Survey Says: 47% of PC Game Sales Are Digital
Posted 01/30/09 at 09:06:54 PM by Nathan Grayson
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PC gaming isn’t dead; it’s merely waiting for the day conditions are finally right for its return. Like Jesus! However, it looks like Our Lord and Savior (or incarnation of your particular religion’s greatest evil – you know, whichever) is posting a Craig’s List bulletin searching for a new pal for Friday night card games, because PC gaming’s “return” is nigh.
Finally, someone – in this case, fractiously monikered gaming blog Rock Paper Shotgun – has conducted a semi-official survey of PC gamers’ buying habits. The result? RPS discovered that, of the 2,000 keyboard warriors interrogated, 93% have digitally purchased at least one PC game in the past 12 months, 71% bought more than four games digitally, and, through some flashy mathematics, that 47% of all PC purchases in 2008 were digital.
Assuming that RPS’ findings are more or less accurate, this means NPD’s figures would nearly need to be doubled before hitting the mark.
Like taking candy from a baby, eh, GameStop?
I don't think bandwiths caps are going to have any impact on DD
Submitted by MarioJP on Sat, 01/31/2009 - 1:29pm
These caps are to ease the flow of traffice if any but in any case who is going to download 250gb of month anyways. I will never exceed those bandwith caps at all per month. Now if they start to reduce it like 30gb of month or less. Then people are going to complain to their isp because the future is hd content streaming. So my cap per month for me with comcast is 250gb and thats more than enough per month. I am not going to buy 250gb worth of games per month lol.
Hey Horzo...
Submitted by aluCard1462 on Sat, 01/31/2009 - 11:23am
...my cusin was sent two e-mails from comcast warning of termination of service. they use p2p heavily but so far their still a customer....
Submitted by BaggerX on Sat, 01/31/2009 - 10:18am
I actually prefer Stardock's Impulse to Steam. You don't even have to have it running to play your games. Now if they could just increase their library, I'd be all set. Until then I guess I'm stuck with Steam. It's not terrible or anything, but I'd rather not have to run it all the time.
With all the crap they
Submitted by bjoswald on Sat, 01/31/2009 - 5:54am
With all the crap they bundle with the games, it's no wonder people are downloading them directly. If I want to play a game, I want to play what I paid for. I don't want some advertisement popping up, asking me if I want to try their product instead, I don't want the dubious DRM crap make me feel like a criminal for buying the damn thing, nor do I want to look around for serial numbers or registration codes. What the hell happened to just buying the game, bringing it home, and playing for hours? At least there's STEAM.
Submitted by JohnyC on Fri, 01/30/2009 - 8:59pm
I live in a very remote location in northern Canada. It would cost me more than I need to spend to travel to the nearest location that stocked my favorite games. I buy all my games through STEAM. Have been for quite some time now. Unless you download a tonne of... whatever... you'd never reach that cap. What keeps me a supporter of their services? They do all the work for free. They keep your games updated with all the latest patches and fixes (A must if you're an online gamer) They even provide integrated tools to maintain and backup your games. Add all that to excellent costumer service and support (via e-mail) and well... see it how ya want.
Digital Downloads....blah!
Submitted by windbane on Fri, 01/30/2009 - 7:38pm
Until bandwidth caps are eliminated, all forms of digital download purchases won't take off. With games taking over 7GB these days, thats over 10% of my monthly bandwith allowance. I think I'll get off my ass and goto the mall and buy a hardcopy. Might actually meet some real people out there OMG!
Submitted by aluCard1462 on Fri, 01/30/2009 - 7:29pm
....is superior to retail purchases any way...damn scratched copy of F.E.A.R....
I agree that the bandwidth
Submitted by I Jedi on Fri, 01/30/2009 - 11:56pm
I agree that the bandwidth caps that some ISP's are now enforcing will only end up hurting the digital market. However, I don't believe that these caps will always remain in place, as consumers get sick and tired of paying high prices and being restricted to what they can and cannot do. I hate the fact that most ISP's, if not all, have a monopoly in some area of the grand ol' U.S. of A. That's where I would imagine is the cause for the extremely high prices that customers pay for an 8Mbps connection or less. For now, my ISP, Road Runner, isn't encforcing a bandwidth cap on my area. I can only hope it remains that way. Otherwise it could spell bad news for my digital downloads of movies and games if I have an extreme bandwidth cap of say 150GB or less.
Has anyone here actually
Submitted by horzo on Sat, 01/31/2009 - 9:37am
Has anyone here actually been warned by their ISP about exceeding the bandwidth cap? I have Comcast, and have never heard a peep from them. I stream several Netflix movies to my Tivo and/or PC each week, play online games, buy a game every couple of weeks from Steam, and also...uh...do other bandwidth-hungry things we won't talk about.
If a cap is being enforced in my area, it's apparetly not going to be an issue for me.
Submitted by I Jedi on Sat, 01/31/2009 - 4:53pm
The cap is a 250GB/monthly limit. There not going to tell you game's over unless you exceed that much. Even then, they'll just charge you for using more bandwidth after your monthly use. I'm not too sure if they can priortize packets, like downloading of movie streams, etc. However, that's why you haven't gotten a "peep" from them. Make sure you check your bandwidth usage on their website to see how much you've used already.
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