They wouldn't be able to say, since they have no part in Steam sales. There are probably more sales for 360 and that's because there really are more console gamers than PC gamers. Consoles cater both to the people who don't have the means to play new PC games and people who don't like using PCs (this number is surprisingly huge for a generation that grew up with them).

Every PC player I know bought the game on Steam. I did because I wanted it the instant it was released rather than have to go to a store (GameStop is not a fun place when full of people) and wait. My friend did it because he couldn't find the game in a store a month after release. Demand for disc copies apparently easily outstrips supply.

You should crawl from under that rock and step into the age where sales are being digitalized more and more. I'm pretty confident that with the massive userbase of Steam and still countless other digital distribution platforms like gog.com and D2D around, PC game sales through digital means already outperforms their physical counterparts by far. I wouldn't be surprised if the next generation of consoles makes a big step in that direction as well.

XBox sales numbers may be higher, but the real test will be how many people on each platform will be playing Skyrim in January of 2015? The Xbox game will have grown stale and dusty. The PC game will still be fresh. People will be making content for this game for years to come. The hard part will be sifting through the crud to find the gems that will be created.

How am I to believe anything Steam says when they don't release the sales? I don't think it's safe enough to say anything. Until we know the numbers everything is speculation, at best.

Why would Valve lie about a game selling faster than their own games on a service they run themselves?

The same reasons gaming magazines kiss Bethesda's ass on a daily basis.

I'm a person who wants facts, not someones word. Numbers are facts, words from a spokesperson is specualtion at best.

You tell 'em, Buster. Let all that pent up interweb ire out. If you're feeling particularly sensitive about the whole sales thing, you can always head up to Dragonreach and discuss the ongoing PC v Console hostilities with the other great interwebs, keyboard warriors.

This argument is ridiculous, there is no way PC outsold the Xbox, not in a million years. Steam played a huge part in this sadly, its the onyl reason why I stopped buying PC games like Civilisation and Total War, I don't want that crap in my computer.

At least I can still play Rome:Total War whenever I want

VGChartz
PC: 1.76 million copies
360: 5.29 million copies
PS3: 3.14 million copies

VGChartz generally underestimates pc sales by 30%-50%. This is based on their numbers vs cases where a publisher actually reveals the breakdown of sales by xbox/ps3/pc instead of reporting them in aggregate. Its also generally reported that pc retail vs pc digital sales are 50/50, with steam making 70-90% of digital.

Ex. VGchartz reports 0.68m for the witcher 2; CD Project released figures of almost 1m sold. (CD Project is the publisher, they know exactly how many copies were on steam, GoG, retail, or anywhere else.) http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-11-10-cd-projekt-witcher-2-gog-com-sales-vindicate-drm-free-decision

So ~2.6 to 3.6 mil for skyrim on pc is a safe bet, depending on whether you believe the retail vs digital sales breakdown for skyrim is similar to the witcher or closer to 50/50.

PC: 2.6 to 3.6 million copies
360: 5.29 million copies
PS3: 3.14 million copies <- Probably would've sold ~4 if skyrim didn't run so poorly on PS3

People change too.

A couple of years ago, I would NEVER have considered buying a game I didn't have a physical copy of. I was adamant about it. Now however, I much prefer to buy digitally. The first game I bought completely digitally was Rift. I bought it directly from Trion, and didn't have any problems whatsoever with it. When it came time to buy Skyrim, I didn't even consider heading down to the local Best Buy or Walmart. I Googled it, found out I needed Steam, signed up, and was playing within a couple of hours. I even bought Office 2010 for my new PC digitally recently.

I've gotten to the point now where if I can't buy something digitally, I'm likely to look for an alternative rather than having to trudge down to the store or wait for a delivery.

People that think that buying a physical copy of the game allows them to actually own the game are fooling themselves. You don't own anything but a license to use the software. It's been that way since Bill Gates came up with that diabolical software merchandising scheme back in the 80s. Look closely at your End User License Agreement. You don't own ANYTHING tangible. You have paid for the ability to USE the software according to the limits of the license. You may not copy it, re-sell it (though can you re-sell the LICENSE), or redistribute it.

Steam and other DRMs are just another method for intellectual property owners to combat piracy, and seems to be a pretty effective one. The industry NEEDS some way to fight that piracy, and it needs to come up with it itself. The alternative is for government to step in and screw up everything (as government always does) ala SOPA and PIPA type laws. If the industry can't find a way to beat piracy through technology, a law like that is eventually inevitable.

this
this
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this

Please provide evidence to back that claim up.

That would svck. The way everything PC is going "online" (even for single player games), consoles end up being the last resort for people with svcky broadband. (not everyone lives where the broadband companies actually provide decent service. Lots of people don't, actually.)

So take these numbers, multiply PC sales by two (50% digital sales) and you have 3.52 million copies sold. Now PC sales were higher than PS3, but lower than 360 --- completely logical and probably accurate (although I'd argue to say 3.52 could probably be rounded up to something closer to 4 million).

You should crawl back under your rock.

There's a reason this game was developed for console first. Digital sales to PC are not going to bridge a gap like that.

Reposting this from pg 2 since I know ppl don't read anything but the first and last posts


VGChartz generally underestimates pc sales by 30%-50%. This is based on their numbers vs cases where a publisher actually reveals the breakdown of sales by xbox/ps3/pc instead of reporting them in aggregate. Its also generally reported that pc retail vs pc digital sales are 50/50, with steam making 70-90% of digital.

Ex. VGchartz reports 0.68m for the witcher 2; CD Project released figures of almost 1m sold. (CD Project is the publisher, they know exactly how many copies were on steam, GoG, retail, or anywhere else.) http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-11-10-cd-projekt-witcher-2-gog-com-sales-vindicate-drm-free-decision

So ~2.6 to 3.6 mil for skyrim on pc is a safe bet, depending on whether you believe the retail vs digital sales breakdown for skyrim is similar to the witcher or closer to 50/50.

PC: 2.6 to 3.6 million copies
360: 5.29 million copies
PS3: 3.14 million copies <- Probably would've sold ~4 if skyrim didn't run so poorly on PS3

I'd guess closer to 2.6-3m since RPGs tend to skew towards people who care about physical collectors editions and older gamers who favor retail, and this is the latest in a long line of games in an established RPG franchise. Also don't underestimate the number of digital download conspiracy theorists and people with bad internet.

As opposed if this were say... Assassin's Creed or Borderlands which skews towards younger gamers who favor steam over retail for the social/convenience factor. Then I'd guess the breakdown were closer to 50% retail/50% digital, or even 60-70% digital.

No. Most people would buy the digital copy and activate it on Steam so that they always have a physical backup in addition to playing digitally.

Prior games have had a problem with not being able to be activated on Steam, but Skyrim's codes were added to Steam's database prior to launch. Even Fallout 3 GOTY codes are not in Steam's database (pretty poor planning on Beth's part, really, but many companies have failed to follow up on this point).

Also, people have forgotten history. Beth's games were originally made for PC. Morrowind was ported from PC to console. With Oblivion, Todd stated that the majority of their sales started coming from console. However, in interviews prior to Skyrim's launch, he stated that the market had swung back and that roughly 50% of their sales were coming from PC. He also stated that their games really need to be played on PC for the full experience due to the community and mods, and that's why they have demoed modding tech for Sony and Microsoft (but haven't been approved, of course). This is also probably because starting with Oblivion, many people bought both a console copy and PC copy. This also happened with Morrowind but not in as great of numbers (i.e., the modding community was not as stable and well-established back then).

Regardless of sales, which I believe are much much more on pc than anyone wants to admit.

360 and PS3 players will NOT be playing skyrim in 2 years time. PC players WILL, buying DLC, getting mods and generally creating revenue for beth.
Fact.

And how would you know? Do you have any evidence to convince me with no dispute that xbox360 sales are and will remain dominant? No, you don't. You're being irrelevant anyway, my point in the first place was that it's stupid to imply that asking around brick & mortar stores would provide any remotely accurate perception of sales, not that PC or xbox sold more copies.



All I see is speculation, no evidence. There's really no way to know as long as most digital distribution platforms don't release their sales figures.

Or people who don't support DRM.

I don't support RDM. I use Steam. I consider it more of a service than RDM which is the intention of the platform.

Quite true.


They're not going to release their digital sales anytime soon, so, yes, we can only speculate. However, both docwavy and myself have come to extremely similar numbers which probably represent the reality of the situation. It's one thing to say "Oh man, PC totally outsells 360" with no factual evidence; it's quite another beast to use the data we have avaliable to predict an adequate number of sales versus various platforms.

There's no doubt in the fact that consoles generally (specifically 360) sell more; however, I think the point of the entire argument is to emphasize the fact that PC sales/users do NOT go unnoticed, as it is roughly 1/3 of BGS revenue, regardless of what Todd claims.

That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard.

I know about eight people who purchased Skyrim... 1 was PS3, 4 were 360, and 3 were PC. I've yet to meet anyone who refused to purchase based on Steam requirements (well, save for people on the forum).

Consoles have no advantage. Other than that your post is correct.