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| [Nov 24, 2011, 2:09 pm ET] - Share - Viewing Comments |
Though plans for a PC edition of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier was previously confirmed by Ubisoft, PC Gamer has word that the next installment in the Ghost Recon series is for consoles only, and that PC gamers will get Ghost Recon Online instead, which is apparently Ubisoft's new approach to PC piracy following their almost universally despised always-on DRM. Here's word from Ghost Recon Online producer Sébastien Arnoult: We are giving away most of the content for free because there’s no barrier to entry. To the users that are traditionally playing the game by getting it through Pirate Bay, we said, ‘Okay, go ahead guys. This is what you’re asking for. We’ve listened to you – we’re giving you this experience. It’s easy to download, there’s no DRM that will pollute your experience.’
We’re adapting the offer to the PC market. I don’t like to compare PC and Xbox boxed products because they have a model on that platform that is clearly meant to be €60’s worth of super-Hollywood content. On PC, we’re adapting our model to the demand.
“When we started Ghost Recon Online we were thinking about Ghost Recon: Future Solider; having something ported in the classical way without any deep development, because we know that 95% of our consumers will pirate the game. So we said okay, we have to change our mind.
We have to adapt, we have to embrace this instead of pushing it away. That’s the main reflection behind Ghost Recon Online and the choice we’ve made to go in this direction.
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| 158. |
Re: No PC Ghost Recon: Future Soldier |
Nov 25, 2011, 22:05 |
ASeven |
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Dev wrote on Nov 25, 2011, 20:05:
ASeven wrote on Nov 25, 2011, 18:22:
Uuuh, it's exactly like 78. Publishers are pushing a lot of games per month (Just look at the past two months) and you only have to see the forums and the NPD numbers, amongst others, to see people are indeed buying less games. From the past 3 years, only about 8 or 9 months of the whole 36 showed an increase in sales, the rest was a decrease. And I mean software only, if we take hardware into account, namely consoles, the picture's more dire. The forums are also a good indication, console and PC alike, that people are getting fed up with the quality of games. Also, there's a major, vast migration going into other platforms, like mobile, and publishers are not adapting into it.
I don't know how much its like 78, but I'll point out that NPD doesn't track much digital (for instance they have no steam numbers at all), which means they are increasingly irrelevant for PC game numbers.
My wild guess is that the current state of PC gaming is something around 50% retail, 50% digital, and of the digital, valve has at least 25% of it. 25% of the entire PC gaming market is not chump change.
Yes, that is my point exactly. The PC market is growing a lot lately and it brings big bucks, however the lion's share still lies on the console market, which is mostly sold on retail. Hence why it's a serious mistake for the publishers to keep neglecting the emerging digital markets on the PC and their blunders of implementing it on all platforms. And I can't see the consoles having successful digital markets anytime soon, console gamers love retail because otherwise they wouldn't be able to buy second hand games for a fraction of the price. A digital market would kill this in an instant and I can see console gamers raising hell if this were to happen. In fact, many console gamers point the second-hand market as the biggest advantage over the PC, which has none.
Until publishers successfully implement a digital distribution on consoles the gaming industry will lose a lot of money and if they do implement said digital market who knows how console gamers will react to losing the second-hand market? They sued EA over failing a promise of giving BF1943 with pre-orders of BF3, and EA backtracked on that pretty quick. If they have that reaction over a minor thing, imagine losing the second-hand market. Hence why I keep saying that the gaming industry is pretty much doomed, because they keep repeating the mistakes of 78 and because they fail to see that if they are to survive and adapt to new market conditions they have to adopt and cherish the PC market as a vital failsafe in case things start to really get out of hand financially. |
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