Not exactly. There are now a lot less PC games produced every year, and instead there are fewer but much larger hits (courtesy of the scale of the PC market globally).
The peak of the PC gaming world was Windows 95 to Windows XP (2003/2005 time frame). Shareware was extraordinarily popular and accessible during the first part of that, and the Internet had made downloads / patches / updates / modding possible in the last part. Meanwhile consoles began to present increasingly superior accessibility to casual gamers while providing enough of the eye candy to satisfy many serious gamers.
You'll find the lopsided majority of those hits occurred during the 1995-2005 era. The biggest hits however, are since then. The PC gaming market has simply become smaller and consolidated to a few hit franchises.
I don't see a significant difference here. There are about seven elements per year on that list. There are a handful of years during the recession where there are fewer top sellers, but 2011 had just as much as any of the earlier years, and many of the games from 2012 probably are still selling in large quantities today.
This also doesn't account for the rise of free to play gaming on PC. The most popular video game in the history of the world isn't on this list at all.
Also, fatally, digital sales are not factored into these numbers. There's this thing called Steam . . .
34 of those games were released after 2005. 79 were released in the 1995 / 2005 time frame. So those ten years averaged 7.9 per year; the seven years after averaged five per year. It's a nearly 60% increase per year.
In my opinion digital PC game sales would do nothing but tip the scale toward my point about the PC gaming market consolidating into just a few mega hit franchises that generate all the sales while the volume of games has significantly contracted. In PC gaming there are maybe ten titles that matter, such as WoW or Sims. In console gaming, there are over 100 titles a year that sell 1 million or more copies.
Free to play PC gaming is a very small market still. The Sims 2 alone made more money than the entire free-to-play market combined did in the previous four years. That may change in the next few years, but it doesn't change the facts that exist right now.
Four of the top five on that list are from 2004 or earlier. Meanwhile of course total console game sales have exploded to the moon during that time.
First of all, would you mind showing me the sales data from Steam? No? Then how do you intend to use that as part of your argument exactly?
Which game on steam has sold 11 million copies on the service, like Starcraft did at retail? 20 million like Sims 2? 9 million like Half-life 1? 12 million like Half-life 2? I'd wager it's not even remotely close.
It's my opinion that Steam is moving a mid number of high priced new releases, and a lot more lower priced discounted games (eg buying Shogun for $9.99 or Torchlight 2 for $9.99 during discounts). A quick look through their top 50 best selling reveals the strong majority are $20 or less, with many being $11.99 or less. Is Steam popular? Of course, but what does that have to do with whether the PC gaming market has consolidated into a few hit franchises with less total games produced per year?
Yes, with the gap for the recession, that makes perfect sense to me. Also, you're forgetting that as sample size decreases variance increases. The ten year sample is larger than the six year sample (2006-2011) that you've set up. I expect variance.
Also, I count only 73 in ['95,'05). Are you counting ['95,'05]? That's 11 years. 7.3 per year is really not that different from 4.8/yr (29 in ['06,'12)), which includes two to three years of recession.
As for this:
> First of all, would you mind showing me the sales data from Steam? No? Then how do you intend to use that as part of your argument exactly?
I'm not interested in winning a debate with you, I'm just trying to demonstrate what's true to any fair-minded people reading this. If you want to pretend that Steam sales didn't account for a huge portion of all PC games sold, and therefore that the PC sales are extraordinarily under-represented in the last few years of this chart, be my guest. It's only yourself that you're deceiving.
List is also kind of misleading in regards that many games do not release individual sales based on systems anymore so they cannot be accurately listed (and are omitted). For example, Deus Ex: Human Revolution sold at least 2 million copies[1] since it came out 2 years ago and a large % were probably PC based on it being a PC franchise.
It's also generally better to buy on steam directly versus physical copies to avoid headaches (usually cheaper as well if you catch steam seasonal sales). I can understand not doing that if you preorder for some special items though. That and to always make sure the game does not come with some sort of other annoying DRM that is not listed[2].
I'd argue that the second half of the 1990's was actually something of a bubble. 3D-ness and CD-ROM's were the hot new thing, and everyone tried to make their games 3D, increase polygon counts and texture resolutions, add cutscenes, fill an entire CD with assets -- which meant bloated art and development budgets, and a loss of focus on innovation.
In short, new 3D and storage technology, dotcom-era funding of big publishing conglomerates, those conglomerates' control of retail channels, and a lack of alternative distribution for smaller developers, led to an unusually large number of big-budget games.
IMHO gaming's "natural" state is more similar to the era c. 1975-1995, where small studios and innovative gameplay were a big part of the industry.
There's still a market segment today for big-budget "A" titles, but c. 1997-2005 was the heyday.
Anyone in the world who can make a game now has affordable access to a number of digital distribution and payment channels like Steam, Gamersgate, Android/Apple Apps, Facebook, HTML5, or plain old downloads on a website with payment provided by Paypal/Stripe/Dwolla/Amazon/Google Checkout/Bitcoin [1]. There are plenty of open-source and commercial tools and libraries for developing games. This means individual developers and startups can enter the industry relatively freely, with minimal upfront costs, can restore innovation to its rightful place, and can exert downward price pressure with their small costs.
I believe the number of games/developers/publishers in the ecosystem is larger than it ever was [citation needed], as is the revenue of the industry as a whole [citation needed], but A-list console and PC titles have given up a fair amount of ground to the "long tail" of modestly successful indie games.
[1] 1990's connection speeds, and the pesky business of tying up telephone lines for hours or days during long downloads, made yesterday's Internet an unappealing distribution platform.
The peak of the PC gaming world was Windows 95 to Windows XP (2003/2005 time frame). Shareware was extraordinarily popular and accessible during the first part of that, and the Internet had made downloads / patches / updates / modding possible in the last part. Meanwhile consoles began to present increasingly superior accessibility to casual gamers while providing enough of the eye candy to satisfy many serious gamers.
If you go down through this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_video_g...
You'll find the lopsided majority of those hits occurred during the 1995-2005 era. The biggest hits however, are since then. The PC gaming market has simply become smaller and consolidated to a few hit franchises.