Hell Freezes Over: PC Gaming Not Dead

According to the New York Times, PC gaming is alive. It rebounded from a slump, but it’s definitely alive. Excerpts:

Anita Frazier, an industry analyst for the NPD Group, a market research firm, noted that in the first two months of 2007, domestic retail sales of PC games reached $203 million, a 48 percent increase over the $136.8 million in the period a year earlier. She noted that these figures do not include revenue generated by PC game sales online, or online subscriptions to play PC games.

She said the bulk of this surge in sales is rooted in the role-playing video game genre that, itself, grew 43 percent over the same period last year. “The robust performance we’re seeing in PC game sales can be tied to several key titles across several genres,” she said, “but we’d be remiss not to address the continued success of World of Warcraft.”

The upsurge comes after some recent reversals. Over all, retail sales of PC-based games in the United States exceeded $970 million in 2006, an increase of about 1 percent of sales the previous year of $953 million, which represented about a 14 percent drop from $1.1 billion in 2004.

One thing I noticed about these reports is that they never include revenue generated online, either through online sales or subscriptions to MMO games. Not to discredit the report or anything, but for once I’d like to see someone check it out and give the numbers. It’s probably trickier than counting retail sales but it’ll be nice to finally see the figures. Just how much money is World of Warcraft and Blizzard earning? And no, answering “boatloads” doesn’t count.

Source: New York Times

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