PC Games Account For Only 14% Of 2007's Total Game Sales

[JKKDARK]

via Wired Blog

According to the recent NPD numbers, during 2007 the sales of PC games only made up 14% of the total revenue earned through the sale of videogames.

The data shows that of the $18.85 billion dollars earned by the gaming industry, only $910.7 million was earned through the sales of PC titles.

Unfortunately, the NPD numbers don't reflect sales of PC titles through download services such as Valve's Steam service.

When asked how many games were sold via Steam, Valve's Doug Lombardi told Game|Life that they "don't release the Steam sales numbers."

In less shocking news, the two best-selling titles of the year were World of Warcraft and its expansion The Burning Crusade. The two titles made up almost a third of total PC game sales.

Without the data from digital distribution it would be premature to say these numbers are a harbinger of doom for PC gaming, but they certainly don't inspire much confidence.

Even huge PC releases like Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3, which combined for roughly 120,000 copies sold, have seen unexpected failure on the platform during the last year.

I personally believe PC gaming will never die due simply to how many PCs are out there (do you know anyone without one?), though with consoles taking on the role of computers more and more, it's not surprising to see the market shift toward the cheaper alternative.

[VampDude]

14% is a lot, 86% for console games seems about right.

[bah]

Considering you have xbox 360, ps3, ps2, PSP, DS, mobile phones, apple computers, arcade games, as well as all those standalone retro game things and older consoles that still sell a bit then 14% sounds like a pretty decent share.

If they didn't count online distribution, did they exclude things like all the little web based games that are advertising supported and surely make some kind of profit for someone (guess it would be hard to tally those sorts of profits).