Profitability has become a problem for companies that choose to manufacture PC games. They just are not selling enough copies because of how easy it is to pirate games. By downloading and replacing several files in a game you can get it to run regardless of if you have the CD. With the increasing problem of pirating and the ease of which that is done on the PC platform developers are starting to migrate. The console platform has become all the rage with Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, and PlayStation 3 having major success in recent years. PC game developers are claiming its too hard to protect their interests and assets by making products that can be copied and distributed easily without obtaining any revenue.
I inherently prefer computer games because that is where I believe the user has more control via a keyboard and mouse then a controller. I also believe that computer games have the ability to have a higher level or quality through size, complexity, or visual depth. So now that I have briefed you on the problem led me introduce you to what I believe is one of the solutions for the PC gaming industry's problem; Steam Power.
Steam was started by a gaming company called Valve which is a game developer. Steam is a Pure Play retailer for PC gaming that exists only over the internet. Steam is not limited to just selling Valve products, more and more companies like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and Rockstar have signed on to allow their PC games to be sold through Valve's Steam retailer. Steam exists solely over internet and has no storefront making it a pure play retailer like Amazon or iTunes.
Steam is basically iTunes for games. What makes Steam so special in my opinion is that I think it can solve the pirating problem for PC gaming.
Steam like Amazon and iTunes fight against more traditional retailers like Best Buy and GameStop, but also against other pure play retailers on the web. Steam's web business model is like iTunes, the merchant model that is a bit vendor selling products that are sent by being compiled into bits of data and transmitted to you through the internet. What makes Steam better then both iTunes and other pure play gaming retailers is the availability and mobility of their platform. You can access all formerly purchased products at any time from any computer with Steam. iTunes only downloads to a designated computer and provide no backedup history of purchase.
What makes Steam so great is that it is more then just a pure play online merchant. The site is also a progam that you download. This is Valve's Steams competitive advantage, it acts as a base program launcher for all your games. The site's store and community is basically the same as in the program but just an extension. Steam is just like iTunes because it is a program and player that is a vendor and not just a website. Steam also has aspects of a community business model through its social networking properties. It gives users access to a user generated community.
Everyone who buys or plays games through Steam must have an account. A user can log into his account on any computer with Steam. From that profile the user can download and play any game that he has bought or registered with Steam onto any computer. This is the reason that I think the solution to piracy is in this program, everyone is registered. All of this helps to feed the Steam user community and provide plenty of metrics to calculate success in sales. The Steam user community is like social networking for gamers. There are user created groups, user profiles with personal gaming information, like what are the users recently played games and how long has he played, friends can also be displayed.
Since everything is digital and interconnected, it all can be tracked by Valve to evaluate Steam's success and profit viability. Using Steam and other web analytics Valve can learn how long users play games they have bought, what they look at in the store, and anything else they could want. Steam provides a platform for gaming and a community which makes it easy to quantify results because people are usually on in one respect or another. Even in the user is not playing a game they usually log into Steam and it runs in background. The main metric I would use is tracking the length of time that users who bought games from Steam played them, also the general amount of time spent in games makes users easy to profile. You can also look at time played, what games people looked at in the store versus actually purchasing it. Those kinds of percentages can really help companies refine sales techniques even online.
This program can be the solution to the piracy problem because it registers everyone. All games sold are registered with a specific user account. One account can only be active on one computer at a time. There are no CD keys to enter no companies to register with Steam allows you to download, update, and play. This is the future for PC gaming retail sales in my opinion.
