So before release they tell everyone "Blah blah blah, PC is a miniscule part of our profits. 10%. Don't expect much in the way of special attention." and "We're giving you DX11. We're never going to rescind this statement, we'll just launch the game without it and you'll find out that way."

Cue last week. Suddenly Bethesda is giving PC a higher number of patches more often and more attention to "port issues" like the UI / controls. They also went totally nuts with the CS and linked it to a cloud service.

Sudden change of heart? We already know PC boxed is already between 15% and 16%. But PC boxed is dead. Most serious PC gamers buy digital. Out of 20 friends, 14 bought the digital copy on Steam. It seems to me like their expectations got totally shattered. Peak concurrent users for Skyrim was something like 250k on Steam. That's people playing at the same time who WEREN'T launching the game directly via the main executable. Not total sales. The peak concurrent users for Modern Warfare 3 was 80k. Yeah. PC Skyrim outsold PC Modern Warfare 3 by about a factor of 3. Yep. And yes, Modern Warfare 3 requires Steam to play, so this is a usable metric. That, or Modern Warfare 3 outsold Skyrim but for some reason 3/4 of the people who bought it didn't play it. Add on the fact that a PC copy gets Beth more profit than a console copy and things get pretty interesting.

Then again, Call of Duty sells horribly on PC because the PC market hates rehashes that don't advance their tech even a little between yearly installments, so maybe saying "Skyrim outsold Modern Warfare 3 by 3x" means nothing. In fact, there are a LOT of other reasons. The PC market really hates Call of Duty, and we'll leave it at that. It's not for this thread.

tl;dr: Skyrim PC outsold Modern Warfare 3 PC by at least 3x.

Including digital downloads Skyrim seems to have sold as much on the PC as it did on the PS3, or at least pretty close. So yeah, that might have surprised them a bit..

Your point? I didn't get it.

Boxed or not, every PC copy of Skyrim uses Steam to launch/play.

I think you should review the sources of your info.

This is because on PC they don't have to pay to put a patch out, and can decide when to release it.

For console they both have to pay, and once approved by Sony and/or Microsoft the patch goes live the same day they update other content.

It's true though. PC games do sell tiny proportions compared to console. For many games there's really no profit to be had in putting them out on PC. Games like the Elder Scrolls series, where modding is the thing, are slightly different.

Alot of us still use the executable file and disabled steam, so not every copy does. I dont want a third party running a program in my background.

And eating up processing power...

Understandable.

You say that, but figures from other RPGs don't really show that. Take The Witcher 2 - an excellent RPG, with an even better digital offering (the digital version from GOG came completely DRM free for example). Yet despite all that, digital copies only made up at most a third of the boxed sales according to CDProjekt. I can only see Skyrim being equal to that at best, given the lack of advantage of the digital version (and no premium map either), so I think you can add on another 5% say to the figure, but that's about all.

I think YOU need to review your information. It is possible to bypass steam by running the .exe

PC actually sells very well when you look at things on a per-platform basis. PC games just don't sell well compared to _console_ games in general. I wish I had the article that anolyzes this in depth.

But yeah, PC will look like it's getting preferential treatment because it's simply easier to release updates.

What? Steam doesn't publish figures. The sales numbers for Skyrim only include retail boxed sales. Copies bought directly from Steam are not reported.

And digital download is half of the PC market. Minimum. At least from what me and a lot of other people have seen.

Also, remember that Bethesda makes more money from a PC sale. First there's no console licensing fee. Second there's no fee to release patches. Third copies sold directly via Steam provide a noticeably better return than copies sold via retail, whether those be console or PC. So you can kind of inflate the sales numbers to account for this. Assuming MS/Sony take $8(this is close to the actual figure) Beth already makes 13.3% more from the PC version. That's assuming both are retail, since the higher return from a digital sale is not a known value.

A couple days after Skyrim was released the highest concurrent users i saw on steam was 300k playing at the same time, that's soooo many!

Its much easier to patch a game on a PC than it is to patch on a console. I remember reading that they were gonna do on-the-fly patches and game tweeks to the PC as well. They have also supported modders wholeheartedly for some time now, I dont see how "going totally nuts" with the CS is any different from their other mod kit releases.


I did not know this, how did you come about this tidbit.

Double checked, even without Steam running it will log you in if you run TESV.exe. At least it does me.




I'm not saying Steam reports sales. I thought you were saying that PC was doing poorly in sales because so few were being reported as playing currently. Which would've been weird.

[quote name='PotatoChip' timestamp='1323094313' post='19641371']
Double checked, even without Steam running it will log you in if you run TESV.exe. At least it does me.

There is a work around for that, though i will not post it as I don't want to get banned.

Supporting the PC version of the game through Steamworks is less red tape and effort when compared to the two console platforms.

Logic really. Console makers charge ~$8 per copy printed/sold. PC doesn't have this. Also consoles charge the developer every time they want to patch the game (certification).

Yes, I'm sure the number of players using a "workaround" for Steam is significant in the overall discussion.

Herpaderpderp.

I wonder why everyone has 20 or more friends who play pc games. I must be very lonely.

So you are assuming, ok.

Gstaff called it rolling releases, smaller, more frequent fixes for the PC. It only makes sense, since PC is the de facto platform for mods and tools to extend game play. Toghether with steam it means two advantages up front. First you don't have to re-install the whole game if you mess the install directory - just let steam validate your files. Second, an integrated mod installer seems to be a very nice touch. We'll have to wait and see.

The PC can also get that immediate support because, like Gstaff said, it's a process they control. For consoles, the software has to go through the other companies QA.

PC has about the same amount of gamers as consoles, sadly http://www.gamespot.com/news/the-witcher-2-pirated-45-million-times-cd-projekt-6346876 is how the sales go on PC... and people wonder why developers try to come up with different solutions to stop the piracy...

I believe it to be judging from the amount of people stating that they are bypassing steam on this and other forums. Anyone who uses herp derp crap really is annoying by the way.

Xbox sales: 2.3M, PS3 1.2M, 750K PC. PC isnt far behind the PC, and with the SDK and mods being announced it will pass or go toe to toe with the PS3 version of the game.

Assuming based on things that are true facts, which is perfectly acceptable.

We know MS/ Sony charge licensing and patching fees. PC has neither. Therefore, Beth makes more money. I'm not understanding what part of that is hard to understand / accept.

You don't need big corporations to tell you what is true and what isn't at every turn. Thinking for yourself is A-OK as long as your reasoning is based on hard facts / statistics and you make no leaps in logic. Microsoft and Sony might want people to think otherwise of course ...


That being said, HOLY CRAP GUYS WE OUTSOLD MODERN WARFARE 3!