I had to go to our local Walmart today, and decided I wanted to buy Far Cry 2 to enjoy with my upgraded video card (a GTS 250).
The PC Gaming section in this store used to be huge. It was a chest-high shelf maybe 20 feet long with a ton of games spanning the range from new and recent releases to older standards and CD compilations.
In the last year or so it has been shrinking pretty steadily, to where it was maybe six feet of shelf space. But at least the last time I was in there they had Far Cry 2. Today when I got to the rear of the store I couldn't find the PC section. Where it had been (right across from 40 feet of eight foot glass cases containing hundreds of console games) there were movies.
I hunted around in that aisle a bit, and I did find a row of 15 or 20 discount titles on a single shelf in a corner of one of the Wii sections. I also found a clerk and asked him where the PC games had gone. He directed me around the corner to a shelf maybe three feet wide with mostly empty space. It wasn't even in the entertainment media section with all the other games. It was in the batteries, accessories, and cameras section. There was no Far Cry 2. In fact there were very few new releases. Two copies of COD:WaW. A copy of the Oblivion GoY bundle. A couple of copies of COD4. Maybe 30 copies of CD compilations ("100,000 Games! Better than ever!"). There was a copy of DemiGod, and one of Sins of a Solar Empire. A few others.
I had already given up on Gamestop. All three of our local stores were down to just a few PC titles last time I was in them. Now it looks like Walmart is pretty much out of the business. I was already more or less convinced that PC gaming is dead, and this seems like a pretty clear indication of it. Doesn't really matter if there are still good titles in dev. If there were a market of any size left I don't think Walmart would ignore it.
So I guess it's either Steam or online purchases for whatever number of years PC gaming has left. Has anyone else noticed a similar trend in their local big box stores?
The PC Gaming section in this store used to be huge. It was a chest-high shelf maybe 20 feet long with a ton of games spanning the range from new and recent releases to older standards and CD compilations.
In the last year or so it has been shrinking pretty steadily, to where it was maybe six feet of shelf space. But at least the last time I was in there they had Far Cry 2. Today when I got to the rear of the store I couldn't find the PC section. Where it had been (right across from 40 feet of eight foot glass cases containing hundreds of console games) there were movies.
I hunted around in that aisle a bit, and I did find a row of 15 or 20 discount titles on a single shelf in a corner of one of the Wii sections. I also found a clerk and asked him where the PC games had gone. He directed me around the corner to a shelf maybe three feet wide with mostly empty space. It wasn't even in the entertainment media section with all the other games. It was in the batteries, accessories, and cameras section. There was no Far Cry 2. In fact there were very few new releases. Two copies of COD:WaW. A copy of the Oblivion GoY bundle. A couple of copies of COD4. Maybe 30 copies of CD compilations ("100,000 Games! Better than ever!"). There was a copy of DemiGod, and one of Sins of a Solar Empire. A few others.
I had already given up on Gamestop. All three of our local stores were down to just a few PC titles last time I was in them. Now it looks like Walmart is pretty much out of the business. I was already more or less convinced that PC gaming is dead, and this seems like a pretty clear indication of it. Doesn't really matter if there are still good titles in dev. If there were a market of any size left I don't think Walmart would ignore it.
So I guess it's either Steam or online purchases for whatever number of years PC gaming has left. Has anyone else noticed a similar trend in their local big box stores?