All About the Benjamins

by ShadowOfTheVoid , South Carolina, Thursday, May 02, 2013, 01:59 (4004 days ago) @ Cody Miller

Let's see. Since 2006 console sales have been declining (and PC sales have been going up). I don't recall aggressive microtransactions in many, if any, games prior to 2005. People hate them.

So putting 2 and 2 together… is it possible that sales are slumping because people are tired of this microtransaction DLC bullshit that's common on consoles, but NOT on the PC?

It seems to me that it is not that successful from that perspective. Do they have anything to do with one another? I don't know, but it's not impossible.

2006? I think your numbers are a bit off. The Wii's annual hardware sales numbers didn't peak until 2008 and the PS3 didn't peak until like 2010 and the 360 not until 2011. I haven't done the math (and I'm not including the DS or PSP here), but total annual console sales for this generation peaked in 2009. That total consoles sales are declining is perfectly normal. As I explained a few weeks ago, the console market is cyclical. The transition period from one generation to another is always a low point. New systems always start off with slow sales, then sales pick up speed, peak several years after launch (usu. 2-3; the PS3 and 360 are outliers in that they peaked 5 and 6 years after their launches), and start to decline, and then the next generation starts to renew the cycle. All told, more consoles have been sold during this past generation than in any prior generation (254 million vs. 211 million combined for all four sixth-gen consoles). Console sales are declining because nearly everyone who wants any of them has bought them. If the normal pattern holds — and it has held for every post-crash generation — console sales will start to rebound by the end of next year and reach their next peak somewhere about 2015-2016.

Given the cyclical nature of the console market, the rise of microtransaction-based DLC is obviously not a cause of the decline in sales, but it might be a symptom of it (or the two phenomena may be unrelated entirely). While DLC for console titles emerged during the sixth generation, it was the seventh generation that really saw it take off; you not only didn't see microtransactions before 2005, you didn't see much if any DLC at all for console games (the first Halo 2 map packs, which are the first notable pieces of console DLC I'm aware of, were released in April 2005). Microtransactions are just the latest evolution of DLC, and like all DLC is, at least in principle, created to generate more revenue to compensate for increased development costs and declining inflation-adjusted retail prices of software ("AAA" games can cost 100 times more to develop than their 16-bit counterparts, whereas in the past 20 years, inflation-adjusted game prices have declined by upwards of 50%). Whether said type of DLC is actually worthwhile and benefits the customer is another question altogether. We can argue the relative merits of microtransactions and other forms of DLC all day long, but it is clear that none of it is to blame for declining console sales. Console sales always start to decline several years into a generation, and the PS3 and 360 experienced steady growth long after the typical peak.