Steam Too Hardcore, Will Lose Market Share, says GamersGateSteam has been having a great year, having grown to over 35 million accounts with over 1400 games available. Recently, Bethesda's blockbuster RPG Skyrim set a record as the fastest selling Steam title yet. That's all well and good, but some analysts would say Steam's peaked, and rival digital distributor GamersGate certainly agrees.
Speaking to IndustryGamers, GamersGate CEO Theo Bergquist told us that Steam's biggest problem is that it's only serving the hardcore audience.
"...everyone tends to just hail them. I've said it before and I’ll say it again, Steam's market share can only shrink. Just look at Origin. It came from nowhere and is now a player in the industry. Steam is doing a good job for the super hard-core audience, but everyone knows that's not where the money is. The market is mostly made up of people who buy 2-3 games a year and want a fast, easy and seamless way of buying games. They don’t want a bulky client," he commented.
When we asked Bergquist about whether his company might get into cloud gaming in the future, he questioned the viability of another competitor: OnLive (whose CEO has said that it's only second to Steam in publishers' eyes).
"Streaming or any other way of distributing a game is just technology, not something you build a business model around... As far as I know, OnLive still struggles with their revenue and business model. In theory it's a nice business, but is that really what the customers want or something made for VC-firms?" Bergquist remarked.
