The PC Centric Extravaganza 08.26.08
Posted by Chris Evans on 08.26.2008
A look at PC sales from 2007 and much more inside.
The PC Centric Extravaganza 26th August 2008
Welcome to another action packed issue of The PC Centric Extravaganza. Well I say action packed, but really it depends on your opinion on whether it is really action packed or not. Anyway lets get on with this thing!
Alan Wake Awakes!
Alan Wake is still awake according to a post by Remedy CFO Mika Reini on the official forums (Shacknews.)
Alan Wake has long been a game that has interested me, from my interpretation of the story it is coming off quite like a Stephen King novel with lots of dark mysterious happenings going on. Like a King novel the development of the game has been surrounded by lots of dark mysterious happenings. Remedy, the developer's of the Max Payne games have kept very, very quiet about Alan Wake for the past year or so. So it is with great delight that I read in the post by Mika Reini that the game is still alive and kicking.
We feel we owe you all a small heads up, and our apologies for lack of updates. This is just part of our psychological thriller, is it all real or imagined...
Seriously, yes, we're still here and working hard on getting Alan Wake for you to enjoy. Sure, we've been in development for a long time and if everything had gone perfectly smoothly there probably would be a game out for you guys to play already. But designing a completely new game can be hard, and sometimes you need to take a detour to find the best route forward.
We want to entertain you guys in the best possible way and our team is putting in every effort possible in order for that to happen. That is the way Remedy wants to do things. I'm sure you will enjoy Alan Wake when we're done.
Just follow the light...
I just hope that we don't find ourselves waiting until 2010 for the game to appear, but it has always seemed to be an adenturous project. Time will tell whether it can live up to the promise from the early information we received all those months ago...
PayPal and credit/debit cards will be accepted as forms of payment for the subscription based game which will start going 'live' in October. In this initial phase 14 gameworlds will go live which is equal to 14,000 players. Once these places have been filled one server at a time will go live until 20 gameworlds are running. January will see a push in the marketing and PR campaigns with a possible retail boxed version being sold in several countries in February.
Importantly the game client itself is free to download and can be downloaded as many time and on as many PC/Mac's as wished by the end user. The team behind the game are following a 'constant development' plan which will see the game being updated for free ever few months with new features.
While there currently are no one month price plans Marc Duffy responded to my question about whether we can expect to see any one month price plans saying 'We expect so" though no prices were mentioned.
Sandvich!
That is the Sandvich, the first unlockable that the Heavy will be able to get his massive hands on. In short the Sandvich will heal 120 points of Heavy health and will take four seconds to be devoured. During this time the Heavy will not be able to take part in the battle around him and he must set aside his shotgun if he wishes to take the Sandvich into battle. One last thing, his eating is very loud..OM NOM NOM in video form.
Unfortunately I didn't get to put this into last weeks column, it was revealed way after the column went live. Anyway my initial thoughts on the Heavy Update? Well it is ok, nothing special. Arena mode is pretty crap really, I want Valve to totally rework it as it just fails at the moment. The Heavy achievements are cool, but I haven't had the chance to test out the unlocks yet. Overall a so-so update, the Pyro one was much better.
FUEL
So FUEL is going to be the latest racing game from Codemasters, but this time it is being developed by Asobo studio from France. What then is so significant about FUEL? Well the fact that it will present you with 5,000 square miles of pure open world driving terrain. FUEL is set in a alternate-semi-apocalyptic world where racing junkies are battling it out against each other to win fuel supplies. This is because oil is over the top expensive, nothing like the real world at all then. Check out the video for some awesome in-game footage and more information about the game. It is due to land in 2009.
Red Alert 3 Cast Trailer
Some famous faces, some famous voices and some ludicrous Russian accents. Red Alert 3, that is what it is all about.
Cryostasis Trailer
That is something great, this game will likely make me shit my pants in sheer horror at what is happening, but you know what? I don't really care.
PC Gaming Alliance on PC Sales
The PC Gaming Alliance has released a lengthy press release at the Leipzig Games Development Conference lauding the success of PC gaming in the past year. The 'Horizons' report reveals that PC gaming was a $10.7 billion industry worldwide in 2007. One of the most surprising figures to come out of the report was that retail sales only accounted for 30% of the total. Unsurprisingly however it was revealed that the Asian online market is approaching half of total worldwide sales.
Online PC gaming revenue totalled $4.8 billion and was the biggest contributor to total PC gaming revenues last year, this was nearly double the worldwide retail sales. Digital distribution sales were approaching $2 billion and advertising revenue (websites and in-game ads included) accounted for $800 million of the total.
My thoughts?
This is great to see that PC gaming is such a rich industry, I think this just goes to show that PC gaming is not dying and is thriving, and hopefully when the next set of findings are published we will see that it is growing year on year.
The most striking factor is that retail sales were absolutely swamped by online gaming revenue, while it has been common knowledge for a while that games like World of Warcraft are massive hits to see it put so plainly in black and white must be worrying for traditional retailers. With digital distibution nearly $2 billion it seems that traditional retailers should be looking at how to work with digital distributors in order to help maximise sales all around.
The following statement from DFC Intelligence quoted in the report makes for very interesting reading.
"By pioneering new business models, the PC has quietly remained the single leading platform for games, not only in terms of consumer usage, but revenue generation," said David Cole, an analyst with DFC Intelligence. "The most fascinating thing about PC gaming is its ability to attract such a diverse audience, both demographically and geographically. The real key has been the rapid growth in penetration of broadband-connected PCs in all markets around the world. Broadband-connected PCs are the key driver of growth for PC gaming. DFC Intelligence estimated that by the end of 2007 less than one-third of households in the top 20 markets for games had a high-speed Internet connection. That clearly indicates that there is still plenty of growth to come. The initiatives of the PCGA will be a key enabler of growth as they will help the industry identify key trends and opportunities in this rapidly emerging market."
I must say this is entirely true, with the ever constant expansion of broadband around the world there is going to be an ever increasing number of people spreading into online gaming and digital distribution. I think that this is a key factor in why the PC is such a strong platform.
We shall have to wait until the next report covering 2008 to see if there is a year on year improvement in PC earnings, hopefully we will see this happen.
Tally Ho!
Back next week, keep the PC love going. If there is any!
