Lombardi hits back at the 'PC is dead' rhetoric by citing the recent successes of Valve's Steam platform, stating that Steam alone has seen growth of 150% year over year, not to mention the impressive and ever-increasing 15 million user plus install base. While those numbers look quite good, Lombardi was adamant that install base is not the best way to measure the success of the industry. Install base is only half the battle, "we continue to announce more titles coming day and date now, which is one of the last pieces of metrics we're using for judging the success and strength of the platform."
So with Steam doing a roaring trade on its own, how is it that the PC gaming scene is seen to be in such a downward spiral? Lombardi acknowledges that while the PC is taking a hammering in the retail store sector, inaccuracies in the sales numbers is also doing its part in the scare mongering. In particular he points the finger at NPD's market research, adamantly stating, "that totally ignores the money changing hands, and properties like World of Warcraft with their monthly subscriptions. That totally ignores Steam sales, and any other MMOs and online distribution systems and a host of others... it also ignores things like PopCap games. Peggle's not in that number…If you took Steam, Peggle, PopCap, WoW and mixed it with NPD numbers, the world looks a lot different. All of a sudden, it looks like PC's probably the biggest one, and year over year, the fastest-growing."
Jason Holtman, also notes that Steam distributes worldwide, and the NPD research only focused on sales figures in North America. Holtman states "our view of where PC gaming is across the world is very different than someone looking at North America's numbers."
Lombardi was very optimistic on his take of the state of the industry, "I can remember this story coming around in the mid '90s... and then 3D accelerator came out, and Carmack released that patch for GL Quake, and everybody shut up, because all of a sudden PlayStation looked like crap. There's a big shift about to come in the post-GPU space... all of a sudden PC will leapfrog what's going on on the consoles, in many other ways besides graphics."
Lombardi cites the astronomical cost of producing consoles as well as their tentative steps into the downloadable content arena as deterrents for console gaming. He notes that the PC is the big winner in the connectivity stakes because "the console guys are still trying to figure out how to release DLC, and are still not selling full new games [over digital networks]. I think at the end of the day there's going to be a continued group of people -- us, Blizzard, Epic -- committed to making great apps for PC."
On the business end, Holtman had a few things to say about new business models cropping up in the market. In particular he spoke at length about the play for free model that games like Battlefield Heroes is setting out to champion in the Western world.
The play for free model has already seen much success in territories like Asia - where game piracy is a rampant epidemic. The model has seen gamers quite happy to pay for micro-transactions to get their hands on the best in-game kit for a very small fee. He states that Valve is very aware of the business that the model is making and states that something like that model could be on the cards for Valve in the near future. "It's something we've always approached... you're going to see it slowly roll out, and we'll see how people react."
It seems that Valve's current partnership with Nexon in Asian territories such as China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan with Counter-Strike Online could prove to be a prudent means to gauge the waters of the micro-transaction model before a possible roll out across the entire Steam platform. Lombardi explains, "we feel that's a great place for us to learn, and Nexon is a company that has done it before, and so they're a good partner... it's in beta now, and over the years we'll take the learning from that and also work with other partners who want to bring games like that to North America via Steam."
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