Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

[Blaine]

... @@ did Goose Game really sell only 151k copies??? Based on how widespreaded the memes were, I legit expected it to do Cuphead's numbers. Same with Outer Wilds, the kind of sleeper hit indie that Youtubers won't shut up about so it blows up with the audience.

There are tens, perhaps even hundreds of millions of people who only watch other people play video games. They rarely, if ever, play games themselves.

 

[Silentstorm]

If I were an impoverished teenager, you can bet I'd pirated everything I could lay my eyes on. It's a no-brainer if you don't have the cash.

ftfy.

That's almost every PC gamer as a kid, sure, some did spare some money or had parents that could buy the games, a lot of kids though, remember buying pirated disks or CD's and trying to get over the copy protection, and then torrents later on.

I swear, just last year alone, i legit bought more games than i ever did as a kid, pretty sure i still have some blank looking CD's with only some game names written on them if i look hard enough...honestly, i swear developers must have hated kids and teen gamers and their pirating ways.

 

[Damned Registrations]

... @@ did Goose Game really sell only 151k copies??? Based on how widespreaded the memes were, I legit expected it to do Cuphead's numbers. Same with Outer Wilds, the kind of sleeper hit indie that Youtubers won't shut up about so it blows up with the audience.

There are tens, perhaps even hundreds of millions of people who only watch other people play video games. They rarely, if ever, play games themselves.

Aside from that, plenty of people who do play games and also watch streamers/youtubers saw the game, and there's no real reason to buy it once you've seen the entire game. To be honest, it'd be a pretty mediocre game to play alone as well, it's a spectator game, it's funny to watch and fun to do shit while people are watching.

 

[DalekFlay]

That's almost every PC gamer as a kid, sure, some did spare some money or had parents that could buy the games, a lot of kids though, remember buying pirated disks or CD's and trying to get over the copy protection, and then torrents later on.

I swear, just last year alone, i legit bought more games than i ever did as a kid, pretty sure i still have some blank looking CD's with only some game names written on them if i look hard enough...honestly, i swear developers must have hated kids and teen gamers and their pirating ways.

I honestly never pirated anything that I can recall, and my family was pretty average middle-class. Maybe it's because my mom was a gamer and got me into PC gaming, and since she always bought her games I bought mine. I'm sure it depends on the family and their situation. Kids pirating doesn't bother me though, nor does some Ukrainian villager who makes $200 a month. The ones that bother me are the asshats who easily could buy their games but don't, out of some bullshit justification.

 

[Silentstorm]

My parents were the kind to not buy many games, basically one per birthday so piracy was amazing, but when i started getting money and stuff like Steam became common, it just felt bad to pirate games.

More ease, options and ways to get games make it harder to justify piracy a little bit, aside from maybe expensive AAA games, but you quickly get reviews and tons of videos about those talking about how good they really are.

Of course, little kids and people who don't make a lot of money or live in countries where games tend to be much more expensive i don't care if they pirate or not.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

This "I don't like Fortnite so it's a failure and irrelevant" mindset some have is truly baffling.

Feels before reals.

Aside from that, plenty of people who do play games and also watch streamers/youtubers saw the game, and there's no real reason to buy it once you've seen the entire game. To be honest, it'd be a pretty mediocre game to play alone as well, it's a spectator game, it's funny to watch and fun to do shit while people are watching.

Are UGG playthroughs always the same thing? Watching someone you like playing a game seems to be good advertisement for you to want to play it yourself, instead of the opposite.

 

[V_K]

https://gamerant.com/epic-games-store-pc-sales-report/

Epic Games Store Is Hurting PC Game Sales, Says Report

The NPD Group is an American market research company that currently operates in 20 countries. Mat Piscatella, as the executive director of the company’s games division, focuses on video game market analytics and he recently had something surprising to say about PC digital game sales in 2019.

According to Piscatella, the PC digital distribution war set off by the Epic Games Store in 2019 resulted in lower overall consumer spending on digital PC games. Although game revenue overall increased by 2% in 2019, spending on PC digital content actually decreased. The reason for this unexpected decline in sales, said Piscatella, was that enhancing the consumer experience and reducing market confusion stopped being a priority for the two major PC game distribution platforms, Steam and the Epic Games Store.

When the Epic Games Store was announced at the end of 2018, its declared goal was to increase competition and therefore innovation in the PC digital distribution space. Epic’s CEO Tim Sweeney stated that the new platform’s strategy was to shake things up and effectively force Steam to change its stagnant practices and start giving developers a larger cut of profits.

To enforce this strategy, the Epic Games Store began to sign exclusivity deals with a number of game developers. Sweeney maintained that the only way to break the stranglehold that Steam had on the market was to build a large library of exclusive titles, thereby forcing players to purchase games from Epic’s store instead.

The great PC distribution platform wars of 2019 did not do consumer spending on PC content any favors btw. Priorities of enhancing consumer experience & choice and minimizing confusion were all deemphasized in 2019, contributing to lower overall consumer spend on PC content.
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) January 23, 2020

Despite protests by angry gamers and even boycotts of the new storefront, this tactic seemed to be generally successful. Sweeney announced that the Epic Games Store had made $680 million in revenue by the end of 2019, only one year after its launch, and that 108 million unique accounts had either purchased games or downloaded one of the free games offered by Epic.

In spite of the apparent success of the Epic Games Store, however, it seems that the shakeup ultimately hurt the PC digital game market. And it’s surely not all due entirely to Epic’s move onto the scene. Steam has for years been the dominant marketplace, and it was both convenient and reassuring for players to have the entirety of their gaming library in one place. But in recent years, many game publishers have released their own proprietary game launchers, such as Ubisoft’s Uplay, EA’s Origin, and Rockstar’s Launcher that went live in September 2019. Add to that other storefronts like GreenManGaming and GOG, and keeping track of owned games and how to play them can become overwhelming.

Epic’s plan to break Steam’s semi-monopoly on PC gaming and create healthy competition may have backfired. It seems that gamers have instead chosen to play their games on consoles or simply buy fewer games. Another explanation could be that an increasing number of games are persistently online, constantly updated, and never really end. Perhaps people aren’t spending as much money on games because they’re too busy playing Destiny 2, Fallout 76, Overwatch, and Fortnite.

Competition is good, they said. More money to the devs means healthier industry, they said.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

for all the people looking down on piracy: "buy oblivion, it's the best rpg ever" (quote every single journo).
for the law, THE LAW, you're even allowed TO KILL, if it's for your own defense. i'll defend my money with the same vigor.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

"Perhaps people aren’t spending as much money on games because they’re too busy playing Destiny 2, Fallout 76, Overwatch, and Fortnite."

Can't believe these people are paid to write this drivel. All 4 games are actually in huge decline in 2019 so this is ridiculous report.

 

[Archibald]

I'm not sure if overall point is wrong even if those games are in decline. I think that main point here is that there are more and more "play forever" online games released every year so you figure that at some point less and less people will be interested in buying many new games when they can still play their online games.

 

[Alphons]

"Perhaps people aren’t spending as much money on games because they’re too busy playing Destiny 2, Fallout 76, Overwatch, and Fortnite."

Can't believe these people are paid to write this drivel. All 4 games are actually in huge decline in 2019 so this is ridiculous report.

At least they didn't mention Anthem...

 

[fantadomat]

I'm not sure if overall point is wrong even if those games are in decline. I think that main point here is that there are more and more "play forever" online games released every year so you figure that at some point less and less people will be interested in buying many new games when they can still play their online games.

Different crowd.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

That 2% is fake number anyway. Did they disclose what the fuck is considered a "PC digital content" and what data they are comparing. Not knowing how much the biggest player in the market is selling is kind of big deal to make commentary on the PC market as a whole. It's like talking about electric cars market without knowing how Tesla is selling.

 

[DalekFlay]

I'm not sure if overall point is wrong even if those games are in decline. I think that main point here is that there are more and more "play forever" online games released every year so you figure that at some point less and less people will be interested in buying many new games when they can still play their online games.

Different crowd.

Not if the drop includes shit like the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare reboot. That's a game that would have normally sold an insane amount of copies, but would be highly impacted by the "play forever" success of games like Rainbow Six Siege and Fortnite.

 

[Paul_cz]

Possibly. I think MMORPGs probably have slightly more lasting power due to persistence.

My suspicion is Fortnite will be crushed by the next big fad/obsession, especially considering how young a lot of their fanbase are.

Time will tell.

Unfortunately Fortnite is now too big to fail. It is the same as with WoW and Minecraft and GTA5...these games just keep selling, year after year, as more and more people get roped in, due to the big ass mainstream momentum. Sure WoW maybe smaller now and in decline, but after 16 fucking years it better be.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

I think that main point here is that there are more and more "play forever" online games released every year so you figure that at some point less and less people will be interested in buying many new games when they can still play their online games.

Or isn't it connected with that 'free game every week' strategy? I know these titles are small or just older ones but still, there's little reason for many to buy another non-AAA title because it may appear as gift on Epic anytime.

If you joined Epic Store from the very beginning, you have like 40-50 free games now.

 

[passerby]

It's not connected with Epic at all. It's too small to have an impact, sales and bundles with dirt cheap, almost free games were available all the time, the likes of Modern Warfare also had lower than expected sales.
Very little innovative high quality releases this year and after several years of microtransactions some subset of sheeples managed to look back at the money spent and got bored of wasting money on them.
There was also no new fad of MMO, MOBA, Hero Shooter, Looter Shooter, Battle-Royale, etc. calliber for few years.

The only relevant metric to analyse, would be to compare console to PC ratio of mainstream exclusives like Metro Exodus, Borderlands 3, etc. to previous games B2, M:LL console to PC ratio, and multiply by how on average PC market share of simillar games grew last few years.
Using console sales as reference like that, would give a very rough estimate of how much Epic exclusivity hurt sales, practically only Metro and Borderlands would be relevant, because games available on xbox pass PC from the release day are heavily skewed by that.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

I wonder how long it will be before every single major franchise has its own DRM store... maybe even its very own console. Call of Duty Box, Elder Scrolls Pad, Assassin Creed Station, etc.

 

[Blaine]

I wonder how long it will be before every single major franchise has its own DRM store... maybe even its very own console. Call of Duty Box, Elder Scrolls Pad, Assassin Creed Station, etc.

The sad thing about all of this bickering is that it's largely irrelevant, because mobile games are still king of the mountain. PC games have made a huge comeback (in terms of market share vs. the combined market share of console games) over the course of the past decade, but this is a Pyrrhic victory, because they've done so via the stratospheric success of mass-appeal cash shop/F2P games such as League of Legends and Fortnite (and Fortnite's faddish predecessors). Additionally, consoles have lost a greater proportion of market share to the mobile industry.

For well over a decade, people argued about which MMORPG would be the "WoW killer," but WoW wasn't killed by another MMORPG—it was ultimately killed, in large part, by a Defense of the Ancients clone. How ironic for Blizzard. It's as though everyone had been betting for years on which weasel or mink would finally take down a legendary old hare in its dotage, but a freakishly large eagle swooped down and nabbed it instead.

My point is that PC games, and even console games, face a similar exterior threat. The real competition isn't PC vs. PC, or PC vs. console, but mobile games vs. everything else. It's been this way for a while now. Almost everyone on the planet has a smartphone on them at all times now, they nearly all tootle away on some game or another (ESPECIALLY industrialized Asians) on a daily basis, and the technology continues to inch forward, allowing yet more sophisticated games to run on the things.

 

[J_C]

I wonder how long it will be before every single major franchise has its own DRM store... maybe even its very own console. Call of Duty Box, Elder Scrolls Pad, Assassin Creed Station, etc.

The sad thing about all of this bickering is that it's largely irrelevant, because mobile games are still king of the mountain. PC games have made a huge comeback (in terms of market share vs. the combined market share of console games) over the course of the past decade, but this is a Pyrrhic victory, because they've done so via the stratospheric success of mass-appeal cash shop/F2P games such as League of Legends and Fortnite (and Fortnite's faddish predecessors). Additionally, consoles have lost a greater proportion of market share to the mobile industry.

For well over a decade, people argued about which MMORPG would be the "WoW killer," but WoW wasn't killed by another MMORPG—it was ultimately killed, in large part, by a Defense of the Ancients clone. How ironic for Blizzard. It's as though everyone had been betting for years on which weasel or mink would finally take down a legendary old hare in its dotage, but a freakishly large eagle swooped down and nabbed it instead.

My point is that PC games, and even console games, face a similar exterior threat. The real competition isn't PC vs. PC, or PC vs. console, but mobile games vs. everything else. It's been this way for a while now. Almost everyone on the planet has a smartphone on them at all times now, they nearly all tootle away on some game or another (ESPECIALLY industrialized Asians) on a daily basis, and the technology continues to inch forward, allowing yet more sophisticated games to run on the things.

Does it really matter? We know there there are lots of enthusiest and talented developers who make indie gems in all genres, and there will always be developers who prefer PC opposite to mobile. So what if the mainstream PC market will shrink, we will always have great games. The worst we can lose are the AAA games, and for the most part it is not that big of a loss.

 

[Paul_cz]

My point is that PC games, and even console games, face a similar exterior threat. The real competition isn't PC vs. PC, or PC vs. console, but mobile games vs. everything else. It's been this way for a while now. Almost everyone on the planet has a smartphone on them at all times now, they nearly all tootle away on some game or another (ESPECIALLY industrialized Asians) on a daily basis, and the technology continues to inch forward, allowing yet more sophisticated games to run on the things.

Mobile market is completely irrelevant. I mean sure, billions of people are playing shitty games on mobiles. And shitty developers are making them. Who cares? There are still plenty studios making PC and console games because that is what they want to make and it still makes enough money, and that ain't gonna change. PC and console is going to offer more power and higher-end experience than mobile for a long time. Simply due to physics of its larger space and wattage allowed. Maybe mobile games will look like Uncharted 4 in a couple years, but by then PC will have photorealistic raytraced stuff in full virtual reality.

And if one day mobiles will be powerful enough to run photorealistic stuff, then so what? At that point there is no reason not to play on them, if they can be connected to TV/Projector/VR like PC can.

 

[DalekFlay]

My point is that PC games, and even console games, face a similar exterior threat. The real competition isn't PC vs. PC, or PC vs. console, but mobile games vs. everything else.

This is an old clickbait panic idea that has pretty much zero merit. Everyone thought consoles were dead because of "mobile" and then the PS4 sold like 80 million units, and PC has been a revenue bonanza. Mobile gaming is an add-on, an addition to other gaming, not a replacement. The only actual threat people should be worried about is subscriptions/streaming.

 

[Jezal_k23]

Hell, I still remember how the PC itself was supposed to just die out as a platform because of the consoles back in the early 00s. Look how that turned out.

 

[Reinhardt]

Hell, I still remember how the PC itself was supposed to just die out as a platform because of the consoles back in the early 00s. Look how that turned out.

Maybe it should have?

 

[Black Angel]

The sad thing about all of this bickering is that it's largely irrelevant, because mobile games are still king of the mountain. PC games have made a huge comeback (in terms of market share vs. the combined market share of console games) over the course of the past decade, but this is a Pyrrhic victory, because they've done so via the stratospheric success of mass-appeal cash shop/F2P games such as League of Legends and Fortnite (and Fortnite's faddish predecessors). Additionally, consoles have lost a greater proportion of market share to the mobile industry.

For well over a decade, people argued about which MMORPG would be the "WoW killer," but WoW wasn't killed by another MMORPG—it was ultimately killed, in large part, by a Defense of the Ancients clone. How ironic for Blizzard. It's as though everyone had been betting for years on which weasel or mink would finally take down a legendary old hare in its dotage, but a freakishly large eagle swooped down and nabbed it instead.

My point is that PC games, and even console games, face a similar exterior threat. The real competition isn't PC vs. PC, or PC vs. console, but mobile games vs. everything else. It's been this way for a while now. Almost everyone on the planet has a smartphone on them at all times now, they nearly all tootle away on some game or another (ESPECIALLY industrialized Asians) on a daily basis, and the technology continues to inch forward, allowing yet more sophisticated games to run on the things.

The grain of truth in this is far too big to ignore, actually. Yeah, J_C, it ultimately doesn't matter since many great games are still coming out on PC, but that's only within a very small bubble like our Codex. But you can't just ignore how bloated mobile 'games' industry is getting. Just look at Raid: Shadow Legends ridiculous marketing gimmick.

And then there's a personal experience of mine, in this country. Only a bit more than a decade ago, when I was in high school, internet cafes and game centers are a YUGE thing in the whole country, especially the two cities I lived. My family moved out between few homes in these two adjacent cities, and my biggest childhood memories back then was playing on internet cafes and game centers with my friends. Ragnarok Online, Counter Strikes, localized regional MMOs whose name I completely forgot now, and obviously the DotA custom map for Warcraft 3, these are some games that dominated the PC game market in my country back in the day, if only we played them in internet cafes and game centers.

And then, within a mere decade these game centers starts closing AND at the same time EVERYONE and their mothers possessed mobile smartphones, and in the last two-three years mobile games like Mobile Legends, Arena of Valor, PUBG Mobile, etc etc starts getting released AND literally those EVERYONE in my country are playing those games. And in most recent times there are mobile releases for Ragnarok, Auto Chess and the likes, etc etc, and this year the very same friends whom I've played with in game centers years ago are anticipating the mobile release for League of Legends, after years of playing the PC version together.