PC download market and a shameless plug.
Firstly I should embarrassingly admit that this is the first PlayReplay blog entry of 2010 (what happened to January?). It does defeat the object of having a blog if you don’t regularly update it and this something we advise our clients whenever possible. However, our excuse is genuine – its our client’s projects that have taken up all our time!
More on that in a later entry when we make some exciting announcements about the new clients & games we have started working with in 2010. Watch this space.
Before we start the blog entry on PC game downloads, I want to squeeze in a shameless plug for www.OneBigGame.org who releases www.chimegame.com on XBLA this week for a jaw dropping 400 MS points. We hope you like the website, which is full of interesting content provided by the studio?
Check out the tutorial video here
The game has been created by www.ZoeMode.com and is the first music game on XBLA. It features music tracks from artists such as Moby, Phillip Glass, Paul Hartnoll from Orbital and others, but importantly, 60 percent of the purchase price of Chime will be donated to Save the Children and the Starlight Children’s Foundation, so go and BUY IT NOW!!
Anyway, normal service is now resumed….
The buzz word “download” of 2009, in the games industry at least, has only be been mirrored by words such as “Social Networking”, “Motion Control” and more recently “3D”. Do we stand at the edge of a revolutionary change in interactive entertainment and software development; well we seem to be poised for a dramatic change in the distribution models that have shaped the industry as a force to be reckoned with in the entertainment arena.
Even Sir Clive’s mail order home computers don’t seem that far away when looking at the relationship between customers, computers and gaming, although 30+ years of inevitable technological advancement has now began its new phase of innovation.
Although a grandchild of the Spectrum legacy, the PC is still one of the elders of gaming and has found extra gears with online connectivity, benefiting and growing handsomely alongside the internet’s popularity.
Now it seems that PC download is the hot topic of digital distribution and with a focus on discovering new opportunities via PC gaming business models, there are decent number of developers using the platform in hope of a commercial payoff as a part of their business objectives.
A number of PC digital distribution service providers are presented to any budding programmer or team of seasoned professionals. Here are few of the alternatives to Steam and Direct2Drive to get your teeth stuck into:
www.blitz1up.com/
www.greenmangaming.com
www.digitalriver.com
www.gamersgate.com
www.gamesload.co.uk
www.gamestreamer.com
www.impulsedriven.com
www.metaboli.co.uk
www.gog.com
No commentary on PC download can be without mention of Valve’s popular digital distribution network Steam. As reported by MCV recently:
“Steam now has over 25m members and Member numbers surged 25 per cent in 2009. The peak number of concurrent users hit 2.5m during December, taking Steam’s average monthly player minutes to over 13bn in the process.”
Although still known as a colossus in the market, Steam is not yet the Apple of PC downloads. From a marketing perspective it is challenging to achieve a sustained visible presence on Steam, as the marketplace inevitably becomes more crowded. Other PC download services can provide a gaming company with alternative, unique and niche offering that can penetrate wider and possibly deeper into online gaming communities.
This year, 2010, and all that it promises in a rich vision of the information world, is set to be most exciting in the land of PC gaming, and we welcome that. We believe the inclusion of digital sales to GfK ChartTrack PC games sales reports in the UK will reveal a slowdown in the PC gaming market more recent demise. This transparency can only be a good thing for games producers and the PC gaming market as a whole. Mice at the ready…
