It's just as easy to pirate games no matter what version of DX someone is using. . .

Just in my family, 2 ppl have bought the PS3 (plus one Wii) and have NEVER bought any PS3/Wii game. Guess why?

It's annoying how people (even game devs) shows up the "piracy" statement as a poor excuse not to release quality PC content. They always overlook the fact that there's a console piracy industry, and so important that there are literally tons of modchips, firmware cracks / downgrades, and pirated copies running out there.

Just in my family, 2 ppl have bought the PS3 (plus one Wii) and have NEVER bought any PS3/Wii game. Guess why?

It's annoying how people (even game devs) shows up the "piracy" statement as a poor excuse not to release quality PC content. They always overlook the fact that there's a console piracy industry, and so important that there are literally tons of modchips, firmware cracks / downgrades, and pirated copies running out there.

While it is true that there is piracy on any platform, there is more capability to moderate on a closed system like the consoles online services. For instance, Bethesda can't lock someone out of the internet when they discover they have a pirated copy of one of their games.

screw pirates!

Neither can any company, if the game is single player. Cracks take good care of that.

Only chance of doing that, AFAIK, is with Multiplayer-exclusive games, or with the Multiplayer feature of a SP game.

I can't speak for PSN since I don't use it, but on XBL you can get caught with single player games, unless you never connect to the service.

Do you really think adding the full capabilities of DX11 will bring in more PC users?

I find it interesting you belive you know about the Bethesda sales better than those who work there.

No, they don't. Xbox 360 is powered by an IBM CPU, not an Intel CPU. That's at least one thing you wrote that is wrong.

I barely know anything about both (mostly because I don't care). I only know my brother plays what he wants in his PS3, without any issues (he even got Crysis 2 two days before my copy was unlocked on Steam...that bastard ). So some crack or way to do it must logically be involved.

Corrected.

EDIT: Why would a business "focus on smaller markets where sales are not as strong"? Isn't it more profitable to put effort where the money is?

Presume that, statistics (and potentially false ones at that) notwithstanding, it's the PC players who are Beth's most dependable market, simply because of mods (hardly a day goes by on the Oblivion forums without at least one post from somebody who mentions how he used to play the game on a console, but then got the PC version and discovered how wonderful mods are).

Presume that Beth is counting on PC players to buy the game anyway, since PC players know that even if it's garbage, it can be modded into playability (an assertion that's regularly made about Oblivion - "If it wasn't for mods.....").

Further, presume that they're thus focusing their attention on the potentially weaker console market, since console players are actually the ones more likely to decide not to buy the game after all if it turns out to be a disappointment.

And suddenly, all of their seemingly pro-console/anti-PC rhetoric all makes sense.

90% of Beth's customers are NOT console players. Were this true, Beth would be focusing on the PC and selling the game hard on PC to grow their install base. I say that as a business minor, knowing a fair deal about marketing and running a company. You do not grow a company by catering to your largest install base. You more or less disregard them and give them the bare minimum they will cope with. Why? So you can focus on smaller markets where sales are not as strong, such as consoles. http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2010/04/19/hear-that-knocking-sound-its-pc-gaming/ and including mmos and free-to-play dwarfs both combined, since the Wii is the most successful console console by a fair margin.

Secondly, various companies in the industry have repeatedly stated that the vast majority of their revenue comes from consoles. This is partly true. Console gaming represents 57% of gaming revenue globally. Wait, what? 57%? Split three ways? Yeah, no. PC Gaming takes up the entire other 43%. It is the absolute strongest platform. "PC gaming is limping." is a popular lie spread by the console companies and their partners, such as Epic, Bungie, etc. It is not too far of a throw to say that BGS is in on this, since they do give 360 exclusive DLC for a while.

Essentially, Intel's study shows that Todd's "90%" is patently untrue. Some games do sell poorly on PC compared to console, but BGS games have so many reasons to buy the PC versions that this cannot be the case. Pete backing him up on it is pretty much just as bad, because the actual numbers probably put total console sales ahead by a little, but with PC having a much larger share than either console alone. This post is essentially a demand for Todd to redact this statement or back his "90%" up with actual sale figures from Oblivion and Fallout 3, because that figure has done a lot of damage on these boards and is most likely very far from any kind of truth.

Also, before saying "Intel's making it up, they want PC gaming up," remember that Intel manufactures the CPU used in the Xbox 360, and most likely the next-gen Xbox as well.

Actually, it's apparently an IBM chip. Shows me not to double check. That said, only marketing would know the real figures, and Pete said, "I wouldn't be surprised if they were close to that." meaning that this statement did not come from actual figures, but is probably more from general assumptions about the industry. If Pete / Todd were speaking from real figures, Pete would have said something like, "Actually, they are close to that, console sales accounted for 8more than 80% of Fallout 3's sales."

And here I read somewhere it was a triple core Xeon. Fair's fair, removed.

Yeah, I'm not intimately familiar with any details either. As far as I know it's a similar process as on the PC, but they can check the legitimacy of the copy whenever you're on the network. I think that's why that Playstation key hack awhile back was such a big deal. It essentially took away Sony's ability to do that.

It always makes me mad when people pirate stuff. They're shooting themselves in the foot if they're stealing something they like, regardless of platform.

It seems like all the gripes about the PC being neglected are graphically related. It doesn't matter to me much since my computer only runs DX9 (WinXP), but I think it's worth mentioning that the best games that I've played in the past year have all been games from smaller publishers or independent studios with much smaller budgets compared to larger publishers games (they've all been PC games too, but that's besides the point).

I've cleaned out a lot of posts - flames and flamebait - from this thread.

Members who insult each other may find themselves banned!

As to accusing Bethesda of "lying" when referring to information that is often publicly available - for example I can tell you off the top of my head that on-launch PC sales figures for Fallout 3 accounted for slightly more than 15% of sales at GAME, according to the retailer's own published figures - well, it's pretty rude. Yes, that's one retailer, but other figures I've seen from other retailers suggest that the 90% figure "is not far off".

Speaking personally, I've spent the past 9 years working in a marketing department for a company that has grown rapidly every year I've been there, and while we do try not to neglect our smaller customers - just as Bethesda cater to PC players with the construction set - we do indeed focus most on our largest markets.

Well, actual figures! That's pretty much what we've been asking for. That is less sales than I would've expected though, unless digital accounts for a ton of Fallout 3's sales. Just out of curiosity - have any figures for how many copies of Fallout 3 actually check in to Games For Windows Live versus how many use FOSE or some other mod to disable it? That's one I'd love to see. Anyway, thank you for coming here with actual numbers, I respect that.

Bethesda already has a lock on the PC market with the most extensive modding capability in gaming history. No amount of PC exclusive tech is going to bring more people to the trough than that.

I've got no idea how many people use GfWL - that sort of information isn't publicly available. Personally speaking, I don't use FOSE and do use GfWL, if that helps (I only use minor tweaks/house mods in FO3).

As to the figures you requested, here's one site - probably more indicative than complete, as there are some gaps where figures aren't available (e.g. for individual platforms on the GOTY edition).

http://gamrreview.vgchartz.com/browse.php?name=fallout+3

That site gives a total of 6.86 million sales for Fallout 3, of which 3.43 million were on xbox 360, 2.59 million on PS3 and 0.84 million on PC. That would suggest 12.5% of sales for Fallout 3 were on PC.

On the other hand, according to that, the DLCs sold absolutely nothing.

probably more indicative than complete, as there are some gaps where figures aren't available

On the other hand, according to that, the DLCs sold absolutely nothing. Well, I bought them, so I can tell you first hand that that isn't true. The least damning conclusion you can get from that is that they don't count digital sales - in which case sales on PC are vastly underrepresented.

That's the problem with this entire issue - there are no accurate statistics available.

amyways you might want to look at this
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1186405-what-platform-will-you-get-skyrim-for/