The Numbers

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Wednesday, February 27, 2013, 14:01 (4073 days ago)

There must be something I am not seeing.

First, the decision to require an internet connection cuts out literally 75% of the people who own current gen consoles. I am not kidding, because as of last year, I believe it was the NPD that said 75% of current gen game consoles are never taken online. That's a huge chunk of potential players that are out of the picture. Destiny has been in development for how long? I have no doubt it's going to be 100+ million. How are enough people going to buy it?!

Second, since they've already decided to go with the always connected model, not making a PC version seems insane. You have China and South Korea, both of which are huge markets for MMO or 'Shared World' games as Bungie wants to call it. Several MMOFPS games are popular in Korea. Software piracy is pretty much non existent for these types of games due to the connection requirement, and thus since they are popular, they are pretty lucrative. Console gaming is not popular in Korea, and I believe consoles can;t even be sold in China, so keeping the game console only seems maddening unless for some reason they don't think they can get this market.

Lastly, if you look at the numbers, console revenue has been declining steadily, while PC revenue has been rising, actually eclipsing and passing console revenue. So, the PC is where the money's at, and the console is on it's way out. Why stay excusively on this sinking ship?

If I had to guess, the only thing I can come up with is that due to the way XBL and PSN servers work, that the cost of support (which is any MMO's biggest expense) could possibly be quite low compared to that of a PC release, sustainable by the retail price and DLC packs.