Half Life 2 sales..

[Garric2]

I was reading an interview with Valve,

"About three million copies of Half-Life 2 have been sold so far. While Valve's primary development platform is still the PC, they are excited about the opportunity to sell the upcoming XBOX version. Once that ships, they will start thinking about ports to the upcoming consoles, starting with the XBOX 360."

For the #1 PC game ever, this comes as a hard blow to me. Only 3 million units. Compared to consoles, their top games like GTA sell around 12+ million units. I wouldn't be surprized if Half Life 3 was a PS3 or an XBOX360 title.

 

[AgentXen]

I wouldnt be surprized if gta6 was ps3 title.

 

[sinkoman]

To me, PC gaming seems to be more of an artform than console gaming. If you look at PC games, they're sleek and sophisticated, sexy, and don't require much gimmickry to be successful. On the PC, painting esque locals are the norm, while on consoles, everybody just wants a big city they can shoot stuff in.

Console gaming is a tad more ammaturish compared to PC games, yet console gaming requires less thinking and brainpower (getting a high end/good rig set up, then tweaking ingame settings for good performance) and such attracts the technologically inept and the younger people. PC gaming on the other hand, is an untaped artform, so i'm not surprised that HL2's sales are as low as they are.

I hope that PC gaming never gets as popular as console gaming. That'd just turn every games community into CS' community (childlike and stupid).

 

[Garric2]

To me, PC gaming seems to be more of an artform than console gaming. If you look at PC games, they're sleek and sophisticated, sexy, and don't require much gimmickry to be successful. On the PC, painting esque locals are the norm, while on consoles, everybody just wants a big city they can shoot stuff in.

Console gaming is a tad more ammaturish compared to PC games, yet console gaming requires less thinking and brainpower (getting a high end/good rig set up, then tweaking ingame settings for good performance) and such attracts the technologically inept and the younger people. PC gaming on the other hand, is an untaped artform, so i'm not surprised that HL2's sales are as low as they are.

I hope that PC gaming never gets as popular as console gaming. That'd just turn every games community into CS' community (childlike and stupid).

I'd rather have PC gaming big, console gaming dead. Right now, it's so small that at any moment it could die. Theres a huge cycle of over a hundred of games coming out for the PC . Most will flop, maybe 3 or 4 will break 1 million units sold (AoE3, FEAR, Quake 4, Oblivion?). That would mean PC gaming is dead for good.

 

[sinkoman]

I'd rather have PC gaming big, console gaming dead. Right now, it's so small that at any moment it could die. Theres a huge cycle of over a hundred of games coming out for the PC . Most will flop, maybe 3 or 4 will break 1 million units sold (AoE3, FEAR, Quake 4, Oblivion?). That would mean PC gaming is dead for good.

You don't seem to realize that, that's the beauty of PC gaming!

It's such a small market that it's untouched by these companies looking for nothing but profit, and it's allot easier for the little guys to succede. You see a lot of Indie developers around, producing awe inspiring titles like Half Life, without fear of being overcome by high profit, high profile companies like UbiSoft and Take 2 Interactive.

PC gaming has always been small, or as you consider it, "dead". I've never seen a point where high profile title after title has been pumped out, like they do with consoles. Consoles have a truckload of great games, and they come by the bargeload every month. PC gamers have a small collection of amazing games, and they come four or five every year.

I'm happy with PC gaming as it is now, and dread the day that console gaming dies.

 

[Garric2]

You sound like you're in denial. Just to let you know, most "indie" titles fail miserable, get pirated by millions of people, and cause those poor souls who spent years making the game go out of business. And if they do manage to succede, they will probably be confronted by a publisher that wants them to port the game to consoles or make their sequel on the console, which they will probably chose the console path (more money potential.) and never look back. It has happened a ton of times in the past.

 

[sinkoman]

You sound like you're in denial. Just to let you know, most "indie" titles fail miserable, get pirated by millions of people, and cause those poor souls who spent years making the game go out of business. And if they do manage to succede, they will probably be confronted by a publisher that wants them to port the game to consoles or make their sequel on the console, which they will probably chose the console path (more money potential.) and never look back. It has happened a ton of times in the past.

I'm not in denail.

And indie titles like Half Life 2 and Black and White flourish. What are you talking about, they get pirated by millions and fail misserably? You probably don't seem to understand that companies like VALVe and Lionhead are doing wonderfully, since they don't have the compettition the Console market has.

PC games are sleek and sophisticated, while console games are cartoonish and gimicky. I really hope that we never get the attention the console gamers do.

 

[nvrmor]

For the #1 PC game ever, this comes as a hard blow to me. Only 3 million units. Compared to consoles, their top games like GTA sell around 12+ million units. I wouldn't be surprized if Half Life 3 was a PS3 or an XBOX360 title.

well that 12 million for gta is from a platform with about 90 million consoles. are there 90 million pc's that can play hl2? are there 50 million? 20? something tells me the ratio for hl2 will be better.

 

[Sparta]

I fail to see how selling 3 million copies is a bad thing?

 

[Absinthe]

I fail to see how selling 3 million copies is a bad thing?

It only looks bad when juxtaposed with the sale of console titles. On its own, it's quite fine (in the case of HL2, we don't even know how many units were sold over Steam).

Of course, most people only look at the comparative figures and then spout the usual gloom and doom crap that's repeated... oh, about every year. Frankly, it's a load of hogwash and you should punch yourself in the kidneys if you buy into it. PC gaming is here to remain and those involved can still turn a good profit. If they couldn't, it would be abandoned.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

PC Gaming is not dying. True, it's not quite as innocent and sunny as sinkoman thinks. Lots of smaller, good game companies do go under, and alot of good game companies do wonderful, and alot of real bad game companies do good. But there is crap out there. And there are big, profit greedy companies who spit out products just to make money *cough EA Games *cough* Vivendi *cough*.
That's why it's important to not download PC games that are fresh and new thinking. Anything that EA Games have produced you're welcome to download as far as I'm concerned. It's only good for them.

 

[Top Secret]

Also take into account that steam eliminates the middle man. While obviously not all 3 million copies were sold via steam, Valve did have a higher profit margin per copy than Rockstar did for GTA.

 

[Chris D]

The technology in consoles never changes. That means the average shelf life for a console is five years.

The average shelf life for a PC gamer's computer is probably about 18 months before you have to buy some sort of upgrade. The PC game technology is always changing, that means there's much less of an audience when a game like Half-Life 2 comes out.

Also, it's a fact that there's many more console gamers than PC gamers anyway.

3 million is a great number. It's also about $150 million of revenue, and it also doesn't include the Steam sales.

 

[Solver]

3 millions sold in 10 months is a very solid figure, period. And I'm not even sure if that includes Steam sales or not.

Console games are, simply put, different. PC gaming isn't going to be dead. Heck, in the days of those old Sega consoles with those yellow cartridge thingies, everyone was saying PC gaming can't compete, and they still are. It's pointless, PC gaming is here and it is going to stay.

I don't have a console and am not planning to buy one. Firstly, I don't have extra money to throw away on a gaming piece of equipment. Computer is different, I need a computer anyway, and I need a pretty decent one. So games are an extra for it. Secondly, most titles that I love are those that are PC games, and PC games only.

For games that are available both on the PC and consoles... I am honestly shocked by how some people prefer the console version, even if they have the PC to run it. Take HL2. For the PC version, you can get all the mods out there, plus all those that will come out in later years, as well as custom maps, well, whatever. You don't get that for consoles.

BTW, as far as mods go, consider Counter-Strike. It came out quite a while after HL was released - I'm sure that there will be a HUGE mod with extreme popularity somewhere in late 2006.

 

[Garric2]

The technology in consoles never changes. That means the average shelf life for a console is five years.

The average shelf life for a PC gamer's computer is probably about 18 months before you have to buy some sort of upgrade. The PC game technology is always changing, that means there's much less of an audience when a game like Half-Life 2 comes out.

Also, it's a fact that there's many more console gamers than PC gamers anyway.

3 million is a great number. It's also about $150 million of revenue, and it also doesn't include the Steam sales.

It does include Steam sales. Retail sales were around 1.7 million, so about 1.3 million of Steam sales I'm thinking. Also, in CGW, it had a quote from Doug Lombardi saying "We expect Steam sales of Aftermath to account for 10-15% of total Aftermath sales.". Obviously Steam isn't the heavy hitter everyone thinks. The only way they would come up with the 10-15% number is if they based it on Half Life 2 retail vs Steam sales.

 

[Insano]

It does include Steam sales. Retail sales were around 1.7 million, so about 1.3 million of Steam sales I'm thinking. Also, in CGW, it had a quote from Doug Lombardi saying "We expect Steam sales of Aftermath to account for 10-15% of total Aftermath sales.". Obviously Steam isn't the heavy hitter everyone thinks. The only way they would come up with the 10-15% number is if they based it on Half Life 2 retail vs Steam sales.

Wow, you're just saying two opposite things.

First you say that HL2 sells 1,7 million retail and 1,3 trough Steam and then you say that Steam only gets about 10-15%.

And that 1,7 million retail was in the beginning of the year.

 

[Garric2]

Yes sorry. That 1.7 was at the start of the year. Total w/ steam right now its 3 million. Steam was probably 10-15%.

 

[Chris D]

It doesn't include Steam sales. They haven't announced any figures on this yet.

There were 1.7 million sales of the game just after Christmas... It's now nearly Christmas again so they've sold an additional 1.3 million in stores since then.

Also, by your logic... 15% of 1.7 million is 255,000. It does not include Steam sales in the 3 million figure.

EDIT: I'm repeating what Insane just said... I missed page 2 of the thread

 

[CptStern]

I'm willing to bet valve made more of a profit with HL2 then bungie did with Halo2 ...the profit margin for valve is almost 100% since the own the right to everything they make ..plus dont have to give a huge portion of it to publishers and the fact that the profits from HL funded HL2

 

[nvrmor]

Steam offers developers and publishers a direct distribution channel to over 5.5 million customers.

so if gabes 3mil statement is retail only, how many of the remaining 2.5mil would be from hl2 steam sales? 1.5mil? 2?

 

[Fonaki]

A new tought: In a few years gaming in Asia, and espesially Chania, will explode. I think computergames will sell alot more then. If they don't get console-freaks like Japan...

 

[mortiz]

Three million is still a lot of copies for a video game, it's very rare for a game to sell that many (even console).

Half-Life sold around 8 million copies, but that was primarily down to Counter-Strike. If someone develops a popular mod for Half-Life 2 (ok, Counter-Strike was a one-off really) then that number could still go up quite a lot.

 

[el Chi]

I wouldn't be surprized if Half Life 3 was a PS3 or an XBOX360 title.

I would be. Half Life is Valve's baby and I don't think they'd compromise it in that way.

 

[mortiz]

It's likely that Half-Life 3 will come out on the PS3 and/or XBox 360, but that doesn't mean they'll not develop it for the PC as a primary platform. They've dumped quite a lot of cash into STEAM, I doubt they're going to give up on it any time soon.

There is still a market there for PC games, a large market, as has been proven by Half-Life 2, The Sims 2 and World of Warcraft. In order to tap into that market these days however you have to make quality games, because hardcore gamers (which make up a large proportion of the PC market now) don't like crap.

 

[Beerdude26]

Lots of smaller, good game companies do go under

But Larian Studios will ALWAYS exist !
*Belgian proudness*

Also, HL2 is the best game ev0r. I think that roughly 90% of the world population would go absolutely mad if Valve went belly-up. I think that some people would even fund Valve to recover if it went bankrupt.

 

[kupocake]

IIRC, console games tend to sell well initially, but fall off quickly afterwards. Meanwhile, PC Games just steadily sell for a longer period of time. It's part of the hardware thing: people can't run the game, they wait and a few years later they can. Futhermore, HL2 looks set to be similar to HL1: mods shall suistain sales for an extended time. The oft-quoted fact about HL1 was that it's most successful year in terms of units shifted, was actually it's third year of being available.

 

[JoeCLawrence]

IIRC, console games tend to sell well initially, but fall off quickly afterwards. Meanwhile, PC Games just steadily sell for a longer period of time. It's part of the hardware thing: people can't run the game, they wait and a few years later they can. Futhermore, HL2 looks set to be similar to HL1: mods shall suistain sales for an extended time. The oft-quoted fact about HL1 was that it's most successful year in terms of units shifted, was actually it's third year of being available.

Very, very true. Both Diablo 2 and Starcraft Battlechests sell pretty well even today and those games are ancient. I think I've seen Half-Life packs wthin the last few years, too. Can any console games from the 90's claim that they've made the best sellers list in the past few years? No. Half-Life 2 will continue to sell for years. My dad didn't pick up Half-Life until over a year after it came out, and many people didn't get it until CS was getting popular.