Why AAA games are way more succesful in consoles than PC?

[Summer Nightmares]

This is something I've been wondering a lot lately, especially with Sony porting more and more games to Steam. Why is it that big productions usually only sell a couple hundred thousand units and struggle to hit a million unit sales? I think the most successful port is HZD that sold a little over 2 millions copies... still multiple times less than consoles.

Why do you think this happen?

Why the only games that can reach millions of players on pc are games like League of Legends, Counter Strike, DOTA, Team Fortress, etc?

Why is there such a profitable market of high end gpu and cpus if the only popular games are multiplayer games designed to run on low specs computers?

 

[Vertigo]

Monster Hunter World and Elden Ring would say otherwise.

Real answer tho? Pc gamers are pirates and thieves.

Devs are also aware of this. They need consoles.

 

[BlueLyria]

I can't properly reply to all questions with certainty, but most of the games you mentioned are free to play.
I think it comes down to most of these popular games being able to be played in low spec pcs, the lack of subscriptions for online and that you can still purchase and play games even if your pc can't properly handle it ( low spec gamer has some real good videos in game tweaking), so that ends up giving pc a longer lifetime than a console.

Edit : my apologies, I hadn't properly read your last point as well.
The enthusiast market + the people who get these gpus for work or mining (even though mining isn't as popular anymore)

 

[Systemshock2023]

Monster Hunter World and Elden Ring would say otherwise.

Real answer tho? Pc gamers are pirates and thieves.

Devs are also aware of this. They need consoles.

Are we in 2008? That excuse does not apply anymore. Tell that to Sony and MS they seem to go the extra mile for that PC revenue. Japanese third parties as well

Real answer is that console game sales are typically a lot more frontloaded than PC sales while PC games keep selling on the long run.

But PC games almost get no marketing, while marketing spend for console AAA games is as big as the games budget at times.

Console sales are way stronger in certain genres like sports games though (FIFA, Madden, NBA)

 

[Vertigo]

Well no piracy has only gotten worse over the years.

The supplementary pc revenue for 2-3 year old ports is way passed any concerns of a risky launch when those games already finished their runs.

Online games do well because they can’t steal em.

 

[Zzero]

Huh, big games still sell on PC. What they need to do so is day and date releases and non-gimped ports. Preferably a reworked UI, too.

Edit: Unless you mean Sony specifically. In that case meh, either the experiment has failed or there's 4D chess going on.

 

[Muddasar]

Piracy.

No DRM on offline Sony PC ports is a recipe for disaster.

The day and date excuse is bullshit.

Release Half Life Alyx on Playstation and it will sell millions. Probably even outsell the PC version.

 

[BlueLyria]

Release Half Life Alyx on Playstation and it will sell millions. Probably even outsell the PC version.

I doubt it, most of the people interested in VR are on PC, but I think it will be a PSVR system seller

 

[JAHGamer]

Monster Hunter World and Elden Ring would say otherwise.

Real answer tho? Pc gamers are pirates and thieves.

Devs are also aware of this. They need consoles.

Both MHW and Elden Ring sold best on PlayStation

Better examples would be games made by studios like Bethesda, Blizzard, and CDPR games sell best on PC because they're PC first studios. Baldurs Gate 3, Diablo 4, Starfield will all do significantly better on PC than consoles this year. But most other games sell best on console (PlayStation)

 

[Vertigo]

I’m sure they did but Elden Ring, Monster Hunter World and Hogwarts all did extremely well on steam where most “console” games do not. This is unlike Resident Evil 4 and most other releases where there isn’t comparative success.

 

[JAHGamer]

Why the only games that can reach millions of players on pc are games like League of Legends, Counter Strike, DOTA, Team Fortress, etc?

Why is there such a profitable market of high end gpu and cpus if the only popular games are multiplayer games designed to run on low specs computers?

Real PC gamers don't care about traditional single player games, they're into e sports/mmo type games and stuff like Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, Total War, Age of Empires, etc.

The big shift to PC gaming the last few years is mainly Xbox kids who realized their consoles were useless and hopped on to PC for the superior Xbox experience. Thats why so many "PC gamers" HATE PlayStation gamers, they're just xbox fanboys larping as PC guys. You never used to see PC gamers so active in the console wars until Xbox started doing day and date on PC.

 

[Muddasar]

I doubt it, most of the people interested in VR are on PC, but I think it will be a PSVR system seller

Point still being that this day and date excuse PC gamers bring up is nonsense.

Why does it matter how old a game is if you haven’t played and it has never released on your platform?

 

[JAHGamer]

I’m sure they did but Elden Ring, Monster Hunter World and Hogwarts all did extremely well on steam where most “console” games do not. This is unlike Resident Evil 4 and most other releases where there isn’t comparative success.

In general, Hogwarts and Elden Ring are successful because they're piggybacking off of wildly successful authors (JK Rowling and George RR Martin). Idk why Monster Hunter is successful, that game is a snoozefest but I guess it fits the PC criteria of multiplayer with tons of replayability, and it also has an MMO feel to it.

 

[Pey]

As someone who publishes news targeted for a Latin American audience, I see comments and 9 out of 10 say "it's already cracked" or "green steam" (utorrent), so I'd say piracy is the main issue, at least on this side of the globe. A PC user will often pirate a game if they can, no matter how good it is. Then they might buy it at 75-90% off if they have the money, but it's quite clear that most PC gamers feel entitled to pirate a game just because they spend money on their PC and internet. It's both a cultural thing and an economic issue that goes hand in hand, sadly. I don't blame them because a $70 game is like 1/5 of a salary in most countries, and Valve did nothing to prevent regional price abuse. It's no wonder Latin America represents like 5% of worldwide sales. I can't speak for people who live in the US or first world European countries and earn enough to purchase 5 or 6 AAA games per month, but even then, there's a high chance an average PC user can find a torrent within seconds, or just ask a friend to find it for him.

 

[JAHGamer]

As someone who publishes news targeted for a Latin American audience, I see comments and 9 out of 10 say "it's already cracked" or "green steam" (utorrent), so I'd say piracy is the main issue, at least on this side of the globe. A PC user will often pirate a game if they can, no matter how good it is. Then they might buy it at 75-90% off if they have the money, but it's quite clear that most PC gamers feel entitled to pirate a game just because they spend money on their PC and internet. It's both a cultural thing and an economic issue that goes hand in hand, sadly. I don't blame them because a $70 game is like 1/5 of a salary in most countries, and Valve did nothing to prevent regional price abuse. It's no wonder Latin America represents like 5% of worldwide sales. I can't speak for people who live in the US or first world European countries and earn enough to purchase 5 or 6 AAA games per month, but even then, there's a high chance an average PC user can find a torrent within seconds, or just ask a friend to find it for him.

"green steam" is hilarious this is also the case in places like Eastern Europe (Balkan countries) and India, where piracy is the norm and in some circles you're even frowned upon for buying a game. But I don't blame them when the prices of games and PC parts are ridiculous relative to their currency. Money is much harder to make and the price of PC parts is sometimes 2-3x what they cost in the US/Western Europe.

I had a friend from Bulgaria take a trip to the UK to buy PC parts, and with the cost of a round trip flight and hotel included, his PC build was still much cheaper than if he had bought it all in Bulgaria.

 

[anonpuffs]

My perspective, being a PC gamer for most of my life.

Firstly, most people who play on PC are only playing one game. Be it WoW, be it League of Legends, Dota, fortnite, minecraft, be it CS:Go or Team Fortress.
Secondly, people who play on PC value control. That's why they have PCs - because they want to control how they interact with their content. They like PC because they like to customize things to their precise liking. Fiddling with settings, tuning sensitivity, playing with mods, precise inputs with mouse and keyboard. AAA console games (especially the linear Sony kind) tend to not be that.
Thirdly, because PC gamers are cheapskates. AAA gaming died on PC initially because of piracy, and then years of steam sales have indoctrinated them into never paying full price for anything except their favorite franchises e.g. diablo. AAA games that you extract the value out of in 20-30 hours (i.e. story-centric games) are seen as bad value. Also why they tend to gravitate to multiplayer games as there's a lot of replayability there.
Fourthly, because the number of PC players who actually own rigs that are capable of running modern AAAs is a fraction of the overall playerbase.

 

[KnittedKnight]

Console user install base is around 300 million between Xbox, Nintendo and the PlayStation ecosystem. That install base are mainly consumers from G7 countries with disposable income. All of those consumers have a desired intent, inside a closed system to spend money on gaming. Result = those consumers drive the premium games industry because they're the main bulk of the addressable market. PC Windows Gaming is still chaos, only alleviated by Valve's Steam, Epic Games Store, and the other store launchers that brought some semblance of order - it also killed physical releases on PC. Piracy is rampant.

The "sell more over the long-term" talking point that some PC fanboys have grabbed tight to their chest since Capcom made a comment and somehow generalize that to every other dev/publisher on the planet is funny as hell. A publisher will grab a $60/$70 sale over a $10/$15 sale any day of the week. In one you get about a $30-$40 margin, on the other you're talking about $6-10. How many 6-10 fit into 30-40? You're also not getting immediate returns and businesses that depend on revenue from scheduled releases are not structured for what if's - trickle bit by bit over the long haul revenue.

Console consumers provide high and fast turn-over for titles supported in a release schedule - more competition by default, and winners and losers established almost instantly by the markets reaction to the product released (game). There is a reason this industry has flourished under the reign of consoles, starting with the Nintendo Entertainment System. It didn't flourish because of PC, and MS Windows Gaming - they're a complementary market, a sidepiece. PC Windows Gaming golden age came, imo, with the MMO age of the early 2000s. Once MMO's hit that brick wall in so far as gameplay innovation/ideas and much later monetization strategies, that was it for any potential, however slim, of PC Windows Gaming guiding the industry forward and becoming somehow the standard bearer that consoles are: PlayStation ecosystem being that for hardcore and tech, while Nintendo for the casuals and on the go. MS has tried, at great and considerable financial costs to themselves, with the Xbox trojan horse, to keep consoles from drifting apart from the PC Windows Gaming development standards environment, with considerable success - but the cost is heavy, and without it, if left to its own devices, PC would be sinking much faster and harder, akin to the console domination of the market during the PS1-PS2 days. It's not a natural market reaction - it's an artificially buoyed one. Mission accomplished nonetheless.

People often don't know what they have until they lose it. Console market fundamentals aka Premium Gaming has made gaming what it's today. Gamers who foolishly think PC Windows Gaming should somehow become the dominant platform have absolutely no idea how that would change consumption patterns and how that translates to the type of games made as devs ultimately respond to money. If Piracy is a concern - DRM or online-only MP games become the incentivized model because thats were the monetization will come from and where less piracy/cheat is. GAAS is already a problem on consoles over traditional titles, it would only get worse with PC at the head. You get a Witcher 3/Cyberpunk/GTA because consoles make that happen $$$.

The problem with consoles will continue to be the Asian market (foremost). The Asian market is open to PC/Phones but consoles are completely out of sight. That market is a critical growth sector. The Chinese allow PC/Phones but cock-block Console gaming - you can see the problem $$$. Also Sony and Nintendo's effort in the establishing of a console market, with a console like pattern of consumption for Asian countries outside Japan (with their futile attempts to enter China included), are pathetic to say the least. S.Korea and Indonesia are no-brainers. The tariff problem for the Brazilian market is also disadvantageous to console gaming, and not PC/Phones to the same extent. All the emerging markets are a problem for console gaming more or less and it has to do with both politics and Sony's/Nintendo's/Japanese government lack of effort/investment and lobbying. In the emerging markets outside the G7, nothing happens on its own. PC/Phones are multi-purpose, critical economy devices and thus get a pass and/or softer touch. Consoles do not enjoy that privilage as gaming dedicated devices.

 

[FatKaz]

Doesn't take much to sail the high seas.

 

[Nhomnhom]

PC player mostly only like to pay for online games that they can't just pirate.

Diablo 4 shows up with always online DRM and you don't hear a bit, any single player game featuring Denuvo will become a target. Single player AAA games like the Sony one that don't use Denuvo or other strong DRM get pirated like nothing else.

Sadly F2P or paid GaaS are the perfect monetization strategy for PC, since it's much harder for someone to pirate a server and a community.

 

[flaccidsnake]

PC games sell really well which is why MS and Sony are both making money off it with their exclusives. Diablo4 reportedly sold 60% on Battle.net. PC software regularly outsells Xbox. Playstation sells great, and is usually #1 because it should be. It's an easy, convenient way to play AAA games. Gaming on Windows is a pain in the ass.