So apparently arstechnica.com mined Steam's data.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/introducing-steam-gauge-ars-reveals-steams-most-popular-games/

I knew there were over 170+ million Steam accounts.

I knew the PC version of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim sold more than 6+ million copies.

781 million video games registered to various accounts? Incredible. 493 million titles left unloved and alone That means PC gaming is incredibly huge. Nvidia at PAX East said they have stats to back it up and that in 2014 PC gaming should be a $24 billion dollar (USD) a year revenue.

I read an ineteresting opinion article in the local games magazine, that consoles might be the ones that are dying due to losing hardcoe players to PC and casual players to mobile devices.

Regardless, PC gaming is going as strong as ever, and is not disappearing... well, ever probably

And nearly 6 million copies of Skyrim sold on Steam? How's that "PC sales are ten percent of total" quote looking now

I'm surprised that Civ V has sold almost as well as Skyrim on the PC.

I forgot to mention. Those stats are for all video games that started to track play time from 2009 when Steam introduced how many hours you played. If they had stats before 2009 it would be even bigger.

Cue Steam users wailing about how data miners accessing their public page is an invasion of their privacy.

Is the data from consoles as accessible as this? It would be interesting to see an actual comparison and not just peoples opinions and guesses.

I have no idea how accessible data is for the consoles. Someone who is interested in the consoles should look.

I did a quick google search for the 360 and got two radically different answers. One site said 384 million games sold, another said 732 million games sold.

And the new consoles aren't really slowing down. The Xbox One launch was more successful than the Xbox 360 and it was the worse of the two at launch. I imagine the PS4 launch sales blow the PS3 out of the water. With Titanfall the Xbox One has really started get a foothold.

The 781 million PC versions of video games sold is for Steam only and only counted since 2009. If they counted ones from before 2009 it would be bigger. Also before 2009 the physical boxed versions of the PC versions of video games sold to brick and mortar retailer stores world wide had no Steam requirement on them. So if you also add those up as well it would be way bigger probably in the 1+ billion copies sold maybe 900 million copies sold.

Yes this is a little known business secret. There are two types of sales. High spike sales and long term sales. The majority of "AAA" publishers focus on big investments, high risk, and hopefully high payoff style of game sales. They want it to sell as much as possible in two weeks, and if it doesn't it's a failure and never given a sequel again. Unless its sales fall under borderline in which case it might get one more chance.

However some recent studies have revealed a new factor in sales of video games "stick" factor. Some video games have high sales retention past two weeks. Some can sell very well over a very long period of time. However the AAA hotshots think this is invalid method of running a company. If your not making as much money as possible this instant your company is dying. Many of those old "AAA" companies are now dead, and many more are dying. A few are starting to to realize.

A third factor is that games don't need to be super big budget insanity "AAA" all the time. There is a huge market for moderate hits, and because the aaa developers don't make them a bunch of upstarts are now changing the playing field by making games with a smaller budget and more unique setting. Which in turn allows them to make bigger games as they find more success.

You'll find many of the best PC games have high "stick" factor in their sales. Which is the highest factor contributing to steams success other than its sales, and community. I'm not surprised at all. A lot of these companies who figured it out wouldn't want their secret of success getting out. While the old dinosaurs are dumb, blind, and stupid they do pack a mighty wallop if they ever caught on. Look at EA, an old dino that can adapt. Sickening as it is to say it has successfully transitioned. Now can they make it last? Perhaps, they loath the change. They didn't embrace their change but had to do it because necessity dictated they had to because of Steams growing rivalry. Now they run Origin which they pretty much have to do or else it could mean long term disaster.

As more services like Steam appear the majority of users will most likely congregate around the largest, oldest, and most successful services. EA got in on the game just in time. Things like uplay will probably not see so much success since they don't offer anything the other two don't. This last part is speculation on my part given everything I have learned.

This is why we PC gamers get all kinds of weird video games released for sale on PC like Airport Simulator, Goat Simulator, Train Simulator, etc Because they sell well enough to earn a profit on PC.

However all of these PC versions of video games getting sold exclusively on Steam is making me sad with each passing day. I want more PC versions of video games to be sold on gog.com as well since I have both a gog.com account and Steam account. As well as selling a 100% Digital Rights Management (DRM) free physical boxed version of PC versions of video games to brick and mortar retailer stores.

I really hope ZeniMax Media Inc. and Bethesda Softworks see the huge success of selling PC versions of video games on PC and follows in CD Projekt RED's foot steps and develops their video games that they publish for PC first. Getting very irritated by console ports that are broken, have 720p textures, lack v-sync, can't do 60FPS, etc.

Doesn't anyone else feel the same way as I do?

The Skyrim sales are interesting. From what I had gathered, when the game reached the 20 million landmark Bethesda stated that about 10% of all sales were on PC, but that would put it at 2 million which is a lot less.

Of course, then there's the statistic about how many games on Steam are never played or played less than an hour. Lots of "sales" happen because of 1) bundles, and 2) "Wow! What a bargain! Hopefully I'll have time to play that eventually!"

The PC version of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim certainly did not sell only 2 million copies. It sold 2.4 million physical boxed copies according to vgchartz.com. Now vgchartz.com says 3.42 million copies sold. Todd Howard said like a month ago that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim sold by a large large number on PC. On Steam The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim sold over 2.4 million copies or 2.5 million copies by January or February 2012. So yeah it sold over 6+ million copies.

Cue Steam haters noting that such privacy invasions are why they refuse to use Steam.

Bundles and bargains don't count as sales? I'm definitely guilty of buying games I don't have time to play because of sales, Humble Bundles, etc., but from the industry's perspective does that make me less of an interested party?