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Stardock's Wardell: Digital Distribution Will 'Save PC,' Say Retail Publishers
by Chris Remo
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September 10, 2009
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Like Valve, developer and publisher Stardock has a broad view of the PC gaming industry, being a company that sells not only its own games but also those of other publishers through digital distribution. Its Impulse service carries third-party games across numerous genres.
As a result, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell ends up having a lot of contact with other publishing executives, who tell him the growth of outlets like Steam and Impulse is making them take a closer look at the PC game arena.
"A lot of publishers are viewing digital distribution as the thing that is going to save PC," he told Gamasutra during a recent interview.
The retail market for PC games is undoubtedly shrinking, as NPD sales figures reflect. "You can't get a lot of retail space on the PC," Wardell said.
But as that number declines, digital distribution figures are on the rise, and fast. Right now, Wardell roughly estimates PC digital distribution as about 25 percent of the total PC game market -- but based on its current growth, he expects that to double within a year or two.
Earlier this year, IGN reported Valve saw 97 percent year-over-year growth in its Steam revenues, while fellow digital distribution service Direct2Drive saw a 56 percent increase.
And despite being direct competitors in many respects, Wardell believes the operators of the various distribution services are actually pursuing increasingly divergent paths that will hopefully work separately toward the same goal: a more robust and user-friendly PC platform.
"Steam and Impulse start out as competitors here, but we really have different long-term ideas on what we want to do, and they're not mutually exclusive," the exec said. "Steam's not going away. Impulse isn't going away. I think we're going off on our own different visions, to make it so that the PC experience is much better."
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Glen
http://www.zenfar.com
When there are well documented facts regarding the sales and income of digital distribution and MMO fees, then they probably will.
As it stands now, it is up to the provider to offer numbers and most do not want to share anything more than vague life to date sales figures.
As for losing keys, I recently had the problem with one of my games. I have the real disc, but lost the key... so I googled me up a new one. Really losing the key isn't the problem, having one in the first place is.
In all honesty its great for me because i erm... i don't take care of my games at all, i have missing boxes, missing disks and missing codes. Thanks to steam none of the above worry me now. Although i have to admit i'm more of a console person at the moment, well until they start releasing more titles i like on the PC.
The real issue is the multiplication of distributors. Right now, you have Steam, Impulse and Direct2Drive that are "majors". You have a couple of minor ones that are specialized with old games and indie ones. You can add BattleNet 2.0 in this category now that you can buy and download digitally almost any game they made. What happens if all publishers create their own digital distribution system ? Because right now, we understand that they are trying this market (ex: Ubisoft selling all his titles on Steam), but someday, they will want all the profits from those sales. As a consumer, I don't really like this scenario.
The sales are not there, because companies are doing it wrong.
First, PC gamers don't like "consolefied" games, like games that show you tutorial screens with a screenshot of a XBOX 360 controller (Lost Planet for example...), or that changed the genre totally for the lack of a mouse (Rainbow Six, from a tatical game to a normal FPS), or genre twisting (FPS with auto-aim and poor controls imported from console analog sticks...).
Second, PC gamers don't like dumbfied games like is happening now in a way to reach the "casual" gamers, some companies instead of making good tutorials, difficulty levels, good balance, manual and proper designed interface (both input and output), they are making the gameplay plainly stupid, idiotic, in a way that not even "casual" gamers enjoy, like games that play themselves, games where failure is impossible or games that are only avaible in the "extra easy" difficulty setting.
Third, PC gamers don't like DRM, we have a wave of DRM right now, if DRM was not hated, we would not have gog.com advertise big that they don't sell games with DRM.
Fourth, not all PC gamers have console-like machines, Crytek is blaming piracy for the reasons that Crysis don't sold, and they don't see that in fact they sold a great amount considering how their game don't run in the majority of the PCs in the planet.
Fifth, there are PC gamers in other places than NA, EU and JP, releasing games there might make them sell...
Sixth, digital distro and DRM that use internet will reach a limit, they are expanding fast but they will stop expanding soon, since they are expanding faster than the internet expansion, studies trying to figure out how much people on USA has internet in a attempt to see the reach of Obama internet campaign showed that altough there are a significant amount of users, 70% of the population, only 50% of those has broadband and can stay connected, and 50% of 70% is less than half of the total population.
Seventh, PC gaming will not expand if some companies like MS continue to ignore it, microsoft since some time ago don't mention PC anymore on E3, don't make PC games (and they closed Esemble :/), and instead of making PC a better platform with their libs, they are making it worse, Xinput is awfull near the old DirectInput, and if you want to support multiple controllers and the XBOX 360 one, you need to mix the two libraries, coding the input of a Windows game getting really harder. Even EPIC, a traditional PC company is abandoning PC gradually...
Happily, we still have ID, Bethesda, Valve, and all the bazillion indies that make awesome games like World of Goo, Braid, Cortex Command, Demolition Gunner, Torus Trooper, Spring, Freeciv...
I don't think the DD market will fragment to that extreme. Sure there will be a lot of larger publishers starting their own channel, but most developers will want to go with the better alternative of letting someone else handle the store and distribution side of things.
It is not easy or cheap to run a DD service. Trying to run one yourself will probably see you spending more in the long run than when the fees were for using someone else's service.
You have a good point about the cost of a DD service. Unless current DD providers have an interesting ratio (ex: Apple keeps only 30% instead of major retailers that keep around 50%), I think that most big publishers will try their own DD service. Most smaller developers/publisher will stay with current DD providers.
As for the price, I don't think that DD would cost more if you only have 2-3 companies. Right now, you can still buy most of your PC games in retail store with a "fixed" price. All I can see is some competition between them with 5$ rebates, weekend at 50% and things like that.