GOG release The Witcher 2 sales stats. Steam dominates all competitors combined
Valve don’t like sales charts. In fact, they’ve referred to them as a “step backwards for the industry.” That means we never get to see exactly how many games are sold on the digital distribution service.
But now we have some sales figures! Good Old Games’ Guillaume Rambourg has been talking to Gamesindustry.biz about The Witcher 2′s sales on GOG.com, Direct2Drive, Impulse, Gamersgate, and Steam.
Click through for the stats.
Supreme Commander and SC: Forged Alliance released on Steam
After teasing us with a momentary appearance on the Steam new releases list earlier this week, THQ confirms that Supreme Commander and its Forged Alliance expansion are coming to Steam after all. They should be in the Steam store by the end of the week.
Supreme Commander 2 has been available on Steam since it launched, but the original has only been available online via other digital distribution services.
Pricing details are coming soon.
Update: And they’re up! $15 a piece, or $20 for both.
Watch PC Gamer’s epic Supreme Commander game
On Thursday we mentioned a massive game of Supreme Commander between six PC Gamer writers and two overpowered AIs. There’s a write up of it in the new issue of PC Gamer UK, and we finally found time to record it as a video for anyone who wants to see it for themselves.
Graham and I do our best to commentate what’s going on – please forgive my erratic observing, our patchy memories, and the bits where our voices go too quiet. We know how to fix the latter in future. There is no known fix for my numerical skills – I manage to kick this off by claiming we’re playing against six AIs, when the whole point is that we outnumber them.
If the embed above doesn’t work for you, check it out on our YouTube channel.
PC Gamer’s epic Supreme Commander co-op match
In the new issue of PC Gamer UK, you can read about a vast game of Supreme Commander we played against two of the most powerful AI opponents possible. It was six PC Gamer writers versus two AIs, and the robocarnage was pretty spectacular. If you have Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, you can grab the replay of our match here and watch it for yourself. If not, here’s a gallery of shots from the game.
We’re also turning it into a video anyone can watch, with commentary from us, so stay tuned for that. You can bookmark or subscribe to our Supreme Commander tag (RSS) and it’ll pop up there.
If you’re watching the replay in-game, here are a few things you may need:
A diary of dirty tactics in Supreme Commander
I still play the original Supreme Commander a lot. Partly because of the huge scale, but mostly because nothing else has this many different types of exciting robots, and if something did, they probably wouldn’t explode so perfectly.
It also has unusually good AI, and this is a story about that.
The Fields of Isis is a map split by mountain ridges. One in the middle divides your possible routes to the enemy base. Two outside each base concentrate all incoming forces into a tight chokepoint, making it easy to defend. I’m fighting a single top-level AI, and I have a plan.
PC Gamer UK Podcast 56 – Chris Taylor and Danan Davis interview
I chatted to Gas Powered Games’ Chris Taylor and Microsoft Games’ Danan Davis about their new free-to-play game Age of Empires Online. Chris also talks about making Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander, and Danan about making Rise of Nations and Rise of Legends. And everyone has a lot to say about the future of PC gaming.
Download the MP3, subscribe, or find our other podcasts here.
Chris Taylor: “Total Annihilation was a game I designed for myself”
Total Annihilation was one of the PC’s most forward-thinking strategy games – it threw out all the arbitrary conventions of the genre and created something more like a simulation. The result was a game plenty of PC gamers still consider unsurpassed. More recently, its creator Chris Taylor took over development of Age of Empires Online, a free-to-play version of the old classic. When I got to chat to him recently, I asked about the unconventional economy model TA used, and why he didn’t stick with it.
Chris Taylor: Steam’s dominance will ‘shift’ in the next five years
When I got the chance to interview Chris Taylor recently, I asked him what he thought of Steam. Then, off his blank look, I asked specifically how he felt about its dominance of the digital distribution market for PC games.
Chris designed two of the world’s cleverest strategy games: Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander. More recently, he and his company Gas Powered Games took over development of Age of Empires Online, a free-to-play version of the old classic. He thinks Steam’s dominance will shift before long.
Chris Taylor on why PC gaming is bigger than ever
I spoke to Chris Taylor recently, and asked him how he feels about the state of PC gaming. ‘Good’ would be an understatement. Chris designed two of the world’s cleverest strategy games: Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander.
More recently, he and his company Gas Powered Games took over development of Age of Empires Online, a free-to-play version of the old classic. Here are his thoughts on why the platform has never been stronger.
Chris Taylor on why he couldn’t go back from free-to-play
Chris Taylor designed two of the world’s cleverest strategy games: Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander. More recently, he and his company Gas Powered Games took over development of Age of Empires Online, a free-to-play version of the old classic.
But far from being a stopgap between full-priced games, Chris says that working with the free-to-play model has convinced him it’s the future of the entire real-time strategy genre, and gaming in general. He says whatever he makes next will inevitably end up using it too. I tackled him to the ground in London recently, and demanded to know why.
