Raj Agrawal

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It’s Not Even Funny How Badly Reported PC Game Sales Are

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Lately we are seeing the resurgence of PC gaming. Microsoft has finally admitted that it ignored the PC platform for too long. Every game publisher is pushing out more and more games on the PC. The question is, why? Last month, a gaming website reported that PC games sell more than games on Xbox One. To be honest, it sounds a bit made up. And it sounds made up because we don’t have numbers. For consoles, there are numbers thrown around everywhere. For PC’s, everybody is hush on how much they actually sold.

Gabe Newell
Such sales, much steam. Wow.

Steam is supposed to be the holy grail of PC gaming. These days, the number of active users on Steam peaks at around 9 million. 9 MILLION! And they say Steam makes 1 billion dollars a year. So where are the numbers? Well, they don’t release any. But there are sources. SteamSpy monitors traffic on Steam, to tell us how well a particular game is selling. Their data (while it may be off) is never far from the truth. And just going through their top 100 list of games sold on Steam shows some shocking numbers. I made a list of the top games that sold very well on PC, and whose numbers were never ever reported.

  • Far Cry 3 – 2.6 million copies
  • Tomb Raider (2013) – 3.2 million copies
  • The Witcher 2 : Assassins of kings – 3.4 million copies
  • Dark Souls : Prepare to Die edition – 2 million copies
  • Dishonored : 2.2 million copies
  • GTA 4 – 3.7 million copies
  • GTA 5 – 2.6 million copies (in 2 months. This one will hit 5 million)
  • XCOM : Enemy Unknown – 2.8 million copies
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum (GOTY edition) – 2.2 million copies
  • Batman : Arkham City – 2.6 million copies
  • Bioshock: Infinite – 3.7 million copies
  • Bioshock – 2.9 million copies
  • Mirrors Edge – 2.5 million copies
  • Borderlands 2 : 5.1 million copies
  • Fallout New Vegas : 3.8 million copies
  • The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim – 9.3 million copies (Sold very well on PC)
  • Left for Dead 2 : 13 million copies (Yes, millions of copies just on Steam)

One interesting thing to note is that, Skyrim has sold almost 4 million physical copies in addition to almost 9.5 million copies just on Steam. If you go to VGChartz and see their numbers, you’ll get an impression that PC gaming is dead. It’s like an underworld Mafia -looking poor from the outside, but running a very healthy business without anyone ever knowing. This is one thing gamers and game developers deserve to know.

I can’t imagine what the poor numbers will look like to a startup that is contemplating making a PC game. Having an accurate idea about what’s what is the only thing that can give these ambitious developers the confidence they need.

Game Reviews Are Becoming Polarizing And Unrealistic

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Game reviews have been all over the place lately. There was a time when scores were in a range that gave gamers a fair idea of how a game will be. On a scale of 100, games in the low 60s were trash and the ones in the high 90s were godly. Seeing a game get a 95 on multiple sites was a pleasure to watch. Most gaming sites these days are split on the review parameters. For instance, take a look at Alien Isolation. IGN gave the game a 5.5/10, while Gamespot gave it a 6. Yet the game has a Metacritic user average of 84/100.

alien isolation
Poster – Alien Isolation

Metacritic users are extremely unforgiving when it comes to games. Even a single bug can garner a lot of unwarranted ratings that can bring the whole score down. But 84/100 is solid however you look at it.

The giveaway is that gamers loved it, and reviewers didn’t. The question is, who would you give more credibility? I played Isolation and loved it. The game is more terrifying than it had any right to be. And that set it apart from any other game of 2014. The Evil Within was supposed to be THE horror game to make you defecate your pants, but it ended up leaving just a slightly uneasy feeling in my stomach. And yet it got an 87/100 from IGN. Which brings me to my point about parameters.

the evil within
Poster – The Evil Within

Reviewers should define a set of parameters, and should keep changing them with the changing trends in the market. You cannot review Killzone 3 and Half Life 1 with the same reviewing standards. In the same way, a person who does not love slow paced strategy games cannot possibly give an unbiased review of a slow paced action RPG like Dark Souls. Every Gaming publication should define personas and then only allow people to review games who fall under a particular persona. That way, at the very least we might start seeing realistic reviews.

Oculus Rift Got Tested. Here Are Some Epic Reactions.

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Oculus Rift is a gaming device with a head mounted display, powered by a revolutionary head-tracking technology that enables view transitioning with no noticeable latency. In order to use Oculus Rift, it has to be worn on face to experience a stream of virtual reality environment in a ‘highly immersive manner’, well let’s say – almost realistically. As a matter of fact, Oculus Rift quickly gained support with it’s instantaneous funding at a Kickstarter campaign on 1 August 2012. This is one of the most awaited upcoming augmented reality devices. 

So quite recently, the developer version of Oculus Rift was experimented with a number of people, and the reactions recorded were surprisingly similar.  Sit back, relax and enjoy some of the best reactions videos collected from YouTube, below!