Steam Sales in 2010 Exceed $1 billion, PC Sales boosted

cherryghost

Interesting read, was posted last week.

Estimated revenues through the major digital PC retailer were estimated at $970 million USD in 2010, with December capping off the year with an estimated $213 million USD. Valve took a back seat during the year, as it was the 3rd largest publisher on Steam, bringing in an estimated $80 million USD in revenues, mostly from its 2009 release 'Left 4 Dead 2'. However, Valve sold the most titles of all publishers, as Valve published 7 of the top 10 titles when ordered for units sold. Director of Research & Analysis, Benjamin Schlichter, stated, "Steam's growth has been remarkable during the year. Over 180 titles were estimated reaching over $1 million USD in revenue for the year, painting a very healthy market for developers and publishers, with more room for growth in the future."

Interesting that 180 titles are million dollar sellers.

Top Selling Titles, by Estimated Gross Revenues in 2010

* Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision) - $98.2 Million USD
* Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Activision) - $39.4 Million USD
* Left 4 Dead 2 (Valve) - $36.0 Million USD
* Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (Electronic Arts) - $25.4 Million USD
* Sid Meier's Civilization V (2K Games) - $21.9 Million USD
* Portal (Valve) - $20.0 Million USD
* Fallout: New Vegas (Bethesda Softworks) - $17.0 Million USD
* Metro 2033 (THQ) - $13.4 Million USD
* Mafia II (2K Games) - $11.9 Million USD
* Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising (THQ) - $10.8 Million USD

Very interesting post here, as there are Steam sales only. Basing it on number can be dodgy, but Black Ops has never been on sale, so one could assume roughly 1.6 million units sold, excluding retail (vgchartz state 1 million sold in retail). Bad Company 2 has sold roughly 300-400,000, of course which does not include the EA store, Direct2Drive, retail etc. Portal which has been around for 3 years, continues to reel in money for Valve. There's some very interesting numbers posted up.

I had read somewhere (I've actually lost the link ) that retail sales of the PC platform had dropped to roughly $600 million.

In another news story, Starcraft II and WoW: Cataclysm boosted overall PC sales (not including Steam again), but 3% in 2010, and the 2 games alone accounted for 14% of all PC game revenue (again, not including Steam)

The launch of two PC games from Blizzard helped boost sales of the overall PC game software industry in 2010. A new report from the NPD Group said sales of PC games in retail stores in the US were 3 percent bigger in 2010 compared to 2009. The biggest reason were because of sales of Blizzard's sci-fi RTS sequel StarCraft II and the MMO expansion pack World of Warcraft Cataclysm. According to Gamasutra, NPD stated that those two games generated 14 percent of all PC game sales in 2010.

Starcraft II had sold 2.8 million units in retail alone in 2010, and surely digital copies were huge, while Cataclysm sold 3.4 million in retail alone.

Top that off with Minecraft that sold 1 million copies in 2010 and it's not even released yet!

Food for thought there. I really wish that physical and digital copies were combined in sales totals, so we got to deal with sales revenue and guess! Not that all these sales exclude other retailers such as GFWL, Direct2Drive, GOG, Impulse, Gamersgate and GMG etc.

But anyways, who said PC gaming is dead?

Kiith

:pac:

SeantheMan

Good article, nice post. I'm sure I gave my fair contribution to the sales

K.O.Kiki

What is more surprising is the reaction of retail now. I have read it described as the reaction of a small child who threw his toy away because he no longer wanted it, but started screaming as soon as another child picked it up to play with. The metaphor works perfectly, especially in the light of the excuse I heard on numerous occasions.

'There is no demand' went the mantra. But is this really true? Not in our experience.

I remember fondly the meeting in my office with a red-faced publisher who was explaining why their initial order from a major retailer for one of our new releases was just 30 units. At the time I had my browser open on the Steam product data page, which updates sales numbers every few minutes.

"They have taken one unit for each of their top 30 stores" he told me. "There is just no demand from their customers."

I glanced at my screen, hit refresh and advised him: "In the time it’s taken you to tell me that there is no demand, Steam has sold 45 units."

Article link.

Grumpypants

PC gaming isnt dead its just been done wrong for such a long time. Gabe does talk a lot of silliness but his comments on Piracy (which reflect my own) i believe are pretty accurate when he said the pirates just offered a better service than the publishers.

Fnz

cherryghost wrote: »

Bad Company 2 has sold roughly 300-400,000, of course which does not include the EA store, Direct2Drive, retail etc.

Are you certain on that figure? Bad Company 2 was on sale for $6 during Steam's holiday sale.

Top that off with Minecraft that sold 1 million copies in 2010 and it's not even released yet!

OT but, if it sold 1 million copies, then it seems, very much, 'released'.

dreamers75

Fnz wrote: »

Are you certain on that figure? Bad Company 2 was on sale for $6 during Steam's holiday sale.

Someone posted on the BF forum it had over 1 million PC sales and was outselling the consoles (not combined).

marco_polo

Sure even Crysis the game no-ones PC could play still shifted 3m units in up to May 2010 and Warhead a further 1.5m (Link to Crytek presentation stolen from wikipedia).

http://www.zuse.hessen.de/mm/Konrad_Zuse_Kongress_Yerli_Final.pdf

cherryghost

Fnz wrote: »

Are you certain on that figure? Bad Company 2 was on sale for $6 during Steam's holiday sale.

What I meant was 600-700,000 copies, went the wrong way. Dividing the revenue by the full retail price gets you circa 500,000 copies, so obviously its been on sale quite a bit, the copies would be a bit more

Fanny Cradock

Fnz wrote: »

Are you certain on that figure? Bad Company 2 was on sale for $6 during Steam's holiday sale.

When I start BC2 I see a figure in and around 600,000 on the bottom right of the screen just after the initial load. I take this to be the unit number. Of course, if this is the unit number there is nothing to say that EA didn't start at 100,000 or whatever (like hotel rooms).

Overheal

Grumpypants wrote: »

PC gaming isnt dead its just been done wrong for such a long time. Gabe does talk a lot of silliness but his comments on Piracy (which reflect my own) i believe are pretty accurate when he said the pirates just offered a better service than the publishers.

True. I stopped downloading music when I got a good sound system to play it on. Noticeable difference between MP3 and CD playback. Similarly game software is much simpler these days with the speed of direct downloads and the ability to streamline updates, and always have a copy in the cloud whereas 5 years ago if you found a good torrent and wanted to find it now, you could be completely out of luck, you'd have had to store it physically this entire time. Even Netflix is steadily making a mockery of my movie collection.