"A guided tour of your deepest fears
Designed to help you vision clear
We'll depart from here"

• 30May 09

  The Importance of Steam

  Steam is a great service which enables some truly amazing things for modern PC gaming. But recently certain tidbits of information made me think that Steam is much more important than that. Let's begin with the thing that spurred this blog entry - casually mentioned in the Unreal Tournament III Free Weekend article:

  During the previous Free Weekend of Unreal Tournament 3 Black on Steam, the game claimed the number one spot on the bestseller list, and simultaneous player numbers jumped by more than 2000%.

  Most of you know that Unreal Tournament III didn't set the charts on fire, in fact, it sold rather poorly on both the PS3, PC and subsequently the 360. In the console realm, a game's success or failure is determined by its launch. After that, it's all over. A resurrection is only possible on the PC - specifically, Steam. Sales increased with the game's Steam release with a lowered price and then they spiked monstrously after the recent Free Weekend. They will surely spike once again.

  A few months ago Edge ran a feature discussing Steam's ability to experiment with pricing models:

  Newell showed the results of a Left 4 Dead promotion Valve ran last weekend, which cut the price of the game in half to $25. The discount (and promise of new content for the game) rocketed sales of the game on Steam by 3,000 percent. "We sold more in revenue this last weekend than we did when we launched the product," says Newell.

  This phenomenon is not limited to Valve games. Over the holidays, Steam discounted third-party titles. Sales increased 300 percent and units-sold increased by 600 percent. Newell said that a weekend sale of one third-party title drove that game's sales up by 18,000 percent and units-sold increased 36,000 percent. It energized the user base, says Newell. When the sale ended, baseline sales were double what they were prior to the weekend discount.

  Discounting games does not only increase unit sales--it increases actual revenues. During the 16-day sale window over the holidays, third-parties were given a choice as to how severely they would discount their games. Those that discounted their games by 10 percent saw a 35% uptick in sales--that's dollars, not units. A 25 percent discount meant a 245 percent increase in sales. Dropping the price by 50 percent meant a sales increase of 320 percent. And a 75 percent decrease in the price point generated a 1,470 percent increase in sales.

  Steam could change the way games are distributed, marketed and priced - industry-wide. This is already happening in the PC realm. PC retail is, for all intents and purposes, dead. Almost every PC game is sold both digitally as well as at retail. Digitally distributed-only games such as Zeno Clash are becoming more common. Companies like Valve and Capcom have gone on record to say that over 50% of all PC revenue comes from digital distribution. Recently, EA has stated that their digital game distribution has almost doubled year-over-year to $80 million.

  History has shown that most trends originate on PC. Digital distribution is already here. We can only hope that Steam will be successful in changing the way games are priced as well.

  • Posted May 30, 2009 12:20 pm PT
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• 16Mar 09

  La Valse d'Amelie

  • Posted Mar 16, 2009 3:50 am PT
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• 13Mar 09

  Through My TV All My Problems Come

  I bought an HDTV. It happened at a later date than I expected it to (planned to get one with my 360), but better late than never. I got a 37'' Panasonic TX-37LX85P. It's native resolution is a standard 1366x768 pixels @ 100Hz. It's pretty huge and I'm very pleased with it so far. I only tried out a few games briefly on it yesterday and the difference is quite big. First off, this is my first widescreen TV and naturally everything looks a lot more cinematic. Second, it's BIG and I'm not sitting that far away from it at all (about 2-3m). Third, it's higher res which makes everything a lot crisper and clearer. It's funny actually because playing console games on an HDTV shows a bigger difference from PC games than an SDTV. Higher res naturally makes crappy backgrounds, muddy textures and jaggies a lot more visible than on an SDTV. Ironically, it's the higher resolutions that truly expose a console's weakness in comparison to a PC. It's not very important, really, but I couldn't help notice it. Overall, it's definitely a step up from my old 29'' Sony Trinitron CRT.

  

  • Posted Mar 13, 2009 11:17 am PT
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