Annual GDC Report Shows More Devs Working On PS4 Than Xbox One, Most On PC

Remember when PC gaming was “dead”? That’s not the case anymore (if it ever was). The latest GDC State of the Industry Report reveals new statistics about development platforms, digital sales, and the general health of the industry.

According to the report, development on current generation consoles has grown significantly since last year. Of developers surveyed, 26 percent are working on a PlayStation 4 title (2014: 14 percent) and 22 percent have an Xbox One game in progress (2014: 12 percent). Note that some developers are working on multiplatform titles and are counted in both categories.

Mobile development sits at 50 percent of developers surveyed (down from 52 percent last year). PC development has grown from 53 percent of survey participants in 2014 to 56 percent this year.

With regard to sales, developers self-report that digital and microtransactions are beating out retail. 29 percent of respondents say that digital is their biggest revenue source, 21 percent peg their biggest stream as microtransactions. Only 13 percent say retail is tops. This isn't terribly surprising given most PC and mobile titles are exclusively sold digitally.

19 percent of respondents don’t know where most of their revenue comes from or saw no profit. (Jump down to the Our Take for thoughts on this.)

Likewise, 28 percent of respondents didn’t know if they saw more profit in 2014 than in 2013. (Again, see the Our Take section for thoughts.)

Thankfully, 40 percent of the market did identify that profits grew in 2014, with another 20 percent suggesting they held level. Only 9 percent saw decline from 2013. 

Staffing growth also stayed level or grew for a majority of respondents. 44 percent increased their staff rolls and 38 percent stayed level. Of the remainder, 1 percent closed entirely.

Over 2,000 developers from North America were polled for these results. The annual Game Developer’s Conference will be held from March 2 through 6 in San Francisco. During that time the Independent Games Festival Awards and GDC Awards will be held. For more information on those, visit our previous coverage.

[Source: GDC]

Our Take
The trends here seem to be showing that the industry is becoming healthier. However, there are two statistics that jumped out that need to be unpacked.

First, 19 percent of respondents didn’t know whether more of their revenue came from digital, retail, or microtransactions. This group also includes those that made no profit. It would be helpful to have this group broken out, because those that made money but don’t know where it came from need education if they are running a business.

This goes hand-in-hand with knowing whether your business made more money than in the year before. Some context or explanation from those that don’t have a grasp of their company’s health seems important. 

Are these developers working in large, wholly owned studios that don’t have to worry about these matters? If so, that might be a bit less alarming. 

The statistics provide some useful information, but they ask as many questions as they answer. For instance, 12 percent of developers are working on an “eSports” game. I’d be interested to learn how many of those are doing so with guidance from established individuals in that arena. Making a game you hope to be an eSport isn’t the same as making a game that will be adopted as an eSport. The latter is something that requires significant buy-in from the community.

This information is a great start, and I hope that UBM (the group behind GDC) is working on getting more qualitative answers.