Are PCs holding back the console experience? (Witcher3 spawn)

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aaronspink said:
He's one breakdown of costs: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2010/02/anatomy-of-a-60-dollar-video-game.html

That puts the publisher cut at $27 instead of $20 but doesn't include things like advertising incentives, etc which places like walmart pretty much require which will eat another $5 or so, so you are looking at ~$22 to the publisher. And large retailers like walmart etc will also push down their costs to acquire as much as possible simply because they can, so it wouldn't be unusual for then to get the game for ~$30 or so once they roll everything in.
Click to expand...

$27 and made by a guy whose sole purpose was to show his business model in the best possible light. I'll take that as a worst case scenario. $7 for returns is highly suspect. Over here stores don't get to just return stuff. They take the hit as far as I know. $15 store margin on top of the $45 is already 33.3%, so quite a bit higher than the 25% margin you are saying. He does seem to have a realistic view on distribution and cost of goods though.
 
I wonder why EA and Ubisoft still sell their new games at retail, but took their games down from Steam. I mean obviously it's about promoting their own DD-services, but if Steam was such a dreamland compared to retail, I doubt they would be willing to take the hit.
 
Dr Evil said:
$27 and made by a guy whose sole purpose was to show his business model in the best possible light. I'll take that as a worst case scenario. $7 for returns is highly suspect. Over here stores don't get to just return stuff. They take the hit as far as I know. $15 store margin on top of the $45 is already 33.3%, so quite a bit higher than the 25% margin you are saying. He does seem to have a realistic view on distribution and cost of goods though.
Click to expand...

That 25% is overall, and the game sales have to offset the actual console sales which retailers basically make 0% margin on. And FYI, they are making 25% margins on a $60 game if they stock in at $45, not 33%. GM is off of sale price, not acquire price (aka GM can never be greater than 100%, if you do it off of acquire price you could have 100%+ margins which don't actually exist). And you better believe that major distributors and retails either have return rights or are pre-discounted for returns, game publishers need Amazon/GS/Walmart a whole hell of a lot more than they need the game publishers, esp for consoles.

And actually his distribution is light, no distributor is going to live on <10% GM.
 
aaronspink said:
And actually his distribution is light, no distributor is going to live on <10% GM.
Click to expand...

I'm just about ready to drop this topic, but do these distributors even own the stock or just receive, store and send boxes? To me it sounds like an unnecessary complication to have this middleman actually owning the stock. Warehouse hotels and places like that don't charge based on the value what's in the box, but how many pallets they receive, store and send. I have don't know how things are handled there or if it varies a lot between publishers, but this expensive model you are selling, doesn't make sense to me.

Also the retailers need the goods to sell. I don't understand why you see publishers as some tiny man that everybody pushes around as much as they want. What is Gamestop going to do if they don't get hot new games from the publishers in November?
 
Then they must be making boatloads more money on PC games than they are on either console. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the PC profits are near equal to both consoles put together given they make substantially more per PC copy sold.

This trend should continue as even mid-low end PCs and laptops (not Atom) running IGP in the next couple of years will have GPU power equal to or exceeding that of the consoles. It won't take nearly as long as it did for IGPs to match PS360.
 
I mean this single quarter had only about 6.5% of the revenue Ubisoft had during their latest full Fiscal year that ended in March 31st, and like I said nothing was released between April and the end of June. PC's share during the FY was 12% PS4 was 32% and Xbox One 20% and those figures come from nearly 1.5 Billion Euros, instead of 96M from the latest quarter.

edit: Personally I would like to see PC-marketshare growing. It might help with stuff like the Batman release not happening the way it did for example.
 
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Ubisoft PC sales by quarter for the last 2 years:

Q1 2013 - 20% - 3rd
Q2 2013 - 13% - 4th
Q3 2013 - 10% - 5th (new gen consoles launched)
Q4 2013 - 24% - 1st
Q1 2014 - 14% - =5th
Q2 2014 - 17% - 3rd
Q3 2014 - 9% - 5th
Q4 2014 - 23% - =1st
Q1 2015 - 23% -2nd

Not a particularly strong pattern but the last couple of quarters look promising at least.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/07/18/idUSnHUGdc6B+71+ONE20130718
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/ps4-dominates-xbox-one-in-ubisoft-platform-sales-c/1100-6423280/
http://www.dualshockers.com/2015/02...lls-7-million-ubisoft-posts-positive-results/
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=163673389
http://wccftech.com/pc-successful-platform-ubisoft/
 
pjbliverpool said:
Ubisoft PC sales by quarter for the last 2 years:

Q1 2013 - 20% - 3rd
Q2 2013 - 13% - 4th
Q3 2013 - 10% - 5th (new gen consoles launched)
Q4 2013 - 24% - 1st
Q1 2014 - 14% - =5th
Q2 2014 - 17% - 3rd
Q3 2014 - 9% - 5th
Q4 2014 - 23% - =1st
Q1 2015 - 23% -2nd

Not a particularly strong pattern but the last couple of quarters look promising at least.
Click to expand...

Q1 2013 - 20% - 3rd
Q2 2013 - 13% - 4th
Q3 2013 - 10% - 5th (new gen consoles launched)
Q4 2013 - 24% - 1st
Click to expand...

These four together was 15% (Third overall)

Q1 2014 - 14% - =5th
Q2 2014 - 17% - 3rd
Q3 2014 - 9% - 5th
Q4 2014 - 23% - =1st
Click to expand...

And these four 12% (Fifth overall)

Quarter by quarter analysis is not important here, at least when the revenue is not mentioned. These last two quarters were tiny specs. Q3 fiscal (Q4 calendar) is the when the revenue comes in. Last year Q1 had Watchdogs and it looks very different to this year because of that. Q4 2014 had some Assassin's Creed release on PC, that was already out on consoles before.
If PC can maintain a good number the upcoming holiday season and thus the full year, then we'll have something to talk about.
 
Since it says "sales" I figured it meant the total amount of dollars spent on their games, so I figured PC profits must've been higher than PS4 since they make more per PC copy sold.
 
I wonder how much Ubisoft's free2play, and PC only titles like their Might & Magic series & HOMM series impacting those numbers?

(Xbox3 = scientific classification of Xbox One)
 
pjbliverpool said:
More sales info showing a strong PC performance. This time from EA:

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/the-pc-is-a-really-profitable-platform-for-electronic-arts/
Click to expand...
I'd be curious to know what the sales ratio are for pc versions of Multiplatform AAA games like BF Hardline. The revenue from PC includes the F2P and browser games and PC only titles (like the Sims series and its expansions) and MMOs.

The reality is we get buggy ports for SOME series because the ratio of console to PC for SOME series like publisher Warnerbros Batman Arkham series in that case is probably 1/12th or even less compared to the XO/PS4 sales. That definitely isn't a valid excuse to bring out a buggy port, but if we look at the economics we can see why we'll continue to be on the receiving end of crappy pc ports.
 
Eleven games is a vast number? I suppose 11 is a vast number if you have a 4 bit processor! :-/

Are there more than these or is this story: tiny number of PC games outsell Xbox One equivalents?
 
Boys! Be nice! No need to get all personal.

11 games is not a 'vast' number, but it's certainly a bit more than I would expect, having seen years of reports saying consoles trump PC gaming all the time.
 
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