was on sale for $10. All I did was grief and troll with MLC though, which I planned to do from the start. I'd just ruin games by running around stabbing everyone. So much fun. I don't think I'll ever buy MW3. MW2 fulfills my need to be a tireless, teleporting ninja.

No. I don't use Steam. The launcher doesn't work for me, it freezes my PC and not just ot check files (I let it 3 hours once for no result). So I use the unpatched executable. Maybe I'll try reinstalling everything from scratch when a significant patch will come, but for now, like a lot of other players, I don't use Steam.

PC isnt 10%.
PC games, especially with steam requirement like TES, are typically sold as downloads (cheaper then retail usually) nowadays, those arent includet in the sales yet.

There we go. There is no way Steam doesn't charge, and there is no way hard copy sets don't have fees attached to them. I thought the OP was gonna have some sort of list o' fees.

OP, you are just assuming, which is fine, just don't expect people to svck it up without your hard facts to back it up.

I think stronger consoles sales might have been due to misleading statements as well. Perhaps I am mistaken but I recall reading that the console versions would be moddable to the same degree as the PC version. Aside from my online games (Eve and Everquest) I usually play games on our PS3. I opted for PC on TES games as I love to create mods and the creation kit is wonderful. Perhaps many thought since they can mod the console versions why not buy those instead of PC. I do hope though that consoles are not the way of the future as the games on them do not seem very complex at all, though some are fun nonetheless.

I'm more interested in what the sales are up to now. 3.4 million after 2 days was phenomenal.

Steam (Valve) probably charges the bigger names a fee to distribute with their service, sure. But there's no way it's comparable to the costs of physical distribution.

If it was they wouldn't bother with it, profit margins and all that jazz.

Considering that they released it working this way, it's neither a "workaround", nor rare. Everybody hyped for release day and not hyped for Steam (thus merely doing the necessary for install) is potentially still using vanilla day 1 .exe. Including me.

Im sure they just take a cut of every sale, thats what I would do if I were charging the same amount as a physical copy for a digital one.

Something to consider:

How many purchased copies for whatever platform are sitting under christmas trees right now instead of getting played? Keep in mind the age demographics of each platform when considering what platforms those copies are most likely to be for.

Only BGS has the real figures folks. All the rest is speculation.

That is very true, the only work around part is for people who patched and then wanted to revert back to the original executable and ditch steam launching.

I bought a boxed copy. I don't know why. All it is is a DVD case with a wafer thin manual that is beneath my dignity to even open.

Last physical media I ever buy.

Oh and I should mention I didn't even install it from a DVD drive (I forgot my new pc doesn't have one :whistling: ). Launched Steam, it downloaded Skyrim and I was playing it an hour later. Discs are dead.

Well for buying software I love Steam as well and I really love anything that lessens our usage of the worlds resources (like making hard discs when not needed). My only objection, and I am sure I am not alone, is that Steam patched it so that you have to launch thru them. Why not just buy from them and log on to them if you need patches. I just don't get the need to have to run them in the background.

Behesda basically said they don't charge for patching when they said "We control the process, and will do a higher number of patches." Add to that all the indie developers on Steam with $5 games that release free updates every week. That, and Valve called out Microsoft publicly for charging developers to patch / regulating what they can patch. That Valve would publicly call out MS for this over TF2 and then do it themselves seems unlikely, given how straightforward they've been with the gaming community in the past.

Again, assumptions with some evidence, but I highly doubt Valve charges for patches. That's probably covered by their sales take.

Oh. Googled before I finished posting. Check this out: http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/index.php

Updating a Steam game is free. Right there from Valve. No patch fees.

I wasn't talking about patches.



http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1242199-skyrim-and-steam/

This bugs me about recent years.

People might be more inclined to buy a physical copy if some quality content was to be had with it, like the old days. Now they are just getting worse and worse, and keeping the price the same even in digital downloads where you get nothing but the key to play the game.

It's pure profit, especially at $60.

We all know everyone vastly underestimates the PC gaming community. There's way more than companies realise. Doesn't surprise me in the least. This also doesn't include pirates. While they aren't exactly the nicest of chaps and don't actually deserve any attention, they make up a large portion of gamers, too. (There are also console pirates, my brother has a chipped xbox with illegal games).

Frankly, I am not sure where this 10% idea comes from because back when Skyrim was announced, Todd did interviews where he clearly stated that he had to take back what he said after Oblivion's release regarding console versus PC sales. Specifically, Beth was always a PC company until Morrowind was ported from PC to Xbox. Woith Oblivion, as Todd pointed out back then, the majority of players were console... IF you only looked at one copy per customer, which is far from accurate because many people buy both a PC and console copy. When Skyrim was announced, Todd stated that the market had evolved (naturally... things change all the time) and that their customer base was now roughly equal between PC and consoles, at least to the best of their knowledge,

I would also point out that until NPD reports their anolysis, I would not trust other sources that claim any sorts of sales figures. Even NPD is inaccurare because they don't track digital or second market sales (but they are trying to work out a solution for that problem). Same with Enterbrain in Japan as well as other Asian markets. In fact, it woul dbe good to remember that the PC, not consoles, are the standard game platform in many Asian markets.

The only official numbers we have so far, at least to my knowledge, are that Skyrim has shipped 7 million units and Zenimax and Beth are already receiving reorders. However, shipped isn't the same as sell-thru, of course, so we'll have to wait for NPD's reports to get any idea of real sales figures at retail.

The player is essentially getting the same thing today through a digital download as they received 15 years ago -- the manual is in .pdf, and game is still the game. What more could you ask for? Hell, they can do bigger manuals more easily now, with full color, in .PDF that they can't do in print.

If it shaves some physical material cost from the company ... shrug, I don't find myself caring much.

yeah funny i could name 20 friends that dont have a pc? its not really evidense of anything. also as far as i know op wen/what/who did u here about pc dx11 ive been on here since release almost everyday i dont remember, but either of us may be mistaken, plus when did you get a raw deal anyway for ten percent you already get the dev tools, more testing and dev time you want more on top, not cool.

Well, PCs are better in every single way, that's special treatment for you; modding on the PC is possible.

That guy is assuming that the usual amount of downloadet data is more then 2GB an hour and assumes that those numbers dont drop when it is nighttime/morning in the main markets.
While in fact the average speed on Torrents is more around 400MB (it depends on the upload capability of the connections, not the download capability) an hour and the number of downloads drops by 2/3 during nighttime and morning.
I see no reason why those numbers should be different on "pirate Torrents".
They are just into giving out high numbers to make their shares in the money some countrys hand them for compensation bigger and blow up the issue to get more support for the resale restrictions etc. they impose.
So with realistic numbers piracy is still a problem, but not nearly as big as companys claim.

Okay. I'll bite. You call PC gamers elitist and say we demand too much.

Let's pretend Skyrim is coming out on the Wii. Your (console) version of the game now has graphics that are close to the Wii version, only at a higher resolution and with some filtering. Also, the UI + some of the controls are designed for the Wii remote, and it shows. Would you be upset with this?

And yes, Pete and Todd flat out SAID "DX11, on release for PC." This was never rescinded, the game simply launched without it.