Pachter: Online multiplayer games to blame for game sales decline

Game sales are down primarily due to the fact that $60 for a brand new game is absurd. They and by they I mean Playstation/Sony and the game dev's need to realize that yes the core gamers are getting older and can afford more but at the same time there are newer gamers coming in and when faced with a $60 purchase from their part time job at McDonalds they are only going to buy a game ever 6 months or so. That and us older gamers become twice if not three times as picky as to our purchase's since we've smarted up in realizing what we like and dislike.

This cop-out of saying its due to Multi-player is very sad and a excuse of excuse's. If anything Multi-player in my eyes has helped sell games. Alot of us won't buy a game if it doesnt have multi-player, since once we are done playing the main single aspect of it the multi-player adds replay value.

Hi missed WoW.

I've sunk dozens of hours into League of Legends, the online and free to play game. Haven't sent a dime to the developers yet. The game industry must be extremely competitive if such a triple A product is being given away for free like LoL is.

And then Vindictus is gonna come out later. And it's free to play too.

I did go out and buy Transformers WFC for $50 used though. It just feels "fresh" compared to all the other shooters of the past 6 years or so.

maybe it's a decline in game quality, every year games get worse and more focused solely on graphics and other areas fall behind, not that graphics aren't good, they are, but other areas of games are declining, most new games are either an FPS a genera I do not overly enjoy, kind of boring, or annoying to play. Even my 2 favorite genera have regressed, most new RPGs are based on WOW style game play which is very boring, and my other favorite genera, flight sims have too unrealistic flight controls and some don't even have a speedometer or altimeter. My other big beef is how much stupid gimmicks are used in games now, "Ace Kill" in Heroes over Europe is a perfect example and the designers usually force you to use the gimmick repeatedly, and extending a games play life by making some missions/levels/areas so impossibly hard you have to play them 20 times (hard games are not new, but hard short games are).

I honestly believe it has a lot to do with gamers getting smarter and being able to tell from the marketing strategy that a game is going to suck. Also publishers need to realize that they have to compete with Modern Warfare and Halo and that just putting out a run of the mill shooter with mulitplayer tacked on isnt going to cut it.

it seems as though developers like bungie set the bar and then they are also the one's to raise the bar and only a strong developer like Infinity ward or Epic will come along and challenge that bar, while most of the other developers just push a game out, granted I respect their hard work but I'm not going to buy it if doesnt innovate or even measure up.

In somewhat more surprising news, things said by Michael Pachter are still considered newsworthy.

i think it's because there are TOO many games to choose from that we end up just getting a select few and playing them to death.

there's too many franchises/sequels to follow now. gamers are getting wary of picking them up at full retail costs for incremental updates and DLC.

I've always been the kind of gamer that likes trying lots of games, but really only enjoys playing certain games for extended periods of time. I stick with the mainstays that I enjoy and that's about it...


for example:

I keep meaning to get an NHL game... but I always tell myself "this one will go down to bargain bin price as soon as they plan on releasing the next one... "

well at least that's my half assed justifications into why i haven't been buying games as much as i used to...

There's a reason why Halo and Call of Duty managed to get the audience they have. They are high quality and represent the best of their genre. For what reason would I want to take time away from the game that is the best to continue playing an inferior experience?

I don't play online shooters like most other people, but I do have a sense of what is good and what will maintain popularity. Looking at the top games in the Xbox Live most played list, you can see what people like and those are generally the games that have critical acclaim.

They've been blaming mutliplayer games for slow sales since Half Life and Counter Strike (1998-1999)...

Please use another excuse.

I dunno, maybe it's the economy. People out of work. Housing foreclosures. Layoffs. Paycuts. Reduced hours.

I think this is why people aren't buying games right now. It has NOTHING to do with people playing online more. People are playing online more because they're not spending on new games. Plus you have to factor in DLC, which people are buying.

That games still cost a PREMIUM during all this isn't helping. I think people are being more selective in what they do buy these days.. And if you just wait a month or so (depending on the game), the price usually comes down or a sale occurs.

Wouldn't that backfire even more? If you are addicted to playing an online game that was previously free, such as Modern Warfare 2. Then you would want to play it even if they made a price to play it.


Look at it this way:
If you wanted to play it really badly and there was a $5 dollar subscription fee then that means even less money to buy new games, because you would be paying that extra $5 to still be playing it.

I think it's because 1) there are many good games, such as Red Dead, Alan Wake etc which take awhile to complete, and 2) because it's summer, holiday period.

What annoys me about most games now, is you buy a game and then there is a ton of content brought out just after release, you just bought a game at £40/$60 respectively, why can't the release a game with everything in the box?

It's just companies getting greedy, with this download bullshit.

I think the only company who has done it right is Red Dead with the CO-OP content, any content which costs money should be worth the price!

No, shitty games are to blame for bad sales.

They are a few diamonds in the rough now a days, like red dead, bad company 2, Mw2 for the people that like it etc.

Why would i leave the comfort of an awesome game to play the new shit that is coming out?

like medal of honor, i thought that that would be good, but after playing the beta, i have absolutely zero desire to leave bfbc2 for it.

I'm still playing tf2 regularly.

As for the single player games i am currently playing? Dragon age and fallout 3, (i liked mass effect 2, but for some reason i don't want to play it a second time).

When a great game comes out, i'll buy it, because i am currently playing great games, and i have no desire to downgrade my experience.

Greed. The picture above says it all.

Does anybody know how to make one of those ASCII pictures of a hand giving the finger?

If they want to put in ads, in a tasteful way, that's fine. The ads seen in "Rainbow Six Vegas 2" were fine, although sometimes they were a bit silly.

Ex: in the theater, a place where someone may pay a few hundred dollars to see a performance, there were ads for "South Park". I like "South Park". it just seemed funny to see it in a place like that.

It's painfully obvious that he's a publisher mouthpiece at this point. When will people realize that and stop listening?

Does this guy do parties? My kids would get a real hoot out of this clown.

That is an opinion of a man who thinks he knows. He has not proof whatsoever to back it up. No statistics, no charts, no studies, no nothing. Online Gaming is nothing new and it does not make near the impact on Game sales as publishers and those who make money off the industry would like us to believe.

My point is, there is a large % of the gaming population who buy a game and then play nothing else for a long while, sometimes years.

Like my friend, for instance, buys exactly 1 game per year, usually Call of Duty or Battlefield. He then wondered why our other friend hasn't been playing Bad Company 2 lately. And I explained "it's because he buys other games too!"

But who can blame them? The economy still sucks and if you can squeeze 100 hours of fun out of a $50 game, more power to you.

Honestly Joystiq, the more you report on this guys idiocy, the more money he makes. So please, for the sake of us all, stop giving this guy the credit he clearly does not deserve.

I would hope that publishers would not charge for accessing multiplayer. Rather they should charge for additions and options that enhance the multiplayer experience. New weapons packs, Loadout optionns, player skills, and the like could be viable "additions" that the publisher could charge for without ever to charge for access to the multiplayer experience.

Other ways to monetize without charging for multiplayer include options that help transition your modern warfare 2 had work to the next modern warfare multiplayer. Or even an upgrade disc from modern warfare 2 multiplayer to the next modern warfare multiplayer experience - skipping the single player an coop altogether.

Make great games and they will sell. Make shtty games and they won't.

Sales are down because folks have less money and are less amazed by the new round of games coming out. Plus music games have totally tanked. Folks got tired of those. DS software sales have dropped and so have Wii sales although both are still strong.

Ironically I believe the 360's software sales haven't decreased at all and have gone up a bit. And that's the biggest online platform amongst the 3 new consoles.

You're like a bad penny, Pachter.... and I just want to throw you in the deepest well possible.

I never liked year over year sales numbers. nobody ever factors in what games were released that month. Galaxy 2 and Red Dead Redemption both came out in may, so by the time june came around sales were already leveling off a little, and no AAA titles come out last month, unless im forgetting one. if there were more big releases around last june then sales will be higher.

@Brockobama123 yeah, i can't stand this guy. he made it sound like we will all complain about extra fees at first, but then every company will do it and we will all have no choice and will give in and just pay the monthly fees. i really don't think so. this is already a very expensive hobby. there is a limit.

what's next? should i have to send $5 a month to nike because i haven't bought new shoes yet this year and the reason is because i'm still wearing my shoes from last year? business people like this are the scum of the earth.

It was a bad month for releases, I had 3 pre-orders (Crackdown 2, Singularity and Transformers WFC) and I canceled all 3 because they got lousy reviews and/or the demo/beta sucked.

I don't play my games online. I enjoy the single player game and then I'm done with it. However I have not been buying new games is because, games are either too short (bulk of gameplay is online). I don't want to pay 62-65.99 plus taxes for a game I can finish in 8 or so hours. I spend 5$ to rent it and be done with it.

Or maybe.. the games this past 2 months have sucked. When Call of Duty: Black Ops, Gears of War 3, Gran Trusimo 5, etc.. (add whichever game your looking foward too) show up. I think they will be like.. "Oh, money.. now we can stop thinking of ways to ruin the gaming industry."

Here's a crazy idea: Come out with BETTER f'n games and not re-hashed crap sequels.

The games he mentions... they happen to be GOOD games period.

This summer has seen CRAP. What were the 2 big Xbox games this summer? Red Dead and Alan Wake. Alan Wake sure is pretty and I absolutely love the art/story... but come on, the gameplay is BORING and unchallenging.

Stupid, I hate these experts and execs who come up with a million reasons for lulls in sales when the answer simply is: There hasn't been any new games WORTH their plastic in buying.

It's summer. Most people understand there is something called "outside". Well, maybe most console players still understand that because our game rooms are above ground level ;)

I wonder if Mr. Pachter has heard of a thins called "market saturation". Let's go over this one. Be warned, I'm a liberal arts graduate, not a business graduate, so I'm sorry if my definition isn't textbook-accurate.

Market saturation happens when there is so much of a given type of product available, and consumers already have enough products, that they become much less likely to buy that type of product. Given the price of high-budget game releases, along with the fact that the average gamer is going to be interested in a game every one or two months, means that gamers simply don't have the time, money and willpower to be interested in every major game comes out. Given that the industry follows trends, and that interest in a game typically increases with the size of its advertising campaign, gamers are likely going to be hooked on a few major titles a year, and yet meanwhile there are dozens more which do poorly at retail in comparison because of gamers' limited time and money.

There's three ways to solve this. One is to stop making so many games, especially ones that publishers expect to sell millions upon millions of copies, instead choosing to focus that development time and money into existing big-budget games and smaller, cheaper products. Another is to stop promoting some games so much more heavily than others, and try to target specific audiences better. Call of Duty is big, sure, but do you really want every gamer playing it when a dozen other games they could have been playing languished in the bargain bin? I'm sure that many games would sell better if they weren't forced to compete with the Modern Warfares and Halos of the industry. The last? Lower the price on games. I guarantee you will see an increase in sales.

The bottom line is: gamers have only so much time and only so much money. You can make a better argument for why you want their money by making better games, but the amount of time and money they have to spend on things is relatively fixed. When you combine this with a global economic recession, where people have less money to spend and are less confident about luxury purchases, you have a recipe for slow sales. The average person already has enough to worry about - paying off mortgages, rents, loans, credit card bills, etc.; maintaining interpersonal relationships and raising children; paying for necessities of life including clothing, food, water and electricity, (arguably) Internet access; and, of course, whatever random things that any given person might value over videogames. Don't forget other forms of entertainment, like television, music, sports, etc., as they also dig into discretionary income and free time.

This may come as a shock, Mr. Pachter, but people have lives beyond what they are willing to spend on games, and for many of those people, games are luxury items are among the first to go by the wayside when times get tough. Combine that with a market that is saturated, and is it any surprise that games come up short?

So we buy a game that is meant for long term enjoyment, and investors worry that we might actually enjoy it long term? They are only happy when we get bored and move on to buy something new?
God, I feel pity for developers. Who the eff wants to work in this industry that can't win even when it wins?! :-/

Generally, I only buy games that have a strong multiplayer function or long RPGs with lots of replay value. A lot of what's out there, some good, some bad, just isn't worth playing a second time through. No way I'll spend $60 on a one-time playthrough.

Multiplayer is NOT a problem. Just support those fun, popular games with decent, regular DLC and you'll make your money.

http://www.morningtoast.com/2010/07/online-multiplayer-is-not-a-problem/

You either run it like a carnival, free access but pay-to-play, or you run it like an amusement park, large up front cost but once inside, skies the limit. One or the other, not a combination of the two. I'm already paying to play online.

I disagree.

1) I would buy a lot more games, but at $60 a pop... I just can't blow that kind of cash on a regular basis in this economy.

2) I used to always wait until games dropped down to $20 or so, but nowadays they stay at $50-$60 for ages, it seems.

3) Also, I buy way way more games nowadays than I used to. There's just tons of games competing for your dollars these days. So I think more money is being spent on games overall but less to each developer.

So basically the problem with the video game industry is that publishers are making games too good, which is why people continue to play them rather than dropping them like they're hot and moving on to the next overpriced $60 title.

I think that about sums it up.

Personally I feel really good when I get tons of use out of a single game that I didn't pay a lot for.

to be entirely honest, the reason why i think the games industry sales are lacking is because people like me cannot afford to constantly buy games like i used to, which is particularly harsh when all these games have such good ratings...

Patcher needs a bitch slap in the face cause his insight is horrible and mediocre at best.

I don't really understand how this guy gets paid to come up with this crap.

All he's really saying is that if you charge customers more, you will have more money. However, it doesn't always make sense to charge the customer more, which is why you wouldn't want to.

Subscription based services are becoming more common, but that doesn't make them the future. It makes sense for WoW, which maintains massive data centers throughout the world. However, it costs Activision virtually nothing to "let" all those COD players freely log all those hours. The consumers are paying for all the bandwidth to host the game, and paying for all the infrastructure that makes it possible. He's just implying that Activision should charge a subscription because, well, why not.

I'm sure Ford would love to not only make you pay for a car, but pay them monthly to drive it, but they don't because it lowers demand, it's greedy, and it pisses people off, and most people just won't play it. You could try and charge a subscription for anything, However, if it isn't justified, i.e. if it's just pure profit for them, they're just going to piss people off, which is exactly what all this recent news about Activision charging pay-to-play for COD games has shown.

Also, his numbers are absurd. 14 million copies of COD:MW2 have been sold, and he goes on to imply that 92% of everyone who bought the game is playing online, logging on average 10 hours a day. As much as multiplayer has been the rage lately, penetration still rarely breaks past the majority threshold. According to Bungie's own website, there have been at most 580,000 unique Halo 3 users in the past 24 hours, and I've yet to see the number of currently active users go above 120,000 for today. 3 million? Psh. Typical analyst throwing up rosy numbers like those and saying you can turn each one of them into pure profit.

These games sell a ton of DLC and that isn't represented in the NPD.

Most new games come out at $60 & that's all right for a lengthy single player game or a multi-player, but why should I have to pay that price for a 8-12 hour single player only game that I may only play once... I just don't have that type of money for such a short experience these days; Times are hard at the moment... They complain about us buying used & renting but all they have to do is price games accordingly.. ALL GAMES ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL

WTF that's what xbox live is for you have to pay 50 bucks to play online. For a year that dude is a lame o.