UK Retailers: Physical Releases of PC Games Should Not be Ignored - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 09 April 2015 / 3,880 Views
Several UK retailers have told MCVUK that publishers of PC games should still release their games at retail, instead of just digital only.
"PC gaming is a growing market and the physical side of it shouldn’t be ignored," said The Hut Group’s senior buyer Mike Fethers. "There are still plenty of people who want to play games from day one of launch but don’t have the bandwidth or speed to download a full 40 to 50GB game."
"There is a significant market for PC boxed games. For the week ending March 28th alone the UK market sold over 6,000 units," said GAME UK retail MD Charlotte Knight. "We are committed to supporting the PC market, in both physical and digital formats and continue to work with our partners to ensure content is as accessible as possible for all our customers."
These comments from retailers come in the wake of Warner Bros. announcing that Batman: Arkham Knight will only be released digitally and not at retail in the UK.
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A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Why are they even commenting now? This has been a thing for a while. PC games for the most part have gotten physical releases still. People just like the option. But why are they trying to drum this up? And say it matters now. It hasn't for a while.
Because Retailers know they are lost when it comes to physical PC games and they know they are on their way out in general so they drum up this story, throw in the PC platform even though they know PC gamers hardly buy physical copies thanks to Steam,GMG,GOG,Origin,Uplay and other digital markets so they make it look like something bad that needs dire attention/support in order to focus people on buying physical games for PC again even though that's hardly going to happen.
There are plenty of people on PC who just want to buy the game day 1, yet here we are 17 months later with a 7 disk GTA V...
PC gamers hardly rely on physical disks these days, I still own and use a CD drive but the majority of my games are digital, it's cheaper for me to have an internal HDD with plenty of space than it is to wait foreever for a physical release and wait for it to go cheaper and then waste my time installing the game one disk at a time, it;s just a slow and uneeded process.
What they shouldn't be ignoring is PC when it actually comes to releasing their games, release on the same day as consoles do, not a week or two later, not 17 months down the line, physical retail disks are the last big concern for PC gaming with digital media/gaming taking over.
What I want more than anything is to be able to play the game day 1, pre download it the day before as well rather than paying even more for a late physical release that contains more than 2 disks that I'll never use again.
I find the Uk retailers are only saying this because it hurts their business that they aren't selling enough physical games compared to the money the digital market is making, those Uk physical retailers aren't even a concern for me since I get download my games right from my computer than having to go downtown and rifle through to find physical copy and then get mithered by their advertisement suggestions.
Of course retailers would say that, they are the ones no longer getting the revenue from the sales but unlike console games, there isn't a second hand market for PC games so consumers have no reason to own a physical copy, along with the standard 'It's cheaper to download' and 'always have proof of purchase' etc.
This, Retailers are crying over this when they know they are fighting a losing battle with both time, technology and trends.
It feels so random for them to suddenly hark on about physical PC games when they hardly cared about promoting them a decade if not 2 decades ago, I can walk into my local UK GAME store and find at the left side is all Microsoft games, the right is all Sony/Vita and the tiny parts in the middle with one side shelf having Nintendo games and the other small shelf having what tiny slim pickings of old PC physical games they have left.
They never bothered to put marketing effort or stocking PC games so this just comes as a stupid plea for attention by using a platform as a means to fake support for.
Yeah, most PC games are full-install anyhow. The only benefits are not having to hog bandwidth - which is vital if your IP limits you - and being able to play the game on future PCs without it having to be tied to an account (Steam, etc.).
Those numbers don't seem that impressive. The incentives for owning a physical copy of a computer game are not as great as those for a home console.
