Gamasutra has written an article where they take a look at Valve's retail sales numbers and ponder how much those numbers are boosted by digital distribution on Steam.
Quote:
Combined, the published retail figures total 32.8 million units sold -- 36.4 million to 36.7 million if Left 4 Dead projections are included.
On their face, they appear to suggest a downward trend in sales from marquee title to marquee title, taking into account Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and The Orange Box (Counter-Strike sales are harder to usefully quantify in this manner due to the game's original mod status and its spread across multiple versions).
However, following the release of Half-Life 2, Valve's pace of releases quickened dramatically. There has been at least one significant new release each year, not including reissues -- with the arguable exception of 2005, which saw the release of Day of Defeat: Source, whose statistics were not released.
Furthermore, and quite notably, the published statistics do not include sales from digital distribution, which is known to be an increasingly weighty subset of Valve's overall revenue -- and, of course, it delivers higher profit margins.
Steam has been my PC gaming home base for quite a while now.
No one but Valve knows. The article has an estimate that Steam releases pull in 25% the numbers their retail compatriots do, but even if that were true, it doesn't account for the higher profit margin on Steam.
__________________
Gamertag:W0rldcrafter (Yeah, that's a zero)
Wii code:4538-6966-3727-5903
I can't edit but I meant it is 2 or 3 to 1 right now. Probably Half-Life 2 has outsold or nearly outsold Half-life 1, but a lot of sales where in digital format, including MANY orange boxes, I think. I bought it through orange box.
And left 4 dead may as well have sold 3 or 4 to 1 digital compared to retail. Of course, all of this is what I think based on the people I know and the people I know through internet, most have digital distribution instead of retail
