1C Publishing and THQ on Steam

1C Publishing and THQ on Steam: "

Late news, but better late than never.


THQ CEO: "Our Steam business is going through the roof"


At Gamescom they've also said PC isn't getting the attention it deserves:

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/...ion-it-deser/1

This is a response from 1C Publishing director Davyd Styll to "Steam is killing PC market" claim by retailers:

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What is more surprising is the reaction of retail now. I have read it described as the reaction of a small child who threw his toy away because he no longer wanted it, but started screaming as soon as another child picked it up to play with. The metaphor works perfectly, especially in the light of the excuse I heard on numerous occasions. ‘There is no demand’ went the mantra. But is this really true? Not in our experience. I remember fondly the meeting in my office with a red-faced publisher who was explaining why their initial order from a major retailer for one of our new releases was just 30 units. At the time I had my browser open on the Steam product data page, which updates sales numbers every few minutes. “They have taken one unit for each of their top 30 stores” he told me. “There is just no demand from their customers”. I glanced at my screen, hit refresh and advised him: “In the time it’s taken you to tell me that there is no demand, Steam has sold 45 units”. Steam is selling decent numbers of our titles. They are really cool to work with, have a refreshing, knowledgeable developer mentality, and never bully or threaten their suppliers.

On the economics of retail vs. Steam:

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As a generalisation, retail would pay these guys a maximum of 40 per cent of what they made. So on a £29.99 game the publisher would receive about £12 (and on a sub-licensed deal, we would then only get about £4.25 of that) – minus return, write down and consignment costs. When would we get that money? Well, payment would be by the end of the quarter. So, let’s say £10 per unit sale goes to the publisher, £3 to the developer/sub-licensor, and it’s in your bank five months after the customer has paid out £30. Compare that to the digital model. On a £29.99 sale, the digital partner will pay the publisher – or in many cases direct to the developer – between 60 and 70 per cent, by the end of the month following the sale. Wow. To recap: on a sale over the counter today, we can have our £3 by the end of March, or on a digital sale, we can have £20 by Christmas. Remind me why we should choose to go with retail and decline to let Steam sell the game?

EA:

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Brown also claimed that Battlefield Bad Company 2 had generated around $30 million in digital sales. Also contributing significantly was "full game downloads... primarily of PC products. What we're starting to see, especially for first person shooter titles like Battlefield Bad Company 2 is a higher propensity for people to purchase the PC client digitally. This is an area where with our first person shooter games, our Sims franchise and others, we've been able to grow our digital business." Brown stated that $750 million of the company's current revenues derived from digital, up from $430 million two years ago. The PC was the major provider of this, with consoles and mobile roughly equal.

Sega:

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Publishing giant Sega has defended PC gaming, calling it a strong and vital market for the games industry. Physical retail sales of PC games are continuing to slide in 2010, but Sega’s UK MD John Clark says that isn’t a fair representation of the market – with digital sales now accounting for a large proportion of revenue. “The PC market is third in terms of its year-on-year performance with a decline of 26 per cent, but this doesn’t really reflect the full picture,” said Clark. “The PC digital download business is now a viable sector but somewhat invisible as it’s not yet covered by Chart-Track. The PC market overall is actually performing much better than is currently reported and remains a vital and strong sector to be involved in.”

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