Steam Boss Blasts Idea of Digital Sales Charts

[Jumplion]

"If you look back at the way retail charts have been made," he said. "They have been proven to be telling an inaccurate story ... They apparently had shown how the PC format was dying when it was actually thriving."

That's because they weren't giving them that information.

Earlier in time, before the rise of Digital Distribution, I can understand. But nobody on the PC side, including you Mr. STEAM, is giving them the information to prove otherwise. So when you see that PC sales have been declining, you're seeing the physical sales go down. It's a two-part commitment, dude, they need the data and you supply it.

I bet if you showed the number of PC games sold overall online on STEAM, with all the sales, I wouldn't be surprised if LIVE or PSN went a similar route to rake in the dough.

I don't really get what this guy is saying, while publishers/developers shouldn't rely on charts to tell them everything, it does give a sense of who's doing what and how well. Knowledge is power, after all.

 

[Albino Boo]

Its way protecting the perceived value of the company and a way of hiding the margins they charge on steam. If sale digital sales figures were published it wouldn't take too much working out what margins rivals are charged by steam. If a competitor is getting a better deal, steam would be under pressure to cut their margins to lowest deal offered to the big publishers. The cost of this would be passed on to the indie and smaller publishers to maintain the same level of profitably.

 

[Pat8u]

Now can I plead with console owners once again to stfu?

Im A console owner and I play Pc games not all of us hate the PC

 

[Veloxe]

Hopefully the bean counters don't get too uppity that Valve won't be letting them count their beans.

 

[TheYak]

It seems to me that his problem is with how people inaccurately use the information rather than the information itself. In which case he should be promoting how to more holistically utilize it instead of telling everyone it shouldn't be utilized. The situation of PC games thriving despite the contrary being extrapolated is a perfect basis for such a study.

 

[Anjel]

I agree. I read reviews if I am unsure of buying a game - I don't check sales data. Example; I have never purchased a Call of Duty game, yet last Christmas I played a family members and was glad that I didn't buy it "just because" everyone else did.

Developers need to listen to what consumers are saying, not what they are paying.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Here is my problem with charts. Game A sells 10 million units. Company X sees this and would like their own creation, Game B to do just as well. But how do you do that? What is it about Game A that made it so popular? Better copy everything that Game A did just to be sure.

And so it goes for Companies Q, R, S & T. Welcome to "like God of War, but..."

 

[Kyogissun]

"If you look back at the way retail charts have been made," he said. "They have been proven to be telling an inaccurate story ... They apparently had shown how the PC format was dying when it was actually thriving."

Now can I plead with console owners once again to stfu?

Gotta love biased sweeping comments towards a whole community made by one person from another community. You act as if only the console crowd says that and that they all believe it. It's completely impossible for someone to be a fan of both console and PC gaming, isn't it?

'Scuse me while I go fire up my copy of HL2 on my PC, then play some DA2 on my Xbox, then some Minecraft or Titan Quest on my PC follow by a little Pixel Junk Shooter 2.

Ah, never change escapist users, never change...

 

[Weaver]

As a gamer I want companies to see how well the PC sells as a platform because we're currently getting the dick end of the stick and I feel the sales numbers are likely surprising.

 

[Hoplon]

I agree with Mr Holtman, while a company needs to know which strategies where affective and how well they did with a given release, knowing what everyone else did is kind of irrelevant, it just engenders situations like the MMO market, where instead of concentrating on how well their title is doing, player retention etc, they are looking at WoW going "why aren't we doing that?"

All it brings us is bad clones of games that weren't that great to start with.

 

[Baggie]

Sorry, why can't we do both? I mean PC gaming is getting a bad rep because we aren't as high on charts, which is because you guys won't release the numbers. Give the companies a reason to concentrate on what PC is doing and you'll make your platform thrive.

 

[drakythe]

I'm a little confused as to how accurate sales numbers would create a "me too" market. Currently Steam offers users the list of top 10 best sellers, does that not lead to a "me too" market? The Crysis 2 guys know how many sales they are getting, and they know their in 3rd

The top sellers are there: http://store.steampowered.com/

Portal 2 is obviously number 1 at the moment. I'm surprised crysis 2 is still holding on at number 3 though.

But Portal 2 is number 1 (is anybody shocked by this?) So the Crysis 2 guys know that Portal is selling >X number of copies, where X would be the known quantity of Crysis 2 units sold.

This holds true for 9 out of the 10 companies on the top 10 list (okay, slightly less since 3 of the top 10 games are Valve games) and a lot of those companies like to brag about their overall numbers, meaning that analysts can usually provide a pretty good picture of how well Steam titles are selling.

Then of course, I could be totally wrong, and the analysts could be totally wrong because they aren't getting accurate Data because Steam is withholding it and thinks Data is bad since Data is clearly inaccurate... Okay yeah that was sarcastic, I do enjoy the irony though, as already pointed out "We don't think sales data is useful, since it points to the PC market dying, but our data, you know that data that we're withholding? shows that the PC market is thriving"

 

[Bobbity]

I'm glad he's taking that stance, actually. Sales charts are part of the reason that we see so many uncreative games; because people just go with what they know sells. It'd be nice if physical game vendors took the same approach.

 

[twm1709]

I've always wondered just how many copies of Steam's top selling games were sold to be in that TOP 10 list.
For example, Modern Warfare 2 sat at the top of the steam sales list for almost a year without getting any kind of discount, so just how many of them were sold daily/yearly to achieve that? I'm guessing this data would give a much needed improvement to the pc community's image.

 

[Wandrecanada]

I'm pretty sure he's discussing the bias inherent in sales charts. Things like Nielsen ratings or NPD numbers that don't necessarily take into account all forms of product sales or audience coverage. You'd also have to take into account non public companies who don't need to share accurate information.

He's probably right that it's a waste of time to support an inaccurate publication as it would likely do as much harm as good.

 

[Jaeger_CDN]

"If you look back at the way retail charts have been made," he said. "They have been proven to be telling an inaccurate story ... They apparently had shown how the PC format was dying when it was actually thriving."

That's because they weren't giving them that information.

Earlier in time, before the rise of Digital Distribution, I can understand. But nobody on the PC side, including you Mr. STEAM, is giving them the information to prove otherwise. So when you see that PC sales have been declining, you're seeing the physical sales go down. It's a two-part commitment, dude, they need the data and you supply it.

Same thing that came to my mind when I read it.

Another reason they won't release digital sales data, to show that brick and mortar stores have become basically obsolete and thus justify the high cost of PC games. Walk in to most stores and PC games are maybe a shelf and a half relegated to the back wall next to the 300 copies of Barbie's Princess Magic they have. As for the pricing, back in the 80's and 90's when physical copies were the only choice you actually got a colour printed manual and other goodies in a box (example would be any of the Ultima series which generally included a cloth map, some little pot metal trinket, along with an extensive manual). With digital delivery, the only cost other than development and advertising, is bandwidth which can be had for pennies/GB. Where is my discount for buying digital and saving the publisher the costs of shipping/handling, a B&W glossy manual (or if they're feeling cheap an on-disk PDF file) and the CD/DVD which no longer comes in a jewel case but a cardboard sleeve?

 

[Bretty]

Snip

I get what you are saying, unfortunately your case doesn't match what he is saying.

There was a day when publishers only released games based on their figures. Developers would be bought and traded for these figures.

That meant that instead of product evolution through innovation it was pushed forward by pure numbers alone.

And not just this, @wandrecanada (mentioned above), sales numbers do not tell you the whole story at all. Market coverage, new customer #s, repeat buyers and avg. time played show a dev company so much more. So instead of the funding of companies in growth, making good games, companies that were only making money (1 hit wonders etc) were getting paid and surviving.

IMO anyway

 

[Bobzer77]

Now can I plead with console owners once again to stfu?

Im A console owner and I play Pc games not all of us hate the PC

"If you look back at the way retail charts have been made," he said. "They have been proven to be telling an inaccurate story ... They apparently had shown how the PC format was dying when it was actually thriving."

Now can I plead with console owners once again to stfu?

Gotta love biased sweeping comments towards a whole community made by one person from another community. You act as if only the console crowd says that and that they all believe it. It's completely impossible for someone to be a fan of both console and PC gaming, isn't it?

'Scuse me while I go fire up my copy of HL2 on my PC, then play some DA2 on my Xbox, then some Minecraft or Titan Quest on my PC follow by a little Pixel Junk Shooter 2.

Ah, never change escapist users, never change...

Well it certainly wasn't PC gamers who were trying to convince us the platform is dying for years.

And can I please be allowed one sweeping generalisation a week?

 

[WarCorrespondent]

It's a private company, and they don't have to listen to anyone in terms of publishing their private data.

We sometime get people ring up the company I work at and ask for accounting data of whatever area. I literally hear my bosses say on the phone, "no...Because it's a private company...no, you see...no, don't ask stupid questions like that-look, it's very simple. Just hang up the phone, and go fuck yourselves for a bit. Then pick up the phone again if you want, but don't call this number."

 

[millertime059]

I'm a little confused as to how accurate sales numbers would create a "me too" market. Currently Steam offers users the list of top 10 best sellers, does that not lead to a "me too" market? The Crysis 2 guys know how many sales they are getting, and they know their in 3rd

It's simply a function of markets. What do we see a lot of right now? Cover based shooters. Now making games can be quite expensive, and money men can be quite nervous with their money. These days simply making a profit isn't enough for the corporate board types (not just in the games industry). You need to be making the most money you possibly can RIGHT NOW. If FPS's make the most money, make those. Especially if there is a large gap in sales volume. So with the cost of making games what it is there would be even more rehashes of the top 10 sales. Boards would be less likely to greenlight expensive, but new projects. Risk is a four letter word to investors, safe is where they want their money.

As for Valve having this data, I don't mind as much as if, say, EA had it. They are their own publisher and have a history if releasing risky projects.