Commentary

The PC Numbers Game

It's January -- the month when analysts get to discuss the sales of gaming hardware and software from Q4. And I'm very dissatisfied.

There is a major problem in the industry, a gaping niche that needs to be filled. The PC sales numbers are all over the place. The problem lies with digital distribution, and the lack of significant tracking.

For retail sales, NPD steps up to the challenge of providing fodder for analysis. But PC retail sales decrease each year, as a greater percentage of sales come from digital distribution. This makes things... complicated. Most sites link to the Steam and Direct2Drive sales charts as well as NPD's in covering the quarter for PC sales, but this too provides a seriously skewed perspective.

For consoles, the bestselling title of Q4 was "Wii Play." And yet on the PC sales charts, casual gaming is perhaps, in a word, unrepresented. Sure, the NPD chart gives some love to the Sims and Spore, but the PC is the home ground for casual gameplay - yet there is no reflection (or even an indication) of those numbers in these stats.

Houston, we have a problem. The PC space, fueled by digital distribution, is larger than we probably realize. The problem is there aren't any good metrics tracking what is actually occurring in PC game sales, as the space presents a serious challenge due to fragmentation. Until this space gets tracked across distribution points in a trustworthy manner, I have a feeling that marketers are going to continue to under-value the medium.

I'd really love to see a solution come forward before Q4 2009.

4 comments about "The PC Numbers Game".
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  1. Edward Hunter from Loop Analytics, January 23, 2009 at 11:58 a.m.

    comScore has the ability to see gaming applications being run anonymously on panelist machines but have two significant issues with reliably reporting gameplay in a syndicated fashion.

    The first is, unlike our client focused dictionary of web entities, we don't have a dictionary of game applications and therefore we have a challenge in maintaining a lock on all the various applications in the game category. An industry or partner solution here would go a long ways in helping us bring a product forward.

    Secondly, we cannot account absolutely for 'purchases'. The game could have been purchased, or pirated, or be on the PC for a myriad of other reasons.

    Lastly, unlike our ability to detect who in the household is on the computer using the browser, our technology isn't ready to make that judgement within other contexts e.g. applications. This doesn't impact the ability to see raw counts of machines playing games, but it does restrict our measurement to machines, thus, our demographics are limited to the household level.

    We'd love to be partner in bringing a bona-fide solution to the industry and closing the loop that was started and maintained so well by folks like NPD in the retail space.

  2. Anthony Giallourakis from Advergames.com, LLC, January 23, 2009 at 1:49 p.m.

    It's not the quantity of players you have on a web based casual gaming site that is important to advertisers, it's the quality of demographic that you attract. If advertisers feel that you have a very mature audience, one that will spend money on their product or service, then they will pay for that opportunity. It's going to be more about relationships with gamers and less about volumes going forward. Specialize and focus. Target your audience and go after them in multiple ways.

  3. Alice Dale from Itchy-Brain Communications, January 28, 2009 at 10:06 a.m.

    For game publishers it's incredibly frustrating to not know the market for their game among PC owners, compared to the market for the same game on console. This is especially a void for publishers of high-end graphic games -
    We need to start tracking PC ownership (and sales) by unit specifications. Consumers can use websites like www.canurunit.com to tell them if their PC can run any given title - yet that information is not captured on a total market scale. As services like Xbox Live create online gaming experiences that were once limited to PC, the value of understanding the overlap is critical to accurate forecasting.
    If I'm missing a source for this kind of data - do share!

  4. Alice Dale from Itchy-Brain Communications, January 28, 2009 at 10:33 a.m.

    For game publishers it's incredibly frustrating to not know the market for their game among PC owners, compared to the market for the same game on console. This is especially a void for publishers of high-end graphic games -
    We need to start tracking PC ownership (and sales) by unit specifications. Consumers can use websites like www.canurunit.com to tell them if their PC can run any given title - yet that information is not captured on a total market scale. As services like Xbox Live create online gaming experiences that were once limited to PC, the value of understanding the overlap is critical to accurate forecasting.
    If I'm missing a source for this kind of data - do share!

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About the Author

Josh Lovison is a regular contributor to MediaPost, including the Gaming Insider and MEDIA magazine.