OP
OP
Yeah nothing is a sure thing anymore I don't think
Like if I think about two of my favorite games (Life is Strange, Katana Zero), they caught lightning in a bottle and launched big boi season, overly so
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Mike Rose, Founder of Indie Pub No More Robots: Roughly estimates that average year 1 sales revenue for Steam games is under 25k
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Yeah nothing is a sure thing anymore I don't think
Like if I think about two of my favorite games (Life is Strange, Katana Zero), they caught lightning in a bottle and launched big boi season, overly so
I'd say the market's maximum doesn't have to be what is currently is or anywhere close to that. There are so many regions that still have a low number of gamers with respect to the population. Still plenty of room to expand. However, though the audience could be significantly larger to a point where even the current number of indies could be much healthier, I think the problem is most gaming time is being spent on free to play or games as a service games. I love indie games and spend large sums on them, but can I really argue their worth to somebody who plays 1000 hours of Fortnite exclusively a year for free and is satisfied? Maybe for a couple of the "big name" indies, but a genuine no-name with a heart of gold? It's a tough nut to crack. I think for most people the value proposition for indie games is too low (though I'd disagree with them strongly).
I have feelings all over the spectrum for subscription services like Game Pass and the health of the industry, but part of me wonders if it will be a catalyst to getting a big population to try games they typically wouldn't buy.
Haha. This happened to me just this night. I was browsing the store looking for a potential impulse buy. Long story short, I reinstalled fallout 2 and had a great evening with it.
Yes, Epic will embrace hundreds of new indies to their store each month. And they will continue to do so for years to come.
That's a wishful thinking at least.
We're in the starving artist phase of the medium, and so far as I know, once art gets here, this is where it stays. Maybe within a few years the poor success rate of indie game dev will slim the market down and things will get less crowded but I don't think we'll ever hit the days of Super Meat Boy and the like or anywhere near there ever again. From now on until the end of time making an honest to god career as an indie game dev is going to be the exception, not the rule.
For those suggesting EGS is a good deal, just a reminder that only the early adopters to EGS exclusivity have this advantage as these deals won't be forever on the table and judging by the current trends some are avoiding EGS purely due to consumer backlash.
If the consumer blacklash keeps up against what ever keeps indies afloat financially, then its just bad news; isn't it?
If the consumer blacklash keeps up against what ever keeps indies afloat financially, then its just bad news; isn't it?
This is the right attitude ^^
But seriously, the problem is the volume of games releasing all the time. This is not a Steam problem, if EGS had 10s of thousands of games the revenues per game would be down too.
Yes, this is the most possibel outcome.
It maybe cruel, but everyone can't be a winner. That's just how everything works in the world, not just gaming.
It's not just the number of games releasing that's the problem. Games aren't just competing with other games, they're competing with every other form of entertainment imaginable, including many that no one would have thought of a decade ago. Your game has to compete against an evening spent watching Ninja on Mixer for free, and frankly a lot of people get everything they need out of that.
Not really, we don't know how much money developers get from those subscription services. So it doesn't matter if more people play your game if your revenue isn't up. Also based on my experience looking at friends and family habits all 7B people on this planet could start playing games and we could have same issue because most casual gamers play what is popular at that moment.
Something else to factor in: GaaS is something the industry hasn't had to deal with on this scale before. Mostly play FF14, with a side-order of Destiny 2? Your spare time and cash goes to those two games. It doesn't matter what the game is if your potential player base is captivated by their 2 current games releasing new material on a regular basis for the next 2/3/4 years.
OP
OP
So the median is 15-25k. Half of all Steam games are getting under that range and half are over that range within their first year of release. Seems pretty good to me given the massive amount of games on Steam vs any other video game platform known to ever exist.
Does anyone have any solid numbers of how many games will release on Steam in 2019 vs other platforms?
Does anyone have any solid numbers of how many games will release on Steam in 2019 vs other platforms?
Yes and as I said, isn't there a large number of low effort releases every day? If so, that's a lot of low effort devs taking up a large portion of the pool, and the median would only reflect their sales.
I can't really trust the analysis of someone who mixes up their "middle value" (median) and "average" (mean), especially when extremely high or low numbers (I don't know if he filtered those in any way or not) can skew the average (mean) in a massive way. If it's truly median, that means (heh) 50% of the games gets more than 25k, which is... not as bad as it sounds?
yup
This isn't a problem to solve by Valve or Epic. If we want small developers to be able to justify making small games, we need to zoom out from looking specifically at gaming and ensure that their output doesn't have to sell well in order for them to have a dignified living.
You guys citing Steam Labs:
You do realize that Steam Labs could very well have the effect of driving DOWN the median revenue of all Steam games.
Theoretically, there's an overall spend on Steam that doesn't change for a given set of users (ie - people only have so much money to spend on games); the idea that people aren't spending to their maximal amount (ie - they have money to spend but don't know which games to spend it on) generally means they can't find games that they want to play; perfect singular curation to people will generally drive consumers to spend more concentratedly on high quality games (ie - people won't buy "asset flips or garbage games that shouldn't be on Steam in the first place").
This will drive a larger sum of the overall spend to the highest quality games (on average) which will shift the median income for a game on Steam lower and lower in absolute dollars.
Which is why pointing to the median is kind of useless.
If my belief is that Steam is FLOODED WITH GARBAGE, it should make me happy to know that the median income is absolutely bonkers-low. Because that means garbage isn't being bought, overall spend is concentrated at fewer (theoretically 'the best') titles.
Honestly, if the overall spend on Steam is growing, but the median revenue is dropping, that kind of shows that people are generally buying what they want and happy with it. But we don't know that, because just telling people the median is mostly useless.
An average (mean), with standard deviation points would be far more useful.
Hell, a mode would be more useful.
Yup. Your game has to compete with the prospect of missing out on 10/20 hours or whatever spent playing FF14 with friends. I don't play either, but I still have the Paradox titles to play, and a lot of games aren't more appealing than another EU4 campaign. There's also the Assassin's Creed Odyssey DLC that's half price this week that I plan to get and work through. Is your game more appealing to me than another 30 hours with Kassandra? I have my doubts.
Probably a lot of reasons for this.
1. The market is flooded. Not with just crap, but good titles.
2. Valve spent about what, 5 years conditioning their consumers to wait for really deep discounts? Then you add in stuff like the ridiculous value of Humble bundles. It's tailed off in the last few years but it'll take a long time to retrain consumers to not wait until something goes 75% before they buy it. I remember this was a big discussion point on GAF at the time (around like 2008-2013). People would come out with stats showing that these massive sales on titles actually increased the tail and all that. I just don't think it was sustainable because consumers were actively being trained to just wait 6 months. And this ties into the first point - you're much less likely to buy something at launch if you've got 10 other games you haven't touched or currently on sale for 75% off.
3. Increased competition from other platforms. Not just PC platforms but there's no doubt in my mind Switch has taken a small amount of indie market share over the last couple of years. It's too good a platform for indie titles for it not to have happened. On top of that you've got a consumer base that has been conditioned by Nintendo to see 30% off as a good sale rather than 75% off on Steam.
1. The market is flooded. Not with just crap, but good titles.
2. Valve spent about what, 5 years conditioning their consumers to wait for really deep discounts? Then you add in stuff like the ridiculous value of Humble bundles. It's tailed off in the last few years but it'll take a long time to retrain consumers to not wait until something goes 75% before they buy it. I remember this was a big discussion point on GAF at the time (around like 2008-2013). People would come out with stats showing that these massive sales on titles actually increased the tail and all that. I just don't think it was sustainable because consumers were actively being trained to just wait 6 months. And this ties into the first point - you're much less likely to buy something at launch if you've got 10 other games you haven't touched or currently on sale for 75% off.
3. Increased competition from other platforms. Not just PC platforms but there's no doubt in my mind Switch has taken a small amount of indie market share over the last couple of years. It's too good a platform for indie titles for it not to have happened. On top of that you've got a consumer base that has been conditioned by Nintendo to see 30% off as a good sale rather than 75% off on Steam.
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Yeah deadass, if I think an indie will come to Switch or iPad, I'd rather get it on there because of price (especially iPad versions) and portability
Do year 2 sales tend to improve over year 1 sales? I'd guess not, but it feels like those numbers still leave out a lot of context.
Yep, even I watch game streams nowadays when I'm a bit exhausted to play.
Did not think about it. I'm on Warframe, Overwatch, will jump back to Destiny 2 when it comes to Steam, still play a bit of TF2. Offline is a bunch of simulation games. Vast majority of what I play are never ending XD I still buy games I have on my radar that I want to support but most people don't have the disposable income to do it.
Snipped out the other portion of your post.
This is kind of a known thing in ecommerce, and I'm always surprised when it gets questioned.
Sales will increase spend but devalue products. In this case, Steam is the beneficiary of the increased spend, but the products Steam sells are devalued.
Valve does a lot of things (on the ecommerce side) that generally are fantastic for consumers but not so great for devs/pubs, and that's where some of the enmity comes from.
I don't really understand what this is supposed to indicate. As of right now Steam's games catalog contains 35,502 games. In every platform out there the top 20% of games brings in the vast majority of revenue. So if you divide the total revenue number by 35,502 instead of, say, Playstation 4's number of 2,209 you are going to get a way smaller number. I got the PS4 number from here.
en.m.wikipedia.org
Based on that fact, the average year 1 sales revenue of $15k-25k actually sounds very good. What context does Mike Rose provide for his conclusion that this number is terrifying?
List of PlayStation 4 games - Wikipedia
Based on that fact, the average year 1 sales revenue of $15k-25k actually sounds very good. What context does Mike Rose provide for his conclusion that this number is terrifying?
There's a lot of AAA publishers doing that too these days, Ubisoft were selling Far Cry New Dawn for 50% off a month after release, for example. Assassin's Creed Odyssey is available for half price right now, 10 months after release. If you wait, you will always get a better value version of the product, and probably a more complete, less buggy version.
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For GaaS? I'd say that's probably the goal, yah
For Indies? I dunno, my face when I think about it looks like a pumpkin lol
My initial reaction to this is that of course it's low because a tremendous number of nothing games/shovelware come out every day that earn probably almost nothing if not nothing. That has to bring the average down without necessarily affecting serious/good games much in sales.
Yeah I remember there were a lot of arguments in the reverse of what you're saying. Some devs would show that sales increased after a sale and therefore the deep cut sales were a great idea. It just didn't seem all that sustainable at the time. It reminds of the current debate about whether including games in something like Game Pass has a positive impact on sales. It might initially but if you start putting everything up there you're just conditioning people to wait for the game to be in their subscription rather than spending $60 on it.
Nintendo has been banging this drum about devaluing video games for decades. They err on the side of being too cautious, and obviously as a consumer I'd prefer to get everything for as cheap as possible, but it doesn't help create a sustainable environment.
Those guys have the long tail revenue stream of micro transactions though. So there comes a point where you don't really care if you're only getting $10 from someone to enter the ecosystem because you've designed the game in such a way that you can try to squeeze another $30-40 out of them through microtransactions and DLC. Look at something like FIFA - here in Australia if you wait 3 months you can get it 50% off because EA just want to sell card packs.
Indie games, thankfully, generally haven't entered the quagmire that is microtransactions so the first sale is all you're gonna get. And if you're consumer base is conditioned to wait so they only have to pay you 25% of what you originally priced the game at, it's not great.
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There's a difference between buying a AAA Ubisoft game at half off six months after it came out, and avoiding a $20 game from a small indie publisher until it's like $2.00 six months later on a Steam Sale.
Indeed, but both are training people to avoid launch prices and wait for a sale. That's the point I was making. You wait for a sale, or for the game to be on a subscription service or available for free.
Yeah, and it's very difficult to gauge things like sentiment objectively since you can't really establish a measurable cause and effect relationship here, so it's very easy to look at the raw numbers and make the wrong assumption. As Era loves to say, it's all about the short term gains.
It's not that the median $15-25k is bad in isolation; it's that it's decreasing YoY (according to Mike Rose).I don't really understand what this is supposed to indicate. As of right now Steam's games catalog contains 35,502 games. In every platform out there the top 20% of games brings in the vast majority of revenue. So if you divide the total revenue number by 35,502 instead of, say, Playstation 4's number of 2,209 you are going to get a way smaller number. I got the PS4 number from here.
List of PlayStation 4 games - Wikipedia
Based on that fact, the average year 1 sales revenue of $15k-25k actually sounds very good. What context does Mike Rose provide for his conclusion that this number is terrifying?
OP
OP
Yeah I'm 100% trained as a consumer to do all of these things now, if I buy something at full price it usually ends in disaster for me I STILL HAVE THE RYU SFV STATUE IT CAN'T EVEN STAND UP ON ITS OWN
I'm not really getting the devs replying to his tweet that seem to be dismayed that their older games aren't selling many copies outside of sales events. There's a point where everyone who knows about a niche game and wants it, owns it. So unless you can find a way to drum up some attention for those catalog titles, like with a new update or something, I don't see why they'd expect those games to still be selling at a regular pace.
Depends on your definition of a sustainable environment.
The overall market theory is that - there are still indie games that sell millions of copies on Steam at full or near full price. So while I also believe that endless sales condition consumers to wait, I also believe that lower average costs of games get people to try (buy) a wider breadth of games than they would otherwise.
The "Steam Backlog" is a very real phenomena, and it's mostly from people buying games they wouldn't have at a higher/static price.
Additionally, the illusion of a sale can influence purchasing decisions too.
Edit:That said, the Steam Backlog could also possibly have a negative effect on future purchases as someone might feel that they should play the games they own before buying more games (or question whether they should buy that game in the first place when they have bought so many other games they never really wanted to play)./end Edit
So "sustainable" can look a lot like a wider breadth of games receiving modest income vs. a smaller selection of titles receiving a larger income.
20k seems crazy high. I imagine the median unit sales per year is something like 0 units sold, considering how much fluff and garbo is on the service.
I don't really understand what this is supposed to indicate. As of right now Steam's games catalog contains 35,502 games. In every platform out there the top 20% of games brings in the vast majority of revenue. So if you divide the total revenue number by 35,502 instead of, say, Playstation 4's number of 2,209 you are going to get a way smaller number. I got the PS4 number from here.
List of PlayStation 4 games - Wikipedia
Based on that fact, the average year 1 sales revenue of $15k-25k actually sounds very good. What context does Mike Rose provide for his conclusion that this number is terrifying?
How does $15k average sound good when even you acknowledge that this average figure is being skewed by big sales behemoths?
And let's not lose sight of the fact that this analysis is for revenue. Profit figures will even be more dire.
Without sales I would have bought way less games. My total spending would also have been a lot lower since I would only have bought titles that I really, really want. Which for me usually means big titles.
No surprise about the low median. There are a lot of games nowadays and a lot of them are probably junk.
No surprise about the low median. There are a lot of games nowadays and a lot of them are probably junk.
I still buy AAA titles day one because of hype and marketing make me not want to miss out on game release. Especially if it's narrative games that you don't want to get spoiled.
Most indie games don't have the marketing and hype behind it if it's not being picked up by some platform holder to give it exposure
The tweets say median average, not mean average.
So the blockbusters don't skew anything.
Median is percentile 50, it doesnt get skewed as hard by outliers like the average.
Back in the day we could put out a game and get 30k sales in a month. Now we prep to scrape by with 10k lifetime. It's really unfortunate.
