SH5 overtakes Assasins Creed 2 in Steam Charts!!!

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by DarkFish

oh yeah, SH5 is a real multiplayer game yeah
I have never played any of the SH series in multiplayer mode and I think I'm hardly the only one.

Originally Posted by koyan

Just imagine what a fun multiplayer it could have been if they made the destroyers driveable with droppable depth charges. All by a simple UI with sonar.

Silent Hunter II vs Destroyer Command. Played both sides, loved it. On the other hand SH3, 4 and 5 won't get me, as I don't like co-op play.

Originally Posted by kylania

Other than spectacular Blizzard-style collector's editions, I don't know anyone that buys a boxed game over digital download anymore.

Me. Steam thinks I live somewhere outside the US, in a foreign country called Utah. It doesn't matter, though, because I won't buy anything I can't actually hold in my greedy little hands.

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Dowly

The problem is, AC2 has consoles to fall on. AC2 has sold ~700,000 copies more than AC1 had in 16 weeks on consoles. That is 700,000 players they can "sacrifice" to the DRM on PC. You think there will be even half of that number who will boycott the DRM? I don't.

The problem is publishers don't rely on the PC market anymore. CoD:MW2 was a hit on consoles, but only sold 270,000+ legal copies for the PC while there were 4,100,000+ illegal PC pirate copies.

SH5 may be holding up well simply because there is no console version.

[John Channing]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

The problem is publishers don't rely on the PC market anymore. CoD:MW2 was a hit on consoles, but only sold 270,000+ legal copies for the PC while there were 4,100,000+ illegal PC pirate copies.

Yeah, but assuming those figures are accurate those 4 million people would not have bought the game anyway and have already discarded it.



JCC

[Piggy]

All these numbers, console vs PC and the fact that I was in EB games yesterday seriously had hard time finding the little nook of a shelf for PC games just lends credit to my opinion. Pretty much any PC game is niche when compared to console games these days... Money is in the consoles and the stupid crackberry iphone games, hell I bet the latter makes a company a fortune for little investment.

Sad for an old PC gamer like myself...

[janh]

Originally Posted by John Channing

Yeah, but assuming those figures are accurate those 4 million people would not have bought the game anyway and have already discarded it.
JCC

That is a serious point. (a), How many of that number of downloads are really finished and ended up being played? (b) how many of those ended up being player twice, i.e. were not used to simply test in case of doubts regarding the game? (c) How many of those left now would have bought the game in first place if it was not hacked? (d) How many bought it after testing the cracked version because it turned out to be good?

I would hypothesize that less only a small 1-digit percentage of those 4 Mio would have bought it if it was never cracked. And those now include the ones would bought it after playing the crack.

However, 4 Mio is a seriously big number though. I wonder how it is measured, and what the errorbar of that measurement is? 10%? 30%? 50%? As a scientist I would guess it is amongst the latter.

[John Channing]

One way they are measured by the actual sales (a know number), compared to illegal downloads (as reported by torrent sites) and compared to the on-line players (also a know number).

If 4 million are consistently playing the pc version on-line vs. 270,000 paid purchases you pretty much have your facts there.

As I recall this is what happened with IL-2 by Maddox games.

JCC

[Safe-Keeper]

One month ago: "Damn Ubi, let's boycott the game! No way am I buying this! When their product gathers dust on shelves, they'll see the errors of their ways and repent!"

Today:
Header: SH5 overtakes Assasins Creed 2 in Steam Charts!!!'
Excerpt: "Silent Hunter 5, on the other hand, is likely to fare better since it has an established following who are more willing to put up with the DRM's requirements"

No amount of ROTFL smileys is sufficient to describe the hilarity of the situation, so just pretend there's a couple thousand of them:

[Coldcall]

Okay i repent my weakness!!! I gave in and bought the damn game. How many hail marys? :-)

But seriously i do feel a bit dirty for it but cant be helped.

[Sonarman]

Originally Posted by Piggy

All these numbers, console vs PC and the fact that I was in EB games yesterday seriously had hard time finding the little nook of a shelf for PC games just lends credit to my opinion.
Sad for an old PC gamer like myself...

Couldn't agree more it is the same in the UK where the main retailer GAME seems to be giving less and less space to the PC, I think these "bricks and mortar" retailers are determined to kill PC Gaming off entirely. I spoke to an assistant in the shop and she said the company were mainly only stocking the highest profile AAA PC titles like Call of Duty etc now, a sad state of affairs indeed.

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by Sonarman

Couldn't agree more it is the same in the UK where the main retailer GAME seems to be giving less and less space to the PC, I think these "bricks and mortar" retailers are determined to kill PC Gaming off entirely. I spoke to an assistant in the shop and she said the company were mainly only stocking the highest profile AAA PC titles like Call of Duty etc now, a sad state of affairs indeed.

Im not sure they're determined to kill PC gaming, its just most of their sales come from the younger crowd, which usually means consoles. Thats just the reality of the market, its sales driven and sales are in console games. Add in the digital downloads and shelf space for PC games is going to be gone entirely in the near future.

I did chuckle when I saw AC2 and SH5 on display, along with NTW. That was all the front (cover) facing shelf space they gave PC games, the rest were stacked like books in a library so you get a sore neck looking for a title... I swear I have more PC games on my shelf then they did!

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by John Channing

One way they are measured by the actual sales (a know number), compared to illegal downloads (as reported by torrent sites) and compared to the on-line players (also a know number).

If 4 million are consistently playing the pc version on-line vs. 270,000 paid purchases you pretty much have your facts there.

As I recall this is what happened with IL-2 by Maddox games.

JCC

yes, its pretty bad when you look at it. Those figures are pretty easy to find on the internet:

http://kotaku.com/5435876/report-the...-games-of-2009

http://kotaku.com/5426474/report-mod...00-in-november

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/1...re-2-pc-sales/

170,000 was november sales. Apparently, another 100,000 was sold through Steam. Total sales may be higher, but even if you double sales to say 500,000 and reduce piracy to 2,000,000, it is easy to see why piracy is killing the PC games market.

[Commie]

All these figures are a crock. The fact that The Witcher sold over 1.3 million copies despite being a single player PC only game from a small Polish developer, and easily pirated, and ultimately with a no DRM patch released shows that blaming piracy for lack of sales is just bull. If you sell crap then don't whine when it doesn't sell.

Check out torrent sites and see the traffic on those pirated games. You'll rarely find a game that has been downloaded more that a couple of hundred times, only the big so called AAA titles get into the thousands. Times that by 10 to get the majority of popular private and public game torrent sites and you still couldn't get anywhere near the ridiculous figure for piracy the companies quote.

Tired of all the PC gamer defeatism around here and other places. I mean who cares if the PC scene is 'dying' when most of the big games are pretty crap or just popcorn style entertainment? If I want to play I'll just get an eksbawks or pleystasiun! If EA, UBI and the rest leave for the consoles, it will just mean the the marginalised, innovative and interesting games released and ignored these days by small developers will come to the fore again. I'm sure Eastern European, German etc. developers will relish at the chance to be able to sell their games without being squeezed to the margins by the big boys. These are the regions that try to do things a little differently these days.

The PC will NEVER DIE! It will just be reclaimed by those that want serious, quality games.

[Sonarman]

It is pretty bad even for the smaller games like maritime business "Ports of call" it's creator Rolf Dieter Klein recently wrote on his forum....

"We have around 60% piracy of the platinum version and estimated 1000% of the boxed version (POC deluxe) - this killed the development for the boxed version as the distributor didn't get enough money out of the project."

[janh]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

yes, its pretty bad when you look at it. Those figures are pretty easy to find on the internet:

http://kotaku.com/5435876/report-the...-games-of-2009

http://kotaku.com/5426474/report-mod...00-in-november

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/1...re-2-pc-sales/

170,000 was november sales. Apparently, another 100,000 was sold through Steam. Total sales may be higher, but even if you double sales to say 500,000 and reduce piracy to 2,000,000, it is easy to see why piracy is killing the PC games market.

JC, I agree that there are apparent gaps. Even if only 100.000 (5%) or 200.000 (10%) of those piracy download would have converted into sales if customers where honest, or the pirating didn't happen, than this is a 20-40% sales lost based on the 270.000 to ca 500.000 total sales estimate. That number does sound pretty reasonable. It, however, is based on a number of assumptions that all need testing. I don't expect companies to have a much better estimate, since that would strengthen their claims the public.

My opinion on piracy is that it is a symptom, not a root cause. Companies have to work on customer moral, loyality and binding through service, open ears and support. They need to start selling customers what the want to buy, and not selling what the want to sell. And they need to get away from the "patch me if you can on the release date" strategy, but do more thorough testing before. I would assume people are less and less willing to pay since it lacks quality, novelty, is not predominandly what they look for, or that as a pirate you are simply better off than as a paying customer. As a customer, you don't have any added-value. They are also less willing to pay for additional content that should have been part of the original release as it was intrinsic part of previous releases already. I would say for a customer, this whole strategy does not quite add up. But that's just my two cents, and future will test that argument no matter what.

And the PC market was said to be dead already many times, BTW. And as long as there is demand, it won't die. But maybe we'll see changes, maybe back to smaller developer studios with less running costs and more specialized content. Like Madminute games, or Matrix. Maybe the consolidation strategy of major publishers just was the wrong approach for such a diverse and split up market. But who would anyway have expected that many products such as a submarine simulation would ever be of real attraction to the majority of casual gamers? I'd be surprised...

[Rip]

Originally Posted by Sonarman

It is pretty bad even for the smaller games like maritime business "Ports of call" it's creator Rolf Dieter Klein recently wrote on his forum....

"We have around 60% piracy of the platinum version and estimated 1000% of the boxed version (POC deluxe) - this killed the development for the boxed version as the distributor didn't get enough money out of the project."

There is a new version of POC? I loved that game on the Amiga, I would absolutely buy a version with updated graphics that would run under Win7!

Rip