At this point, it is really just a token effort on developers' part to put out physical discs for PC. Most of them REALLY don't want to do it anymore. They have less cost and overhead doing digital versions, and Steam takes less of the profits than a retailer does. (Retailers charge a "stocking fee" - plus there are the shipping costs to get the game to stores - which doesn't change no matter how much printing discs comes down.)

With pre-owned games hurting console sales, developers are eager for the all digital future, and they'll do everything they can to push it along.

Rather than complaining to developers, maybe lobby to get ISPs in America to give the same level of service other first world nations like Japan and South Korea enjoy. Monopolistic ISPs are the ones standing in the way of progress.

Yeah, which is kind of funny. I bought the disc version mostly to try and avoid that download rush, but it turns out that it probably would have been easier if I'd bought it digitally and preloaded it.

As it is, it looks like I'll be downloading from somewhat busy servers on the day. And this is with my good connection and fairly meaningless cap. It's the people who bought the disc version because of poor connections who are really going to be screwed.

Yeah. Valve isn't stupid. That's why every major release on Steam let's people that pre-ordered preload the game over a period of several days, so the servers don't get beat to death with a hammer when the game releases at midnight.

You have some data on this? Seems to me it costs the same buying it on Steam as buying the physical copy, if it was cheaper you would think that would benefit the consumer as well.

Regardless, if the poll on this site is any indication, about 50% of users are still purchasing physical copies of games, and I'm sure there are varying reasons for doing so, ranging from data caps, poor internet connection, to just being a collector. Game publishers could obviously put the games on Blu-Ray for all, and still push for a digital only future. Maybe one day the internet providers will catch up, until then there is no reason for punishing your fan base.

Very few PC games can be sold used, since they almost always require online authentication. Whether you have a disc or not, you've bought a license to use the software, and that license is generally non-transferable.

You know how commerce works, right? Game developers aren't going to make their games cheaper if they can keep them the same price as they've always been and just rake in more profit.

For a $60 game, typically the Retailer takes 20-30%. If on Console, Sony or Microsoft take 20%. 15% usually goes to marketing and producing materials like the box and game disc. The publisher keeps 30%, and often the developer only gets 15%.

Steam takes between 20-30%. The rest the developer and publisher keep. (Bethesda is essentially one and the same as it's publisher.)

So let's do math: (Numbers are approximate, but are based all Skyrim's total sales and gross take to date.)

For every console copy of Fallout 4 Bethesda sells, they make $27 profit.

For every Steam copy of Fallout 4 Bethesda sells, they make $42 profit.

With Skyrim, 86% of copies were sold on consoles. Assuming full retail price of $60 for comparison purposes, that means Bethesda made $540 million (roughly) profit off the console version. 14% of copies were sold on PC. Let's assume for comparison that all those were $60 Steam versions (not true, but let's go with it). That means Bethesda would have made roughly $137 million profit off of the PC sales.

You can see WHY Bethesda keeps developing for PC with those numbers.

Xbox - $319 million profit

Playstation - $146 million profit

PC - $137 million profit

And it is easy to see WHY Bethesda and other developers wish for the all digital future.

Hell, I remember seeing a post in the FONV forum maybe a year ago where a user was having issues getting his copy running.

Turns out he had bought it from a pawn shop, and the previous owner sold it off after regestering it on STEAM.

true, Gamestop no longer allows the reselling of PC games.. does not matter if its DRM free or not, or even if its never been opened.. if its for a PC, it can't be resold

most larger Pawnshops have banned the resale of computer Software since the mid 2000s, due to the legal ambiguity of the practice

Seems to me PCMasterRace is cutting it's own throat by accepting digital only content.
I learned my lesson with Half Life 2 taking 2 hours to verify online after each install.
Who cares how many discs something comes on? Twenty years ago half a dozen 3.4in. discs weren't uncommon.
I CAN'T get any internet other than my phone.
I might try to save up for a PS4 for FO4 but I refuse to go along with this whole got to phone home thing.

The FO Universe may be a bit prophetic having Ham radios as a common thing
...

Actualy those numbers you posted dont include steam sales at all, so here the steam Skyrim stats for you:

Release date: Nov 10, 2011
Score rank: 79% Userscore: 91% Metascore: 94%
Owners: 9,501,237 ± 77,791 2015-04-23(number isnt 100% currect due to a free game weekend that was aviilable)
Players in the last 2 weeks: 860,870 ± 23,813 (9.06%)
Players total: 9,083,347 ± 76,124 (95.6%)

So while the numbers isnt rly 100% exact its safe to say that steam sold over 9 milion copies of Skyrim.

Digital only content is the only reason some developers still make PC versions of games, rather than being console-only developers. See my post above.

Digital only sales have put the PC version of Skyrim almost as profitable as the Playstation version, despite selling drastically less copies.

The numbers I used were from April of this year, so they very well could have changed. The comparison remains valid though.

That's rather cheap on their part, I would be annoyed if I bought the physical version. Put a couple double-layer DVDs for something you ask 60$ for. Many MMOs are sold with 3-4 DVDs for the same price.

Actualy what i was trying to point out is that your 14% PC market share and the revenue numbers you derived from them dont include steam sales at all. Now ofcourse the steam sales i posted cant rly be used to properly calculate revenue as well since the info on how many of them went for what price is missing:)

But even without exact numbers you can easely calculate that the 9 million+ copies sold on steam easely push the digital relase revenues very high on the least and thus puting the total profit made from PC sales most likely on 1st place(even now normal skyrim edition costs 15euros on steam and legendary ones goes for 30euros)

Yes LWR. It makes total business sense. I accept that.
I'm in my late fifties. Played the original Pong when I was in high school.
Been a gamer ever since.

There's some things that I see happening that I just think are wrong. To ME. Period.
Not gonna' whine about it.
All is Change...
And I accept that.
But I won't be giving it my stamp of approval by joining in.

I'm saying how do you know steam only takes 20-30%?

And yeah, I know how commerce works, which pretty much means you know that they are screwing you by charging you same price for digital as physical, and for some reason you're all cool with it

Also on the PC version, Sony and Microsoft are not taking a cut, so they lose on only 45% of a physical PC copy(if your percentages are correct), so it is $33 profit, because as you pointed out there is no publisher as BGS and Beth all part of same, and so basically, Steam, again if your 20-30% is correct, saves Beth 9-12 bucks.

Physical copies on consoles isn't going to change any time soon, we saw what happened when Microsoft tried that "always online" thing(boom fail) and what we talking about is the physical copies of PC, why they not blu-ray or multiple discs.

Basically, you are saying they screwing us and not going blu-ray because it saves em 10 bucks, but imo how many more people would buy the game on PC if it had a limited download and they could get the majority of the game on a blu ray? If that came out to 100,000 more PC sales, then saving your 10 bucks becomes moot. 20% of the population of the USA is rural, and thus more than likely garbage internet, which is roughly 70 million people, and that is just the USA.

Heh I pay $120 for 65GB per month.

This svcks but I can work around it. I can't believe DL of 25GB+ is just standard these days...

I'm cool with it because I believe it is the main reason we still get PC versions of a lot of games. If it weren't for digital downloads priced the same as console physical copies, I believe very few developers would be bothering with the PC version of games.

Numerous hints and winks by various developers. They aren't allowed to disclose the exact terms of their deals with Valve, but it is a common accepted value for what Valve takes from each transaction on Steam.

I pay about the same for 30 gig cap. My only option. Basically I am going to use all my data for the month to download the game. Thankfully, I also getting the PS4 version so if I have to I can stop the download half way through and wait to play the PC version in December.

Well then we don't know. It could be 35%. Regardless, it saves them about 10 bucks, which again, if you sell more copies of your game, you will make way more money than saving the 10 bucks, you add to your fan base, which ends up selling more swag, which is even more profit.

We all know they want digital only, but that isn't going to happen in the next 20-30 years. I already was waiting for 13 years just to get the internet I have now, which is capped at 30 gigs a month. There is no reason they can't ship on blu-rays, it wouldn't damage their digital only sales, and it doesn't damage their "push" for digital only, which will only happen when the internet catches up to it anyway. If we all had blazing fast internet and no data caps, this is a non-issue, so who cares if digital only. In the meantime, no reason to screw over any consumers.

But yeah to get back to the topic i can ofcourse completly understand frustrations on the DL size for people that have limited internet acces, and according to the amount of posts inhere there semms to be quet a lot of you. Its a shame rly that nowdays you still have to suffer cuz of monthly dl caps. Btw i never even relaised those are still being used on anything else than mobile or satelite providers until seing so many people complain about it inhere, (i am from europe and here any sort of monthly dl cap on cable/dsl/fibre is more or less unheard off since people stoped using dialup modems years ago, as an example fibre 100MB/10MB line here costs around 30$ per month)

Oh boy. I guess Bethesda said to those who have weak Internet speeds and other issues to fudge off. Not even Ubisoft did this with Far Cry 4. To buy the ordinary physical copy of FO4 would be the most stupid ass move since I can download a patch about 5-7GB of data which I get the feeling this DVD will have.

If I need to download 75+% of the game then I will most likely pass. I feel like punching someone.

Digital downloads of PC versions of video games is not the reason we are getting a lot of video games sold on PC lately, at least not from AAA video game publishing companies and AAA video game development companies.

It only applies to indie video game developers and indie video game development companies, but we have had them since early 2000 with desura.com and other websites.

I can understand if you have to download about 1 GB if you have a physical copy to deal with piracy, but requiring to download over 15 GB is just insane. There is no point in having a physical copy if the vast majority of the game needs to be downloaded.

ugh, great. Good thing i can download around 6gb a day (less if anyone want to do anything else on the internet). Are dvds so expensive now that including putting the game across multiple dvds is unfeasible? Piracy doesn't really justify it as they can just make the disks contain the resoures and need the .exe downloaded. Oh well better start that preload now if i want to play it by the release day

The main problem with this strategy is of course that 60% of the world population doesn't have access to internet. Then there's the % that don't have access to good internet speeds or have to deal with data caps. To me, a physical copy should mean you have access to the entire game and shouldn't have to rely on having internet.... Especially since we don't even know how long the internet as we know it will last.