20th January 2014, 7:18 PM
Box size might seem to be a minor thing, but the fact is, PC gaming started to decline right about exactly at the time of the switchover to smaller boxes in the early '00s. It might be better to say that that the switchover happened was a sign of the decline, though, rather than a cause. That is, the core reasons for the decline are that Microsoft's move over to Xbox and their pushing PC game developers onto consoles, at a time when rising budgets led companies to search for more revenue from more platforms and MMOs were taking more and more money and time from the market. And as the market weakened, retailers, Wal-Mart most prominently, pushed for smaller boxes so that they could fit more PC games into a smaller space in their store... and it happened. i don't think it's a cooincidence that that changeover only happened AFTER the PC gaming market started to falter, not before. Had the PC gaming market still been as strong as it had been through the '90s, I don't know that Wal-Mart's push would have been a success as it was... but the market was slipping, so sadly they won.
And yes, I think it helped make things even worse, since with smaller manuals and less extra materials, PC games couldn't have quite as much stuff in the box as they had had before. Sure many games didn't make use of that, but some did, and it was great. With less of that, and increasingly large amounts of console-game influence coming in at the same time, gradually the uniqueness of PC games got worn down, outside of European games, which come from a region where PC retail never died off as it did here. Their boxes did shrink, but they didn't see the rest of the collapse that we did. So no, shrinking boxes alone didn't cause this, but I do think it was a sign of trouble, and I definitely think that it hurt PC gaming to not have large manuals, larger maps, etc. in the box anymore. For games as complex as PC games often are, digital manuals often aren't as good; you often want to refer to the manual while you're playing, which is inconvenient if you have to do that in a game menu or external PDF or something.
And yes, I think it helped make things even worse, since with smaller manuals and less extra materials, PC games couldn't have quite as much stuff in the box as they had had before. Sure many games didn't make use of that, but some did, and it was great. With less of that, and increasingly large amounts of console-game influence coming in at the same time, gradually the uniqueness of PC games got worn down, outside of European games, which come from a region where PC retail never died off as it did here. Their boxes did shrink, but they didn't see the rest of the collapse that we did. So no, shrinking boxes alone didn't cause this, but I do think it was a sign of trouble, and I definitely think that it hurt PC gaming to not have large manuals, larger maps, etc. in the box anymore. For games as complex as PC games often are, digital manuals often aren't as good; you often want to refer to the manual while you're playing, which is inconvenient if you have to do that in a game menu or external PDF or something.
Quote: I think PC games are selling pretty strongly these days. Kids are certainly playing a lot of League of Legends and Minecraft. I think if you looked at sales in absolute terms, you'd see that many more PC games are selling now than were selling in the early 90's, and this is in part due to the plain fact that FAR more people own PCs today.Digital PC games are selling, yes, but collecting? Outside of GOG and Steam, there isn't much of that at all, at least not legally.
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