While plenty of gamers seem to enjoy drinking to the death of PC gaming, I won’t be the first to point out that their kool-aid typically consists only of lackluster retail sales figures, with little or no thought towards digital distribution or the all-important subscription revenues of blockbusters like World of Warcraft. But starting this year, the NPD is tracking subscriptions as well; and today they estimated that combining MMO, casual and console services, U.S. game subscriptions contribute $1 billion annually. Does this give us a definitive answer regarding the health of PC gaming?
In a word, no — although it certainly helps.
“Now that NPD can estimate the value of the subscription market,” said NPD analyst Anita Frazier, “it’s clear that there is a sizable chunk of revenue being generated by PC gaming beyond what is reflected in retail sales.”
It’s definitely quite a chunk of change… and if that $1 billion were entirely spent on PC titles, then the PC software market as measured by NPD would at least be closing in on handheld software, estimated at $2 billion (pay no attention to the 14% figure in the link, it’s inaccurate.) But without knowing what percentage of the billion is actually attributable to PC users and what percentage to console services like Xbox Live, it’s very difficult to say whether subscriptions make much of a dent in the current balance of power. On this distinction, NPD was unavailable to comment by the time of publication.
Their release also included a list of the most popular MMOs and casual gaming destinations, ordered by subscription units, as follows:
MMO/PC Game Subscribers
1) World of Warcraft
2) RuneScape
3) Lord of the Rings Online
4) Final Fantasy XI
5) City of Heroes
Gaming Website Subscribers
1) Pogo.com
2) Realarcade.com
3) Bigfishgames.com
4) Gametap.com
5) Disney.com
Tags: casual gaming, mmo, NPD, Online, pc gaming, research, statistics, subscription, WoW
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