Be Excellent To Each Other

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/07 ... -consoles/

So not only are developers all over the PC like a cheap suit because it (a) points the way to the future and (b) lets them release the games as they want them to:

http://www.eurogamer.net/videos/egtv-pc ... ial-part-1

http://www.eurogamer.net/videos/egtv-pc ... ial-part-2

They're also making bucketloads of cash at it too, no wonder EA feels that breaking loose of Steam is worth the risk, there's just too much damn money to be made.

A healthy PC games market is a thoroughly good thing, I'd kind of feared that publishers might just be paying lip service to the PC because they needed to keep their hand in with all the cool stuff they want to do on the next generation of consoles, but by all accounts it's not only a viable platform, but also the top platform from a quality, innovation and profitability perspective.

If nothing else we can only hope that MS and Sony pull their damn fingers out and get a couple of new consoles out into the wild. 'Gaming capable' PCs have never been cheaper (£400 will put you right), even £500 laptops can have a decent crack at running a lot of stuff, add in the undeniable superiority of distribution networks such as Steam, and the PC could potentially put the consoles back to where they were in the days of the Megadrive and SNES, which is in the toy department.

Interesting times for sure, and an especially good time to be into PC gaming.

I like console gaming, it's nice to sit on the comfy sofa in front of the big telly with the 5:1 sound and the wireless pad, but the games have to be up to it, and at the moment they're not.

Also:

I'm off to bed!

I agree with this. From my perspective I'm happier playing games on consoles because it suits my lifestyle better - but I don't see much in the way of innovation in console-exclusives, and I'm happy there are mugs out there pouring money into gaming PCs to keep the developers putting good games out there so I can happily plough on playing the inferior console ports

Happy to be a mug in that case . Ordering a new PC this weekend as a treat for waiting four years for my legal matters to be resolved.

http://www.yoyotech.co.uk/item-detail.p ... id=4372743

Good to read that the PC games market is still alive and kicking despite all the naysayers over recent years. Although I have to admit I have been gaming more on my Galaxy S than my PC lately.

It's not that simple though:

So that's not "PCs worth more than consoles" plural, that's "PCs worth more than either console individually under one accounting model" blended with "biased site is cheerfully biased". And the PC and 360 non-GAAP values are almost the same. It's still interesting, and surprising, but it's a far cry from "the PC is more important to EA than the PS3 and 360 combined".

I have no idea why the accounting model changes the console figures so drastically; I'll do some more reading later. Keep in mind that GAAP stands for "Generally Accepted Accounting Practice" and hence non-GAAP roughly translates as "made up". Also, as they are breaking away from Steam, it's in EA's interests to play up the size of the PC gaming market.

AE, you fucking tedious cunt.

Hmm, interesting. Well, not especially, but you can't read anything into the story without knowing what the difference Is. There are numerous variants of GAAP, normally based on where the company is based.

The main difference is likely to be the time of recognition of income, and also the time you record additional income. It looks like EA internally recognise the sale of a product unit when it ships, and also at that point may recognise an estimated value of paid for downloads and add ons.

Note that in most cases GAAP variations will effect timing only. Turnover over lifecycle on two differing variants should come to the same overall total.

APoD: my inexpert reading of the PDF (http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cf ... eID=594196) made it sound like deferred income from digital purchases was the main differentiator between the console and PC reporting. Most of the other factors EA lists as being part of its non-GAAP figures are corporate things (acquisitions, debt structuring, etc) that (I think?) wouldn't affect its different product lines differently.

The deltas are also interesting. PS3 and 360 revenues are up 30-35% year-on-year; PC is up 10%.

In the interest of balance, I would like to point you in this direction: http://bit.ly/24L829

This proves that Xbox is like totally the coolest.

I'd be really interested in PC gaming if it was 1993 again and I'd just seen Doom running for the first time.

Second reason as to why consoles are better than PCs: http://bit.ly/dg5T

Heh.

Bless you. That made me smile.

It's trivial to be the fastest growing when you didn't exist 18 months ago. The entire mobile portion made up 6% of EA's revenue, which is actually down year-on-year; hardly earth-shattering news. (I'm guessing the iPad falls under "mobile"; if it's "other" then it's 2%). Still, I look forward to reading "EA says the iPad ROOLZ" from the more feeble-minded Apple blogs today.

Here's the GAAP (top) and non-GAAP (bottom) figures from EA's report. The numbers in the middle are the deductions from deferred net revenue, which is the difference between the GAAP and non-GAAP figures on a per-platform basis:



I wonder if an explanation for the difference between GAAP and non-GAAP is as follows (opinions on my amateur fumbling welcomed, APoD). The company is writing down liabilities to represent the sunk cost of games currently in development (that's what the "deferred net revenue" represents). That cost is per-game, and needs to be divided over the platforms somehow; they divide it according to projected sales of the game on each platform. This would result in larger deductions on the consoles than on the PC, hence would mean the non-GAAP figures would skew towards the PC.

A counter-argument would be that the GAAP figures themselves already reflect the balance of revenue generation between the platforms, so you wouldn't expect the non-GAAP ones to skew more heavily unless EA expects to see PC games decrease relative to console ones in future quarters. Given the quarter-on-quarter trend across the last year though, that's a conclusion that isn't inconsistent with the data. So this report may actually suggest that EA thinks growth in the PC market will continue to be slower than growth in the console market.

In any event, the thread title is utterly wrong.

Having just cranked my PC up to 11, what it can do in terms of flashy oooh stuff is incredible compared to the consoles, add Steam to that (as shit as it is) and that makes PC gaming attractive to me again.
However, it cost a bomb to create in total, much more than any console. I would be very surprised if PC gaming was at the same level as console gaming, purely for that reason...

Bollocks are they more important than consoles.

These figures totally and definitively prove that piracy is killing the PC market. (Sub - please check.)

I'm not sure on the digital distribution point, as surely things such as map packs would similarly effect consoles to a similar degree.

Note, there is and can be mo such thing as EA GAAP. Anything that isn't GAAP in and of itself falls into a different subset called MOW and as such should be ignored without more data. Going back to my original point (turnover over time will always arrive at the same total) you may see that most recent year figures may well show a PC bias, but it has to unwind somewhere, so that would imply far lower results in future or earlier years.

Unless this method of accounting restates what goes into the definition of turnover from the outset, in case it's RMOW, and a such incapable of being evaluated with tools appropriate to GAAP.

It's not just digital -- it's physical goods too.

Maybe that's the heart of it, though? Console sales are mostly physical, PC sales mostly digital.

I have absolutely no idea what you just said.

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/07/27/ea-our-f ... -the-ipad/

Yeah, well we would have expected that sort of thing from that TUAW mob.

Heh.

I have a feeling that what may be happening is that GAAP requires them to recognise the total revenue from a sale, possibly including an estimate of future downloaded content, together with associated costs (so, for a £30 game sale, you may recognise £40 income, including the £10 map pack, but also server costs for the next three years and distribution costs of the hypothetical map pack whereas EA is presenting "shit we sold this quarter" as their effective cash basis non GAAP income.

As such, it doesn't stand up to analysis without the direct costs data on the same line by line and GAAP and adjusted GAAP basis

I can’t pretend I’ve understood everything I’ve read here but from what I gather, this is surely a good thing all round. It shows that gaming is still popular and, despite which format people choose... people are still spending money and making it possible for developers to make games for us.

EA being worth $7.6 billion might have some bearing on this.

It definitely shows that there's plenty of life in the PC platform, and it probably justifies EA's risky move to break away from Steam too.

Don't forget that as a console-orientated producer, EA's figures might be skewed against the PC -- bread-and-butter titles like the EA Sports range (I believe) sell relatively poorly on PC compared to console.

There seems to be no mention of nintendo in this thread? I know a lot of people (myself included) think of the Wii as a child's toy but it is technically still a console.

edit: @ Doc - The sims.

A single title doesn't do much to dispute Doc's point. EA are definitely more console focussed than many other publishers.

EDIT - and The Sims is cross-platform, of course.

And has only a couple of expansion packs released in the last 15 months, so wouldn't be a large part of the numbers we are discussing.

I was just bringing up the sims as a example of one of EA's major PC titles, I don't know if they count the micro transactions into the figures or what the figures are - I would assume that the sims 3 is the biggest selling game of all time though - wonder what the comparison between the sims (on PC) games released in the same time frame as say the halo games would be?

fake edit: sims 3 pets? fuck yes.

The Sims 3 sold 1.4 Million Units In First Week (I think this is world-wide). Halo 3 sold 3.3 million copies in the first 12 days in the US alone.

The Sims (1) shipped 16 million copies, ahead of CoD:BLOPS for 360 (12 million). But again, these EA figures we are discussing are from early 2010 onwards. The Sims is almost irreverent.

Virtually sarcastic, in fact.

Certainly not respectful.

Meanwhile, Ubisoft is still trying to make PC gaming jump the shark -- Driver: San Francisco will be another game that requires a permanent Internet connection to play. ADSL goes out, game does down.

It was a bit of exaggeration to reinforce the overall point that in general terms, the PC games market is in pretty rude health.

Moreover, there are no proper numbers from Steam, I'd be fascinated to see what the overall state of play is.

Take a game like DiRT2 on the consoles for example, which once its time on the shelves is over, is really only ever going to be bought on pre-owned, generating zero extra revenue for the developers and publishers. Stick that same game on Steam in a sale for £3, and it could potentially generate a massive wedge of revenue all over again.

Indeed, release DiRT3 at the full price point of £29.99, and have DiRT2 as a related item for a fiver, as Steam does, and it's easy to see how over the long term, the PC market can really rock the numbers.

It's important to note that EA has recently made some big decisions about breaking from Steam and launching its own competing service, as well as buying Popcap.

So yeah, they're going to expect greater returns on those investments, and they both probably have more long-term potential than the current round of consoles. EA are naturally going to emphasise the PC a little more right now, both to satisfy their money men, and to make a statement to the industry and audience at large.

Saying the PC is more important than the consoles altogether is probably a stretch. But 'vastly more important than we previously thought' likely isn't. EA were one of several publishers thought to be abandoning or at least neglecting the PC. That they're willing to say the PC matters to them so much is probably a bigger statement than the actual figures - even if the numbers don't match, all they have to do is get the rumour out there that the PC is better, and lots of people will believe it, and probably be more likely to support them as a result.

It's particularly well-timed given that EA has only shed its "most hated publisher" title in the last few years, while Ubisoft has grabbed it and run off into the distance, apparently doing all it can to shaft its customers at every turn. This may all be about capitalising on that as much as anything.

Never underestimate the PR/political angle

The PC in general is at an interesting point right now. The rise of indie developers in the last few years, coupled with the advent of casual and ipad/etc gaming, as well as the near monopoly of Steam finally being challenged... well. I wouldn't be surprised to see more publishers coming to blows over PC issues.