Topic: Is my math wrong here?

[idolminds]

More stupid console vs PC crap that I felt the need to respond to. One thing I never understood was when someone says "Yeah well console sales are much higher than PC sales!"

Like...what the fuck? You're facing one platform against 3 last gen consoles, 3 next gen consoles, and the handhelds (DS, GBA, PSP)? So I went to investigate. I couldn't find individual platform numbers for 2006, so I'm using rough math based on this article and this article.

PS whenever I say "sales", I mean "revenues"....sales is easier to type.

$13.5 billion total gaming sales in 2006. This includes PC games.

PC game sales was $970 million, leaving $12.5 billion for the console side. This is where people stop looking and shows how the PC sucks...but lets keep digging.

First consider the PC numbers do not include games sold via digital distribution (Steam, Direct2Drive, PopCap and the billions of other casual game sites) nor does it include revenue from MMO subscription fees. WoW alone pulls in $1.5 billion dollars a year for Blizzard. Not all is profit obviously, but thats a shit-ton of money any way you slice it. Thats just one MMO.

The article then breaks things down further. They separate hardware from software sales, showing $6.5 billion for console software sales in 2006. This was broken down further:

$4.8 billion for consoles
$1.7 billion for portables

I can't find any articles that get any more specific. But that means we have $1.7 billion split between 3 platforms (DS, PSP, GBA...thats probably going from most to least sales), and $4.8 billion split between 6 consoles (PS2, PS3, Gamecube, Wii, Xbox, Xbox 360). Obviously some will sell more than others...I imagine the GC isn't high on the list, and the PS3/Wii are both so new and only available since Nov. Still...when you look at it like that the PC isn't that far behind in sales after all. If they included MMO subs and digital sales I bet it puts up some very respectable figures.

[Quemaqua]

Indeed, this is an argument that I and many others have been making for a while now.  I totally agree, and you put it well.  Although it seems to me that I recently heard rumblings of someone starting to include online sales in their reports.  I honestly can't remember.

[Jedi]

You know I never thought of that, when they say console sales versus PC its like ~6 to 1 
Talk about stacking the deck there!
But I guess if the article or argument was about the platforms then that does make sense as all console are on one platform and the PC being on the other. So while showing the revenue of platform sales is valid in a discussion regarding the platforms you would need to factor in the fact that its roughly 6 to 1 in order not skew the point or the data shown.