News - UK PC games market surpasses £500 million milestone

[HEXUS]

However the value of boxed games sold suffered its steepest decline ever.

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[crossy]

Interestingly, looking deeper into these figures the casual game sales have been declining but download-to-own sales have experienced significant growth.

From what I've seen a lot of these casual type games (the "Angry Birds" type stuff) have become browser-based, so I guess these wouldn't necessarily count as "PC" games even though you might be playing them on that platform. Ashamed to admit that I've been giving tower defence games Kingdom Rush and Kingdom Rush Frontiers a thorough going over.

I'm not surprised the amount of boxed PC game sales has fallen - mainly because the ease of (or lack thereof actually) getting those retail. If you go into Game, HMV, Asda, Sainsbury's etc they're much more focussed on selling on XBox or PS - good luck finding anything other than "budget" titles or perhaps the latest, greatest game of the month.

As a result I've pretty much shifted download only for PC games. Worse still, now I've got a PC that can actually play most games (MOH:Warfighter excepted) for longer than 15 minutes without seeing BSOD there's more incentive to PC game. Final nail in the coffin was the changes that Microsoft made to XBox Live to accomodate the XBone. Result being that my Xbox is (literally) gathering dust - I'll have to power it up sometime soon to check if it needs any updates.

Funny problems with XBox360 powerpacks in this house, we've got six and none seem to be able to hold charge for more than about a week.

Big agreement though on the desirability of the Steam sales - some of those are just too tempting to resist.

[Lucio]

The only physical copy games that I tend to buy are the Collectors Edition versions, which include ornamental objects, otherwise I'm paying out more for the game than the comparable digital download

[Antagram]

Could be higher if prices matched Amazon US and other oversea digital suppliers. And it not always down to conversion rate only working in our favour, but lower prices to begin with.

[proxygy]

It's not the worth price

[VijaySathyan]

Yup, browser and android games dont count as PC games.

[Brian224]

When the disc in the box requires you to log on to Steam, enter a code and then download the entire game anyway, why buy a box?

a) For the pleasure of going into town on a Saturday morning, sitting in a traffic jam, finding an overpriced parking space and getting rained on whilst looking for a shop that might have closed down since you last went there.

b) So you can take your family to an out-of-town shopping centre where they will insist on looking in many shops you don't want to visit and spend your money on things they wouldn't even have thought of buying if you hadn't taken them so they can resent you spending 5 minutes in Game

c) To gain an opportunity to visit the Sorting Office because you were not at home to sign when the game you ordered on line was delivered.

[paullongy326]

I agree has the whole pc experience isn't just about turn on and play with a pc you get the freedom , not only that it gives you the option to use for many other tasks with that its also something that you can get into building and putting in what ever you like or budget takes you it allows total control and not just a ugly box on the floor that people get bored with

pc for ever

[crossy]

Yup, browser and android games dont count as PC games.

Erm, why would anyone think that Android games should count as PC ones?

When the disc in the box requires you to log on to Steam, enter a code and then download the entire game anyway, why buy a box?

Last one I had like that was Sleeping Dogs. There, the disk seemed to be present solely to host the Steam client and to save you having to download the entire game. Downside was that if you wanted the "HD Textures" then you had to download a "patch" which seemed to consist of an entirely new edition of the game.

Maybe Game etc could do some kind of enhanced loyalty card that was a flash drive that you could "load" with your game codes. Just a wild thought for a Monday morning.