Redeemer.Blog

2 years ago I wrote a post about the decline of PC games presence in retail stores, and this year I took another look at the situation.

Sadly, the problem today is worse than ever before. And the problem is likely world wide. In Vancouver, no EBGames store that I went into had a single row of PC titles for sale that I could find. In department stores the same is true, except even console titles are rare there. In big box electronics stores, like Best Buy and Future Shop, you *might* find a small selection of either casual titles, or very narrowly focussed AAA titles. EB is owned by GameStop, and I'm guessing no GameStop store sells PC titles either.

The problem stretches itself across to the other side of the world, where no GAME store in the UK, France, Spain, Germany, or Italy seems to stock PC titles.

It's probably because of Steam and other online download services, and I think this can also be studied by observing how DLC has reshaped the console landscape.

I have it on good authority that DLC is making sweeping changes to the gaming business as a whole, no doubt due to the online model for consoles.

Other signs of the end of PC Retail

GameStop recently purchased Impulse from Stardock. If you haven't heard of Impulse, it is a competing PC download store similar to, but less popular and less feature rich than Steam. This move from the world's largest vertical games empire is a sure sign of their vision of PC retail going forwards. GameStop has already started to rebrand the service, and has been offering holiday deals including "publisher catalogs" for sale a la Steam holiday sales.

EA made a big move by starting to sell its PC versions exclusively on their Origin service. Supposedly they aren't making such a move, but several digital stores that sold EA titles have stopped selling them, presumably due to negotiation problems, but also possibly because EA has less of an interest in selling their titles elsewhere when their long term vision is likely to build their own Steam variant.

Microsoft has made its half hearted attempt to sell PC games online via its Games for Windows Marketplace, and no word has been heard of previous reports that they might have retail stores from which to buy Games for Windows branded titles.

PC Retail - Nobody Misses It Anyway

Honestly, the death of PC retail presence is inevitable. Steam and its competitors offer too much to PC gamers for the retail space to compete against, and most digital services are trying to bundle in DRM capabilities so that even should you buy the retail copy you'd have to run through something like Steam DRM to play.

Most gamers would rather NOT buy a game if they can't get it on Steam anyway, due to the convenience of having everything managed by a single service.

Personally, I'd rather have digital distribution than retail distribution because it is more convenient for me, but what does this mean in general for the gaming industry?

What happens to businesses if the rest of the industry transitions to digital distribution? As evidenced by the explosive power of DLC, the business side of huge publishing houses seems to love digital distribution, and would probably embrace it as the sole means of game distribution over time. I even think it will happen in the next 4-5 years.

I think the PC Games industry is probably a good thing to look towards as a model for what could happen if Microsoft or Sony decide they really want to move things online.

So what do you think? Is PC retail completely gone as I observed? Is it a good thing? What about the same happening to consoles?