Is it the stores fault?

[Bumbus]

This is sort of a response to another post concerning boycotting certain retail stores. It is my opinion that the PC gaming market is not failing do to any stores. I mean generally a store owner will try to stay in business by have what their “general“customers are asking for. If they use to stock PC games and they were seeing almost no store profit and little consumer interest in that area then it makes good business sense to change something.


I think there are a number of reasons for the decline in computer games, but I do not blame the place I purchase them.

[Harkoliar]

well i see a trend where you download your games nowadays if you really want the games. there are direct download websites now to download games.

[robertthebard]

The problem with direct downloads is that people with dial-up connections, yes there are some still around, can't get these games in anything like a reasonable amount of time. This effectively cuts out a percentage of potential customers.

I don't see the store as being responsible for a decrease in PC game sales though. This comes down more to publishers like Atari that push developers to release a game 6 months before it's ready.

NWN2 is a strong case for this. While it certainly wasn't the case for everybody. A large percentage of players on the Bioware provided boards for NWN2 are still having problems with the game. While some problems can be chalked up to hardware problems, not all of them can.

Bugged products don't do much to help the platform continue on. ToEE was another example, and I'm sure there were others, KoTOR 2, perhaps? Rushed to get on the shelves before they are ready, people start blaming the industry, whether or not that's the actual problem.

However, availability is another problem. If the consumer can't get the product, then it won't sell, and companies will see a loss on them. My last stop at EB games, they had one two sided shelf in an aisle, with a total of eight shelves, only 4 feet tall, and about three feet wide with PC games on them, and one side of that was used games. In an instance like this, yes, it is the store's fault that they aren't selling any games, when fully half the content is "The Sims", and similar games. You have to play to the market share, as was pointed out in the OP, and if the market share isn't playing "The Sims", you're not going to sell many games.