lol what?

Do you have any sort of source to back that up?

Right. :rolleyes:

This will never be the case, console gamers are like the Zerg, they win in sheer numbers.

Digital download means not having to print a copy and ship it to a brick and mortar store. Of course it's more profit per sale with digital download.

Most consumers on PC are also alien infiltrators from Alpha Centauri. Prove me wrong.

Where does all this mythology about PC gaming come from, anyway?

Maybe it's what I get for just skimming the linked stuff, but I saw nothing that backed up your estimated numbers per device nor your percentage of revenue Beth gets per unit sold by device. Care to point out where these numbers came from?

it comes from publishing agencies, not just games but from record companies as well. who divert the resentment over the industry (in this case music) in general being less profitable for the artists, while the labels give themselves an ever growing slice of the pie.

for gaming it gives some an excuse to insert overbearing drm. most consumers DONT illegally download simply because they either don't have internet (as if they could afford to they very likely can afford to buy the game, thus risk>reward for the consumer) or that their internet connection can't handle downloading 10gb sooner than a week or several days if that.

Not to mention that some of us understand that if we want an industry to continue to exist we should, you know, support it. The fact that you can get something for free now doesn't mean that it's in your best interests long-term. I certainly have the means and know-how to get my games for free, but that would be a really irresponsible thing to do. :shrug:

sure Steam will do well,but SteamWORKS will at least hurt the box sales a bit (some going to DD, others simply not getting the game)

U can't get numbers through steewam but you can get them through other means, if u wanted

Did you actually READ the links (actually, did anybody ?) ?

Percentage of sales price to Bethesda comes from one of those links

Pre-order sales to date come from another link

Could not find the NVidia graph link showing predicted retail vs digital sales, but 3X was a conservative number

License fee numbers I have no links for, but have seen numbers of $5 to $9 in many places over the years
Costs for retail package (DVD, manual, box, distribution) are from "anecdotal reports" I have seen from time to time.

If you have better numbers and justification, tell me

Guesstimate of total sales is just that, a guesstimate; but I think that total numbers are close to what many people are predicting (there's a thread about predicting Skyrim total sales).

Note the the assumption about total sales at initial price guesstimate of 2X pre-order is probably conservative, but
IT DOESN'T MATTER: point still made that PC sales have >50% of profit to Bethesda - only caveat: is Steam sales 3X retail PC sales?

Point gets made stronger as price drops over time - where Beth can NOT sell console version at much less than $25 and show any profit, digital version can show ~ $13 profit at a $20 sales price!!!

And since console version cost so much to manufacture, companies will want to make SURE that they don't overbuild, but digital pc sales can go on for ever

Stereotype much? And a false one at that.



:rolleyes: right...I have the knowledge and all the tools necessary to download any game I want. Have I ever done that? No, not planning on.

Also if that's was the case why do certain PC exclusives (or that atleast the grand majority of buyers are on the PC) largely outsell certain console exclusives? Look at Crysis, The Sims and even some of the most popular RTSs, which isn't exactly the most popular genre around.

Your justification for the doubleing of retail PC sold is completely unjustified IMO. There is no added advantage to buy Skyrim boxed for the PC. People preordered for one of two reasons: the map or limited bandwidth. Once preorders end, the map advantage goes away and the number of PC gamers on limited bandwidth is a small fraction of PC gamers, and even a smaller fraction of gamers in general. Preorders I think will account for 80-90% of boxed retail sales for the PC version of Skyrim. This also will take a considerable chunk of your DD sales (which I honestly feel is incredibly overinflated as stands).

$5-$9 on printed and boxing is insane, and misses the advantages of production of scale. Those costs are cents on the dollar, $2 tops. License fees are already paid (for access to the SDK for the console) and cannot be factored in individually.

Your percentages are for the industry as a whole, come from white papers (which are never a valid source of information IMO) and an opinion article with no credible backing of statistics used, and dated.

I doubled ALL sales, pre-order to total sales at initial price , consoles and pc- so you can cut the sales figures in half, the profit picture is still the same, and the profit picture as price drops over time is even more dramatic

I used $4 as cost for manufacturing dvd, manual, box, AND distribution: it costs money to enter orders and track and fill the orders for retail sales from 10,000 different retail outlets; it costs money to ship 100 retail boxes to Walmart or Best buy, likely at LEAST $50!

The $5 to $9 figure is for console license fees, it's the range of numbers I have seen quoted at various times. If you know of different numbers, let me know.
Console license fees are absolutely charged PER GAME! That is where Microsoft makes the money to pay for the subsidized XBOX hardware (Sony too)

If you don't like the profit percentages link, show me some different data. Until you do, I'll use the data I have

I don't quite understand that either, most of the threads that get moved are spam anyways.

You completely misconstrued what I said. Your PC values are inflated according to my logic, not anything else, as there is no digital distribution method for consoles. So their values stay the same whereas the PC retail and digital distribution (Which you based on the PC retail) get decimated -- and I mean decimated in the conventional sense, not the original Roman sense.


That's not how distribution works. You send it to the retailer, who stores it in warehouses and then distributes from there to other warehouses and their stores. Those costs are not paid by the producer but by the retailer. If the producer sent directly to retail stores and warehouses weren't used there would be a major problem both in great increases in costs and inventory control.


No offense, but you're making assumptions on a global scale based on US data (Net applications did this once with Mac OS X, once they accounted for the US bias, the percentage of Mac OS X fell from 20% to 8%) and also the game market as a whole, opinion articles, and white papers. None of which is credible information sources :shrug:

You, like me, will have to wait for Beth to publish something, until then anything is nothing more than conjecture and wild claims.

Edited to remove snappiness. It's not your fault today was crap.

Realize The Elder Scrolls Series is made with PC usage in mind. It's always been about the PC. It only seems like its going down the way of console because of their seemingly close relationship with Microsoft.

As much as you dont want to believe it, Beth really is one of the few gaming developers left that takes PC gaming seriously.

1) ?? PC retail volumes from pre-order link, then added in 3X that number for Steam digital download sales. Most people agree that digital sales for pc will be larger than retail boxed dvd sales for pc. How much more is up for debate, I suspect that 3X is a conservative number. But we'll likely never know, 'cause bethesda doesn't release those numbers. Point is that TOTAL sales for PC = Boxed DVD + Digital Download, and DD is > than retail volume. AND that PC profit per game is > than console profit per game sold, AND that PC DD profit per game is >> than console profit per game sold

2) Yeah, you're likely right for big chains like Walmart, Best Buy. Not sure about stores like Game Stop - are they a franchise operation? Anyway, so take off a dollar from that cost (now $3), at least for the big retailers

3) Making assumptions based on US pre-order numbers, that's true. I don't see that it invalidates my point, unless Europe doesn't use PCs, only consoles. USA and Europe will account for most of the sales volume; I expect that the ratio of console to PC sales in Europe is "similar" to USA, If someone has data otherwise, let me know.

Sources linked are only info I have - it's up to you (or someone) to come up with different data

4) Bethesda seems to treat those numbers as top secret for some unknown reason


btw do you play on console or pc?

also you make want to check out this thread, it has some interesting and applicable posts
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1248585-skyrim-america-pre-order-update/page__st__120

Just habit, I think: Bethesda's one of the most irritatingly secretive companies I've dealt with. Even if there's a good reason, they do it so habitually that it's still irritating...

I'd like to believe it, I really would! And based on potential profit numbers, it actually makes sense.

But Fallout and now Skyrim both developed for XBOX360 and then ported to PC?

Skyrim being so obviously dumbed down for the console button thumpers?

We will be able to get good numbers on 11/11/11 for PC usage. Since it's Steam exclusive, we will be able to see how many people are playing. I would wager it will be quite a lot.

So once again, you're making up numbers that I see as not founded in reality using reasoning that you think makes sense but I see as quite wrong :shrug: I think pretty much all your numbers are wrong and you've presented no solid evidence to back them up (as I've said I don't think opinion articles with unsourced numbers or whitepapers are valid sources of information. Anyone can create numbers in an opinion article and too many years of reading whitepapers have taught me they are half truths and whole lies). Hence why I'm not going to spew out numbers because if I were to do that it would also be just conjecture and wild guessing.


Neither.


Doesn't seem to change anything

Then ignore the sales figures and compare 1 copy of the game PC DD/PC Retail/Console and you will see that the greatly increased profit margin that Steam offers (between 60-75% of the purchase price goes to the publisher versus industry standard 35% found in retail) is substantial enough that even if both consoles combined sold twice as many copies as the PC, the profits from the PC DD sales would be about the same.

DD is the way of the future thanks to the lack of cost. It is unfortunate that we won't see any benefit in the form of reduced prices, but such is the nature of greed.

Yes, but it will be hard to figure out total Steam sales from how many people are playing at any one time, especially with time zone differences. Maybe by comparing # playing game to some other game's peak player numbers - IF that game had total Steam sales announced



Good point, but shouldn't ignore the sales figures : http://techgage.com/articles/editorials/september_11/nvidia_trends_07.png by NVidia shows a ratio of 4 or 5 to 1 for DD vs retail pc sales for 2008. 2009, and 2010. I expect that the historical data is actual data NVidia collected (without identifying any individual game or publisher in their figures) I used a conservative ratio of 3 to 1 for DD vs retail for pc.

Also, this thread on predicting total sales has some interesting posts in it http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1245665-skyrim-sales-predictions/

Don't know how the myth sprouted, but I know well 95% of my friends who play console pirated most their games.