You put the suits in charge and they come up with Deer Hunter, Deer Hunter: Extended Season (goodness, how many of the little sweethearts can you kill with one CD), Trophy Bass, Big Game Hunter, and Space Bunnies Must Die. Why would Microsoft want to be in this business? It's unseemly, and unprofitable. However, as long as there are people in the computer business who think that computer games will get them a movie deal, or their own action figure line, there will be millions spent on the unprofitable pursuit of mainstream games success. Well, I like Age of Empires.

Table 2: 2Q98 monthly sales charts for PC games (Source: NPD)

	April	May	June
1	Starcraft	Starcraft	Starcraft
2	Deer Hunter	Unreal MMX	Unreal MMX
3	Cabela's Big Game Hunter	Deer Hunter	Deer Hunter
4	Titanic: Journey out of Time	Titanic: Journey out of Time	Cabela's Big Game Hunter
5	Deer Hunter: Extended Season	Might & Magic 6	X-Files
6	Myst	Cabela's Big Game Hunter	Rocky Mountain Trophy Hunter
7	Star Wars Rebellion	Myst	Final Fantasy VII
8	Trophy Bass	Deer Hunter: Extended Season	Myst
9	Police Quest 5 SWAT	Army Men	Titanic: Journey out of Time
10	Nascar 2	Nascar Track	Duke Nukem 3D
11	Nascar Track	Trophy Bass	MS Flight Simulator 98
12	Quake 2	Duke Nukem 3D	SimCity 2000 Special Ed.
13	MS Flight Simulator 98	Star Wars Rebellion	Nascar Track
14	Duke Nukem/Quake Bndl.	MS Flight Simulator 98	Descent: Freespace
15	Rivin: The Sequel to Myst	Police Quest 5 SWAT	Mech Commander

I like a lot of games. But, they are kind of dispensible. So, maybe Microsoft is finding out the hard way that this games business is not really worth spit for a company that makes real money from software. Strategic value? Look at all the successful games companies out there? Which one of them has strategic value? The big publishers have channels. Sure. Distribution. Maybe that was what Microsoft was thinking too.

"We have distribution. Let's stick games on our shelf space with retailers. Easy money."

Millions of MS Office users, and Windows 98 upgrades, in a matter of months, and what's the best they can do with a game title, after a year, even if they get a Myst? Three and half million. Glitch in the system --  three and a half million. Three hundred or four hundred thousand units. You have to sell a hell of lot of SKUs to make up for it. Stack 'em high. Screw the developer. Get a top twenty title and make it a loss leader to get your crap on the shelf, and then watch it go at discount prices. Games are dispensible. Screw the developer.

No wonder there is such a thing as a Gathering of Developers, but you really have to screw the developer to be successful. Unless the developer has already put the screws on you, a la iD Software. They call the shots, but they're a breed apart. Everyone wants their deal. Does Microsoft really want to soil their corporate image with this stuff?

I haven't got the data right now, but if 30% of retail sales of titles can move online we'll see a change in the industry's dynamics. Games alongside music, and reading matter. Not too far off now. Maybe not so many screwed developers. Maybe they get indie fever and do the groundwork themselves. Microsoft doesn't need that business either. They're better off selling servers and development tools to make it happen, or bringing DirectX to set-top boxes. That's cool stuff. That's getting into the games industry the right way. Selling titles, great or bad, is not a business for real businessmen. It's a flea market. It's a bazaar. It's deer genocide, people. Anyone goes on a butterfly rampage, and I can't promise that publishers won't get hurt. There are lots of decent people like myself that just won't stand for the flagrant abuse of insects in motion capture studios.

I give it another six months, and we'll see some big shake-ups in the PC game publishers. They can't keep going on as they have been for the last six months. The console business is holding up the industry. I have to get more data. Time to plan for 1999. Time to think about a change. You don't want to be caught napping with the Wal-Mart crowd around.