Mass Effect 2 sold two million copies in its first week of release, while Baldur's Gate sold roughly two million copies since it was released 12 years ago. Not defending Bioware, or ME2, but it's not like developing for consoles has hurt Bioware none. They wouldn't be where they are now if they hadn't turned their focus from the PC platform.

Two Worlds 2 does this.

On the other hand, the market was far smaller twelve years ago, and sales always taper off as the game gets older. To accurately compare a recent game with an old game, you first have to compare the old game with other old games.

For example, between 1994 and 1999, Doom2 sold about one and a half million copies, which made it the third highest selling game in the period 1993-1999 (behind Myst [4.2] and Microsoft Flight Simulator [2.8])http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Sales. Today, that would be considered a complete failure for a high profile game.

I'm finding PC gaming to be a lot cheaper than console gaming at the moment. They outlay for a decent system isn't that much higher, and you tend not to be treated like a moron by devs. Also you can get games that have been out three years for under a tenner, so I don't feel much discrimination. Then again, the games I buy are usually PC only strategy and worldbuilding stuff, everything else goes on my PS3.

Terrible list. Doesn't even have Skyrim on it.

I noticed. lol Doesn't make the list bad. He'll probably feel vindicated when Beth announce in the middle of this year, that they're pushing the date to an early 2012 release.

They never turned their focus from PC platform mind you. How much they sold ME 2 matters not to my argument. My point is, the "excuse" of "turning away from PC to console for reason of piracy" is a piece of crap. I give credit of ME 2 success to their marketing department, and that "digital nudity" incident to ME 1, that led to vast publication to that game, but that's another story. Take into account of how robust PC AND console markets are comparing to 12 years ago, comparing those figures is partially biased. Piracy WAS a problem 10 years ago, but not anymore as people are far more educated to respect IP nowadays.

I wasn't into gaming when Baldur's Gate was released, but I'm pretty sure that the market then was a lot smaller and Bioware's marketing team a lot less professional.

And many, many people who buy games for consoles don't have a gaming rig at all. So supporting a rather flexible platform doesn't add all that much to the cost of producing the game, has only a minor impact on console sales, and has a side benefit of improving stability a little (whenever you port a piece of software, you notice at least a few bugs or bits of poor code that you might not have otherwise).

Overall, it smells more like like an empty excuse than a real reason.

Not sure if anyone brought this up yet, but Gears of War is an Xbox exclusive, not a PS3 exclusive. Gears of War 2 sold 5 million copies worldwide (obviously much higher than Crysis), and Gears of War 3 already has almost 200,000 Pre-Orders, despite being several months away from release. Mortal Kombat vs DCU wouldn't be a good console exclusive to cite either since most people consider the game to be terrible.

EDIT- I misread "franchise sales" for "Gears of War 2 sales." Sorry about that.

Well it's more from the pov of development than marketing strategy. The capital and time you need to put on console development is lower than PC. From marketing point of view? It baffles me how anyone believes iPad could replace PCs. I'm obviously not fit in marketing team.

If they stopped making PC games I guess I'd stop playing games... I don't own a console and never plan on getting one. I really find it hard to believe though that they would stop making PC games. There are way too many PC gamers and I think they with a bit more ingenuity they can come up with a way to cut down on piracy. Either way, piracy has plagued the video game and music industry from the beginning. The only thing making all the games for consoles is going to do is create more people trying to pirate console games. It's not going to stop piracy.

I have stopped playing PC games along time ago. One reason is I am sick and tired of "tweaking" my PC to get it to play. My other reason, is I am Sick and Tired of being treated as a criminal for a game I paid cash for, which I have a reciept for and purchased legally. I think 9 out of 10 times, I had no problem. Thing is, that 1 out of 10 times, that caused me a problem that I coudln't play a game that I legally bought, I quit PC gaming. It wasn't my fault, and I couldn't play the game. About a day or too later, I could play it, the thing is, I couldn't play a game, I paid $75 Canadian for, just pissed me off so much, knowing that people playing pirated games could play it but I couldn't.

So I have gone to the 360, put disk in, and play. No more problems, no more worries.

I just hate being treated like a criminal. I said it before, I will say it again, anyone who pirates a game is not a lost sale. They are a sale that never would have happenend. I like what someone said on this thread earlier, why spend so much money on someone who is never going to buy your game? That is one of the most stupitest things ever a company does. How do the shareholders let this go? Wasting money on people who never intended to buy thier game. All that money lost, it is quite funny.

You make a game for people to play, but you put in DRM so people can't play it, but they still do anyways. All that money lost. Stardock does it best. You want to play you play, no nothing running in the back ground. You want to update your game, you use Impulse and update your game that way.

I guess the new saying now is, you don't buy a game to play it on PC, all you do is buy a game to patch it up. So when ever you buy a PC game, all you are doing is buyin the privlage to patch it, not play it, since we never owned it in the first place.

There are enough people who pirated the games in order to get it for free who would have bought it to put in these counter-measures. If you tell someone about an easy and free way of getting a game that they were going to buy if you had not told them, then it is a lost sale. That doesn't mean all of the poeple who pirate games are lost sales, but there is certainly a large enough group.

There certainly is discrimination against PC gamers. Most console gamers don't see a point in PC gaming, or regard it as clumsy and without Xbox live attached. While in reality having your games, email, youtube, microsoft office/mac products all in one place is more handy than having separate function units.

The industry tends to gloss over PC gamers (exempla gratia, Red Dead Redemption not being on the computer, although existing on Xbox and PS3), while in fact PC gaming is a hotspot for new gaming (FNV is more common on PC)

Jesus Christ, Steam made over A BILLION in 2010. Can't tell me there's few of us, or that we're not a viable market.

Graphics improvement, mods/customization, console commands/debugger, and general tomfoolery is more common and easier on a PC.

In conclusion, haters gonna hate.

I have both Consoles and a Notebook

But I agree that most games are most released for Consoles rather than PC

And just few of them got good ports (DMC4 for example, who tweaked some graphics)

The reason of being in PC yet is because I love RTS and MMORPG, and RPG works better to me in a PC than a Console, and the Consoles, well, I use mostly to play with friends and parents.

Ps: Im glad that this thread wasnt derailed in a Console Vs. PC thread, yet

I would really like to see the figures on this. So how much does it cost to use DRM? Since it's a 3rd party service, I am assuming it's in the 100 000 of thousands of dollars. Lets say $100 000. If I am wrong please correct me.

So if these figures are correct, that means an extra 2000 people have to buy the game to cover the costs of DRM. I believe this is more, since some of that money goes to the stores who sell it, and some goes to the publisher. Is it really worth it? Again, is thier data to prove that DRM increases sales? I am sure it's the other way around. DRM encourages piracy.

I didn't know nothing about piracy until DRM was included in games and when something went wrong, I found out, I could have been playing the game for free instead of paying for it and not be able to play it. So again, 360 for me. I pay, I play. I could have went the pirate route, but I just choose to go to a different platform that is less frustrating in trying to play a game. I believe to support the developers, so they can make more games. At least I can still support them through the 360 now.

Does anyone have the figures, of how much money companies actually loose money to piracy, and how much money the company makes in extra sales due to DRM.

Again, we don't pay for games or for lisences anymore. We pay the right to patch up those games. Then again, here is a good question why people pirate games. You said " If you tell someone about an easy and free way of getting a game that they were going to buy if you had not told them, then it is a lost sale." How about if game companies actually made games that don't need to be patched anymore, people can say, Why should I PAY for a game, that will not be playable and is very buggy and I have to wait 3-6 months for a patch to fix the issues.

So it goes both ways. If companies can make games that don't need any fixing, and you get a full working product with no game breaking bugs, then MAKE it worth it to purchase. So many games are not worth paying for because of these bugs.

Yes there are people out there who will not buy anything and will always try to get things for free, but the Gaming industry brought this apon themselves with poor releases, buggy releases, and many games never being compledted. The release now, patch later mentalitly I believe, brought many people who use to pay for games into Piracy. The gaming industry has noone but themselves to blame.

People tend to forget PSP and xbox and the ps3 are quite victims too. Hell I think Black Ops was already being played two weeks before hand.

People forget that PC games get better stuff than console versions of the games. Mods and patches for example. Also i agree with the fishy wanderer.

I have no idea what gaming DRM solutions might cost to develop, but in the cases where the DRM is a third party product licensed to a game publisher for inclusion on retail discs, it would likely be similar to the copy protection services provided by companies like Macrovision for retail DVDs.

In the case of Macrovision, I can tell you from experience the cost is something like 5 -10 cents per disc, probably varies depending on how many discs.