Gamasutra - Feature - "Analyze This: Will 'Casual' Games Dominate the Future of the Industry?"


				\|\|\|\|

By Howard Wen
[Author's Bio]
Gamasutra
September 11 , 2006

Analyze This: The Current State of the PC Game Business

Introduction
Michael Pachter
Ed Barton
David Cole

	[Submit Letter] [View All...]

Features

Analyze This: The Current State of the PC Game Business

Page 2 (1, 2, 3, 4)

Michael Pachter, Wedbush Morgan Securities

[On the state of the PC game biz]: "The PC games market is becoming a niche, substantial in size, but a niche nonetheless. There will always be PC games, and the MMOs are likely going to remain PC-based because of the required Internet connection. There are also games that just make sense on a PC, like RPG, RTS and certain puzzle games. I think that the popularity of celebrities like Jonathan Wendel could give a boost to PC games over the short run, and think that the relatively high costs of developing console games could keep a steady supply of PC games coming as a low-cost alternative (to produce).

"The digital distribution model is probably going to be extremely limited, and packaged products will likely rule for a long time. Digital downloads are not portable (you can't take [them] over to your friend's house), can't be sold at garage sales, are limited to broadband households, and take up a disproportionate amount of disk space. I think that this will not approach more than 20% of the market for the next ten years or so.

Blizzard's worldwide sensation of an MMO, World of Warcraft

[On piracy]: "The piracy issue is probably a real one, and the fact that console games are written in proprietary languages and that the consoles themselves have chips to recognize pirated copies will continue to help prevent piracy of console games. However, the flip side is that console games carry a heavy manufacturer's royalty, while PC games do not. To answer your question, yes, piracy is a problem that will limit the growth of PC game sales.

[On Windows Vista]: "Microsoft is trying to make it easy to develop games for the PC and easy to port to the Xbox 360. Vista seems intended to be a tool to facilitate this, and I think that it will help PC game development.

"Ultimately, I think that the PC games market stays about the same size, while console/handheld game sales grow by around 50%. That's still a $3 billion global market. MMOs could expand the market, but the revenues will go to the guys who run the server network, not the PC game developers."

Next: Ed Barton