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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 5455362" data-attributes="member: 151">The OP requires us to accept a lot of stuff on faith.  While he recognizes SOME of the issues in play, there are many to deal with.1) We lack a lot of empirical data.  This is true in both the print world, onine world and gaming worlds.  We don't know how many copies of 3E was sold, beyond vague references from brand managers.  We don't know how well 4E sold.  We have guesses and tracking from places like ICv2, but that's we don't even know specifically how detailed their data collection is.  Likewise, we don't have any sales figures from Steam/Valve themselves, just from occasional publishers.2) The OP draws lines of distinction to make his arguments work.  I don't necessarily agree with those distinctions.  Is Angry Birds a computer game?  Is Plants vs. Zombies?  Is Farmville?  What about games like Breach or Braid, which can be had at the same time across both PC and console platforms?  How do you count those?3) Mass Effect 2 is a TERRIBLE example to use for how DRM doesn't cripple games, IMHO.  The introduction of the Cerberus Network Card is an attempt to curb piracy and the first step in adding an additional layer of irritation to the gamer when trying to use/play the game.4)  The OP takes it as a given that PC gaming and PnP gaming are both dying.  But we don't really have the numbers to back that up.5) Like many analyses, there is no allowance made for the rather dramatic change in financial climate (4E launched during the Great Recession, 3E launched on the tail of the Internet Bubble).6) Paper prices have risen steadily while supply has dropped.  Wood is becoming more expensive, while paradoxically in 2009-2010, the demand for paper plummeted (those e-books being a part, online PDFs another and declining periodicals yet another).  In summer 2010, the price of paper shoot-up, which is probably a significant factor in WotC's printing schedule.  7) The rise of consoles being sophisticated machines that eliminate many of the problems associated with PC gaming have a LOT to do with the decline of PC gaming's cache.  Mass Effect 2 is another bad example, here: it is a console game that has been ported to the PC.  Assassin's Creed 2, equipped with some of the worst DRM around, still managed to sell well on the PC...but it too was a port.  For that matter, so were several Final Fantasy games.8) PC gaming has had it's focus shifted from some of the large production houses to smaller ones.  Popcap has made themselves huge via casual gaming. Companies like 2D-boy have shown that mom-and-pop developers can still find a market.  Steam has games I've never even heard of that look as professional as the big names on the consoles, because they remove many of the costs of releasing a game.  DCUO is hard to find at retailers...but it's always available at Steam 24/7.  Not to mention that many developers have doubled-down on markets like Android, the iPhone and even the Nintendo DS.9) If we've learned anything, there are some people who will pirate games <a href="http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Saving-a-penny----pirating-the-Humble-Indie-Bundle" target="_blank">NO MATTER HOW INEXPENSIVE A GAME ACTUALLY IS.</a>10) When Steam/Valve DOES share information, the numbers are pretty impressive.  I know the OP wants to disregard their sales out-of-hand, but according to Steam, <a href="http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/02/20/valve-steam-is-making-us-rich/1" target="_blank">they have sold amazing numbers</a>.11.  It goes without saying that Blizzard throws many of the numbers in disarray.  While piracy may get you a single-player game, how many pirates manage to get on and stay on Battle.net?  It is almost a certainty that there are more people playing WoW than are playing D&D (WoW has more than 12 million subscribers as of Oct. 2010.  WotC made a presentation recently indicating that their research shows about 1.5 million active players.  And that they believe that there are around 24 million 'lapsed' players from the games inception to now....i.e. WoW now has an active subscriber base [gold-farmers and alts included, natch] that matches half of the entire historical base of D&D.The PC gaming and RPG markets have changed.  A LOT.  But I don't take it as a given that they are doomed.  I think a lot of people expect a level of transparency that WotC and Hasbro have no intention of providing, any more than Valve/Steam provide it.  And I haven't yet heard of a compelling argument for WHY they should do so.  Certainly their fans would appreciate it, but that isn't really important to their business methodology.  I think many people have really unreasonable or artificially inflated ideas of how big the market is or actually ever really was.</blockquote>

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