Casual Girl Gamer - A blog about casual gaming Digital distribution sales 90% of PC game publisher's revenue - Ecommerce CEO of Paradox Interactive, Fredrik Wester, told PC Gamer "We don't really need retailers any more". Why such a bold statement? Because a whopping 90% of his company's revenue now comes from titles sold on digital distribution platforms such as Steam and Gamersgate. As well as the usual benefits of digital distribution such as lack of packaging, shipping, and vying for the approval of retailers, Wester told PC Gamer it also allows game developers more creative freedom. Retailers, he says, are to blame for the endless stream of game sequels. "People complain to publishers that there are only sequels on the market, but that's because retailers want to see sequels, because they can do their chart diagrams for how things sell and things like that," said Wester. So, has digital distribution "saved" PC gaming from not only from creative strangulation but also declining retail sales? Tags: digital distribution, online gaming, PC gaming inShare
You Are Not So Smart Report: Record PC Games Sales in 2011 The PC Gaming Alliance was originally announced at the 2008 Game Developer's Conference. Four years later the "non-profit, industry-led consortium," whose members include staff from AMD, Intel, Epic Games, Capcom, Razer and more, is still putting out reports. Their take on PC gaming? It's alive, it's well and it's setting records for sales. Per the press release put out today by the organization, PC game sales have risen globally by 15% year-over-year in 2011, reaching a record $18.6 billion. According to the PC Gaming Alliance, a big reason the PC continues to grow is the rise of the free-to-play market. The biggest players also include Asian markets, such as Tencent, who purchased developer Riot Games for $400 million last year. The report also cites strong sales for big releases like Skyrim, Battlefield 3 and others, with a large part of the sales coming via digital distribution channels. The Alliance has high hopes for the PC business in the future.
Food Timeline: food history & vintage recipes Retail vs Digital sales–An Infographic | Lazygamer .:: The Worlds Best Video Game News ::. | General News We’ve been told for the last couple of years that digital is the way of the future and that retail sales of games are all but down and out, but how true is that in 2012? Well thanks to statista and the ESA we now have an idea of how it looks in the US market at least. Taking into account the US has a solid Internet penetration, not quite as good as some Asian countries but still better than average. We can presume South Africa is on a similar trajectory if still a few years behind thanks to Telkom and their limited ADSL offerings. So the big talking points on this one that I saw are that obviously physical retail copies are still far and away the dominant form and while digital is obviously growing it is still a long way behind, and in fact if you look at the *’s it’s even further away than it looks. Take a look at the caveat under the digital sales compared to retail sales (includes add on content and social net work gaming). What do you read into this infographic?
Some paradoxes - an anthology 91% of Mobile Game Revenue is Spent on In-App Purchases at Slide To Play Research firm Newzoo released some interesting numbers from March 2012. One of the most fascinating tidbits was that American mobile gamers are incredibly fond of in-app purchases. Of the mobile-game revenue in America accounted for by Newzoo, 91 percent was in-app purchases as opposed to money spent buying games. Check out some additional details below. For both Android and iOS devices, the majority of money is not spent on downloading games but within the games: an astonishing 91% for Android and 91% for iOS games. Even though this is a small sample that only covers one month out of the year, the numbers are astonishingly high. The one caveat is that Newzoo did not include ad revenue. These figures also made me think about my own purchasing habits. [Via: Newzoo]
Urban Dictionary, June 6: chat blue balls Developers — Don’t Bet on Mobile Ad Revenue to Pay the Bills Despite a successful launch of an ad-supported version of Angry Birds on Android, don’t expect the ad revenue in mobile games to be the major driver of sales. That’s the upshot of a new Juniper Research report on mobile ad spending. While ad revenue in mobile games is expected to rise tenfold from $87 million in 2010 to $894 million in 2015, it will nonetheless still be dwarfed by people spending on downloads and in-app purchases. Juniper said that by 2015, game download and in-game purchase revenue will be ten times greater than ad spending. So while ad revenue can pay the bills for a break-out hit like Angry Birds, for most gaming apps, the best way to make money is still getting people to buy the app or getting them to purchase something within the app. We’ve talked about how the freemium model is increasingly the way to go for app developers. Mobile analytics firm Flurry reported a few months ago that virtual goods sales have grown to 4 times that of mobile ad spending on iOS.