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Technology Stocks : 3DFX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karin who wrote (4499)	6/21/1998 12:15:00 AM
From: stephen wall	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

Karin, The saturation of Jonathan Joseph according to the Economist: economist.com SOME advice to all those government lawyers working around the clock on their case against Microsoft: let your hair down. Though the Washington wonks worry about Bill Gates and his operating systems, word processors and spreadsheets, when it comes to software these days, consumers prefer fun and games. The latest retail statistics from PC Data, a market tracker, reveal that the best-selling PC software in April was a space romp called Starcraft, followed by not one but two deer-hunting simulations, a few tax programs (April is tax month), a Titanic game, and eventually, in eighth place, Microsoft's Windows 95. Microsoft's other software, including its Office 97 suite, does not even make the top-20 list, outsold by the likes of racing games, Tomb Raider's pneumatic Lara Croft, and the perennial best-seller, Myst. Indeed, the battle is not even close: as with the top-selling game in almost any month, copies of Starcraft outsold those of Office 97 more than ten to one. Even allowing for Office's higher price, the top games usually collect more revenue. The retail market is just one way in which software is sold: most copies of Windows are shipped with new PCs, and the largest sales of Office come through corporate licensing. But even looking at the entire software market, games are a large-and growing-part. Sales in America hit $3.3 billion last year, accounting for 10-15% of all software sales. In some games-mad countries, such as Japan and Britain (blame Miss Croft), that fraction is probably higher still-the Japanese spend $8 billion on games a year. The reason for the boom is that games are growing up. Mario-crazed kids may be the joystick-twiddling stereotype, but the reality these days is adults blowing each other away in Quake death-matches on their office network, pondering Riven puzzles late into the night at home, and indulging in a bit of laptop warmongering with Command & Conquer on the road. More than 30m Americans, most of them married, buy at least three PC games a year, according to Computer Gaming World, a trade magazine. A quarter of American households, including 14% of households with no children, now have a game console, an all-time record. Their quest for more realistic worlds to conquer is one of the main factors behind consumer PC sales. After all, when did a word-processor need a multimedia PC with stereo sound?