Activisions 2008 numbers confirm the idisputable facts of piracy

[HeXploiT]

Activision Reports Big Gains, Profit of $344M in '08

Growing publisher Activision today reported that its year-to-date 2008 net income totaled some $344 million, a significant increase over its 2007 take of $85 million.

The large profits were pulled from a total revenue of nearly $2.9 billion, up from $1.5 billion the previous year. Activision's fiscal year ends on March 31.

Activision's strong lineup was lead by Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and Call of Duty 4, which continued to perform well into the company's fourth quarter. The company records over 9 million sales of Call of Duty 4 as of March 31.

According to the publisher, 73% of its total revenue, or $2.12 billion, came from publishing console software. The sale of portable games brought in 8% / $2.19 million of that sum, while PC games only made up a paltry 5% / $1.56 million.

Source: Shacknews

I don't know how anyone can argue with these numbers.
It's a sad thing really and the reason that steam type apps will be dominant in the future.

 

[Bateluer]

There is nothing on piracy in there, just evidence of Activision's inability to make a quality PC game.

 

[Soundmanred]

These are the numbers I just saw at the link you posted.
They changed that quickly???

According to the publisher, 82% of its total revenue, or $2.39 billion, came from console software. The sale of portable games brought in 12% / $3.14 million of that sum, while PC games only made up a paltry 6% / $1.85 million.

 

[Soundmanred]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
There is nothing on piracy in there, just evidence of Activision's inability to make a quality PC game.

A more correct post.
Indisputable facts aren't ones that can be disputed. When did that change, or is it an ATOT P&N thing?

 

[BladeVenom]

Blizzard is merging with Activision to be the largest game publisher. I think Blizzard made $1.2 Billion for 2007. So if you count them as a single company, which they soon will be, then over a third of the profits will be coming from PC games. 29% from Blizzard, plus 5% from Activision puts PC gaming at 34% of their income, making it the single most important platform for the largest publisher.

EA Games was the biggest in 2007, and the PC was their second biggest money maker, right behind the PS2. PC kicked 360, PS3, DS, and PSP ass last year at EA.


I don't know why you just want to look at activision. Bias?

I can do the same thing. Ok, Stardock is my favorite game publisher and 100% of their game profits come from the PC. Looks like console gaming is dead. :disgust:

 

[HeXploiT]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom
Blizzard is merging with Activision to be the largest game publisher. I think Blizzard made $1.2 Billion for 2007. So if you count them as a single company, which they soon will be, then over a third of the profits will be coming from PC games. 29% from Blizzard, plus 5% from Activision puts PC gaming at 34% of their income, making it the single most important platform for the largest publisher.

Much of Blizzards income came from WOW which has an even more effective anti piracy system then steam. Namely online play only. Had WOW had the anti piracy system that COD4 had I assure you blizzards profit margins would be drastically decreased.

 

[BladeVenom]

Please, you fail. Now you're resorting to speculative if arguments, and your evidence is that you assure me? Lame.

EA is still selling crap loads of Sims games and their copy protection is cracked. SoaSE is selling well for a small publisher, and it has no copy protection.

Edit: WoW has been cracked, and there are pirate servers for it. So it's arguable even how effective its anti-piracy system is.

 

[AllGamer]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
There is nothing on piracy in there, just evidence of Activision's inability to make a quality PC game.

agree.

almost no good game publisher has dedicated anytime, anymore to PC, except for Blizzard.

so those numbers doesn't mean shit

besides, if the topic is actually about piracy, Console games and Portable games are the most pirated ones now in days

not PC games, since there no worthy PC games to bother with.

 

[Soundmanred]

Obviously P&N needs a video game industry speculation forum.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
There is nothing on piracy in there, just evidence of Activision's inability to make a quality PC game.

Huh? The blurb has COD4 included, which you may or may not think is a quality title. But it was reported to sell 7 million copies in 2007 and was GOTY for many on any platform. Only a paltry 400k or so of that was for the PC according to NPD, so quick math shows about 3 million each for PS3 and 360. These numbers only confirm online and digital distribution couldn't plug the holes in the picture and that the PC version of COD4 lagged horribly behind the 360 and PS3 versions in sales. I'm willing to bet more than 400k PC users have played COD4 though.....

 

[chizow]

Rest of this thread will consist of idiots justifying piracy of any Activision titles for even *THINKING* their poor PC sales are due to piracy.

 

[Maleficus]

I'll let bladevenom continue to handle this, because otherwise I may just have to invent that internet-face-stabbing machine.

 

[BladeVenom]

Originally posted by: chizow
Rest of this thread will consist of idiots justifying piracy of any Activision titles for even *THINKING* their poor PC sales are due to piracy.

Or maybe even bigger idiots trying to insinuate that everyone who disagrees with them is a pirate.

No one has yet tried to justify piracy. You're the one bringing that to the table.

 

[AstroManLuca]

There just aren't that many PC games worth buying every year now. Console games seem less deep to me, and with no mods or player-created content, their replay value is limited.

Also, a lot of Activision's most popular games (GUITAR HERO III) aren't even available on PC.

EDIT: Oops, that is totally wrong! GH3 is available for PC.

 

[Ichigo]

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca
There just aren't that many PC games worth buying every year now. Console games seem less deep to me, and with no mods or player-created content, their replay value is limited.

Also, a lot of Activision's most popular games (GUITAR HERO III) aren't even available on PC.

 

[Ichigo]

yarr doubled

 

[AstroManLuca]

Blargh whoops. Shoulda done a little research first.

But still. A lot of really popular games these days aren't available for PC. I don't know which non-PC games are from Activision though.

 

[mindcycle]

The majority of what we get on the PC anymore are horribly done console ports (at least as far as big titles go). ..and those they do release are ridden with invasive DRM. Doesn't take a genius to figure out why PC game sales are down..

 

[GundamSonicZeroX]

Originally posted by: Maleficus
I'll let bladevenom continue to handle this, because otherwise I may just have to invent that internet-face-stabbing machine.

I can see it now.

[daydream]
n00b: OMG! You have 20 kils n 35 deth! U're kiking my ass! Ur haxin!
*presses button on the face stabbing machine*
n00b: What's happening to my... AAAAAHHHH!
[/daydream]

Also, with as many threads debunking piracy as there is, I thought it's been pretty much established that Intel is the reason that PC gaming is in it's current rut.

 

[Zenoth]

Activision numbers unfortunately don't mean much for the whole of the PC gaming market. It does mean a lot for the Console market though.

But if we'd have numbers from a more "relevant" company such as Blizzard who's obviously been making games for the PC market for years, or a company such as Valve Software then I would have thought about this whole subject with a different mind entirely. I cannot think of a game that Activision made or published on the PC market that really justifies this topic as a way to show the market that PC gaming is in "danger" due to piracy against that specific company more than another one.

I mean... Call of Duty... yeah it's available on Consoles, what do you expect? Big numbers on PC? There's OBVIOUSLY more gamers OVERALL all around the world playing on Consoles than on Personal Computers. And that comment applies on many other titles they've published, not just CoD, but the CoD series is certainly their "main" one. It certainly applies to Guitar Hero as well, and why not even the Quake series too? There's plenty of Quake games on Consoles (mostly older generations one that is). And so on.

 

[Fenixgoon]

while PC games only made up a paltry 6.4% / $185 million.

did you even read the article? PC sales were $185 million, not $1.85... unless you plan on doing scientific notation, which is $1.85x10^8


edit.. or unless shacknews made a typo when you copied/pasted.

 

[Soundmanred]

We both copies and pasted, and got different numbers from the same page within minutes!Not sure how that happened...
The first numbers given were 1.56M, then changed to 1.85M.
It is now changed to 185M.
This "Shacknews" (which I've never heard of) posted the article, then changed it at least twice!

 

[mindcycle]

Been thinking about this more.. 1.56 million is still 1.56 million more than they would have made if they didn't release any PC games at all. So really, they're still coming out ahead..

I say get over it. Start releasing better PC games and get rid of invasive DRM. Then we can watch that number grow and all be happy.

 

[novasatori]

almost all of my friends have been giving up PCs for consoles as of late... and they all bought COD4 for it too

PCs are only good for WoW to them.

Also until we get some accurate, non changing numbers to compare, I'll hold judgement, but 185m is not too bad considering.

 

[pontifex]

is there a number of consoles in use compared to PCs that can play these games? I'm sure there are exponentially more consoles than PCs that can play the games. it seems like a "no shit, sherlock" type of thing to me.