The Witcher 2 - Preview at N4G

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
Well, to take a multiplayer game as an example is kind of useless… yeah WOW is selling like crazy for the PC because it is hard to pirate. People want to take part of the crysis online play…. so they bought it.

But what single player AAA game sales well for PC ?

Doesn't really make much sense - given the VERY high rate of piracy for Crysis. If they all buy the game to play online - then why was the piracy rate so high?

I think it's pretty well established that the PC audience is primarily about singleplayer first and multiplayer second - even for a shooter like Crysis.

What about the Witcher? It sold well enough for them to create an enhanced version for a million dollar investment and make it available free of charge.

You're asking for more evidence? The problem is that developers are NOT making AAA PC exclusives - because they don't want to "risk it" - so we really don't have much evidence to point towards.

If they DID risk it, we wouldn't be having this discussion at all.

I could bring up Civilization and the Total War series - and I bet you'd still insist that multiplayer is the reason. If you don't see that those games generate appeal PRIMARILY because of their singleplayer aspects - then it's useless to debate.

I think it's obvious, though.

Piracy is the obvious and convenient scapegoat, and the passionate gamers are swallowing the line over and over - even when there's no evidence whatsoever. It's exactly the same with the music industry.

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
yeah WOW is selling like crazy for the PC because it is hard to pirate. People want to take part of the crysis online play…. so they bought it.

Today I looked UNDER the shelves of a local electronics chain shoppe … It turned out that they have quite a lot Cataclysm CEs still lying around, here !

Trying to calculte the number from my memory … I guess it was around 15 or so … And the shelves in the shops (not only this one !) are still full of standard Cataclysm boxes … Either they aren't selling not very good here, ot they ordered too much … Or both at the same time ?

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
You can't say that PC piracy is the reason console games sell better, unless you have proof of that - which we don't have. We can only speculate.

If you're responding to me, go back and find where I said "PC piracy is the reason console games sell better" or anything remotely like that.

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
But what single player AAA game sales well for PC ?

Half-life 2 (PC only): 6.5+ millions as of 2008 (retails number only).

The first problem is that more then ~50% of PC sales are digital and none of the digital distributors publish their numbers.

The second problem is that game publishers usually don't publish their numbers. Unless a game sold very well (above 2 millions in the first week).

The third problem is that game sales figures that you can find easily usually come from NDP. They are US only, don't have access to digital numbers and they mostly use box shipped to count sales.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
If you're responding to me, go back and find where I said "PC piracy is the reason console games sell better" or anything remotely like that.

I'm not responding to anyone specifically.

But it's good to know you don't believe that.

You post was straight after mine - easy mistake to make but my apologies.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
You post was straight after mine - easy mistake to make but my apologies.

I don't blame you for such a trivial misunderstanding - and no apology needed.