Jason Liang
Arcane
Issue #19 8/1990
Yes, this was WAY before the internet so you couldn't pirate anything, and game makers could charge a premium. Nowadays if a game is too expensive, people will still play it but no one will buy it...
You have to remember, in 1989 computer gaming was still very niche. Most American households didn't even have a personal computer. This was several years before Myst, and Myst was one of the first games families bought computers to play (and get online. Myst came at the right moment when the internet was starting to catch on). In 1989 if your house had a computer, it's primary use wasn't for gaming. You bought a NES for $150 to play games. You didn't buy a personal computer for $2000 to play games.
So, hopefully, we're going to see this magazine cover the foundations of modern computer gaming as it is being laid, month by month- Prince of Persia. Loom. Monkey Island. Wing Commander. Star Control 2. Wolfenstein 3D. CotDS.
You have to remember, in 1989 computer gaming was still very niche. Most American households didn't even have a personal computer.
Meanwhile almost every Western-European home had at least a computer in the house. It could be a PC, but odds were more likely that it was a Sinclair, Commodore or Atari computer. Consoles didn't start to catch on in Europe until 1988 or so.
wikipedia said:SSI sold 264,536 copies of Pool of Radiance for computers in North America, three times that of Heroes of the Lance, an AD&D-licensed action game SSI also released that year. It became by far the most successful game in the company's history; even the hint book outsold any earlier SSI game.
wikipedia said:Wizardry shipped in September 1981 and almost immediately became a hit, the most popular Apple II game of the year. By 30 June 1982 it had sold 24,000 copies, making it one of the best-selling computer RPGs in North America up until that time. In comparison, Temple of Apshai (1979) had sold 30,000 copies and Ultima (1981) sold 20,000 copies at the time.[12] Electronic Games described Wizardry in 1983 as "without a doubt, the most popular fantasy adventure game for the Apple II at the present time." Based on sales and market-share data, Video magazine listed the game tenth on its list of best selling video games in February 1985, and ninth on the best seller list in March 1985, with II Computing listing Wizardry third on its list of top Apple II games as of October–November 1985.
wikipedia said:Despite a positive critical reception, the game was initially a commercial failure in North America, where it had sold only 7,000 units each on the Apple II and IBM PC platforms by July 1990. It was when the game was released in Japan and Europe that year that it became a commercial success. In July 1990, the NEC PC-9801 version sold 10,000 units as soon as it was released in Japan. It was then ported to various different home computers and video game consoles, eventually selling 2 million units worldwide by the time its sequel Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame (1993) was in production.
wikipedia said:SimCity was very successful, selling one million copies by late 1992.
wikipedia said:King's Quest V was voted "Best Multimedia Fantasy/Adventure Game" by readers of MPC World. It originally sold 500,000 copies, making it the bestselling computer game for the next five years.
I'm pretty sure that what accounts for this difference was the North American gaming crash in the mid-80's. Which I had never even heard of until yesterday, re-reading some of the earlier articles. But yeah, I remember when I moved to the US in 1985, and was living with my cousins, they did have an Atari system. But they didn't play it, it was just tossed in the closet. That gaming crash made a huge cultural and economic difference in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983
$3.2 billion industry -> $100 million in two years, holy shit.
Computer gaming did not become mainstream popular again in the US until Myst. Myst was the first computer game after the crash that became a mainstream success.