How much the slow economy and piracy is really hurting the game industry is a never ending debate. American survey company NPD Group Inc. has published its statistics covering the sales of PC games in USA for the last year. The number have been criticized though as it is said to contain several serious flaws. The conclusions from the gathered numbers was that PC games worth $701 million had been sold in the USA in 2008, which is a decrease by 15% compared to 2007, which in turn was down 6% from 2006. Is the PC game industry caught in a downward spiral and is video games the only profitable solution for the future?
Most of the criticism comes from the material NDP has used. The survey is based on sales of games in stores and over the Internet with a physical delivery. In other words, digital distribution services, which are increasing in popularity, like Steam are not part of the survey. At the same time they have not considered the monthly rates of online-based games, such as a certain game from Blizzard, but only those where you pay a one-time fee to get the game. This of course puts a weird angle on the money a game brings in. No calculations have been made for the many web browser games, which are often financed by so called micro transactions.
Thus these numbers only reflect the sales in stores and mail order and can’t really be used to draw any conclusions other than that people are moving away from buying actual copies of the game, perhaps in favor of the previously mentioned digital distribution.
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