1up’s Mark Whiting has written up a nice little story about how PC games only make up 14% of all the units sold in 2007, according to the NPD. So, what does all this mean? As Mark says, it means PC gaming has to change in order to survive. He also correctly points out that the NPD numbers do not cover sales of digitally distributed media–such as Valve’s Steam–so the reality is that the 14% of the NPD totals that PC gaming took up was solely retail box copies. It is actually quite difficult to tell what state PC gaming is really in.

However, one thing has been made remarkably clear this last year: piracy is hurting PC gaming…badly. Crysis has only sold 87,000 units to date, yet I remember hearing around the 1up offices that it had an absurd amount of seeds on various BitTorrent sites; Call of Duty 4 on PC has also suffered from lots of piracy.

PC gaming needs to change. Whether it is a change that focuses on making all games solely available through digital distribution, or by offering games for free and then selling additional content or advanced subscriptions–see the March 2008 GFW #16 to see an example of the latter–PC games have to find a way to increase their profit margin. Perhaps it could be done through making games less complex, and focusing on making games that need less powerful hardware…I guess I really don’t know.

I sincerely doubt that PC gaming is ever going to “die,” but I think that it needs a new direction to regain momentum.

Chufmoney