Digital distribution had begun with the launch of Steam in 2003, changed the outlook and how publishers and developers do business on the PC forever. It is now 2009 and Steam now have 15 million registered users all throughout the world, since six other websites devoted to only to sell PC games via online have started. There is no big secret to why many brick and mortar stores are stocking less and less PC retail boxes on their shelves, since digital distribution offers convenience and 24 hour avaliability.

Digital distribution have been a benefit to the PC since its release in 2003, biggest factor is the manufacturing of the boxes and disks and the warehouses to stock the thousands of boxes that are produced. A single game box could cost $2 to make and another $2 to ship with a total cost of $4 for each game box. Publishers would produce a million game boxes bring up the cost to them to $4 million. Producing a million boxes also increases risk of overstock and to continually pay for keep it stock inside warehoues which have to be maintained. It is pretty clear digital distribution cuts the cost to publishers by the millions of dollars and increases profitability each copy is sold. Increasing the profitability to the PC would help encourage publishers and developers to produce better quality games.

Three years ago, a person was looking for a game to buy via online would have only two choices, Steam and Direct2drive. There is now six sites that are devoted in digital distribution of PC games and there is sure to be more in the future. Xfire have finally started selling games, making alot of sense since they are a website based on games. Direct2drive and Xfire is owned by two heavily backed companies with huge pockets, News Corp and Viacom. Its not going to be long before these companies will start being competitive to encourage us to use their websites to buy games. The site with the easiest and most convenient to use downloader with the best download speeds, the site with the best selection of games, the site that have the best prices. or maybe the site that exclusively have Assassin's Creed III (future thought here) for the next three months. Games being made only for the console would come to an end, as Xfire and D2D will pay big bucks to the publisher to put it on the PC so they could make more money. The reason Im focusing on Xfire and D2D is because they are owned by two major companies with alot of money in their pockets, while Valve have a much limited amount of resources giving them a disadvantage to compete in the same way as Xfire or D2D would end up doing, Steam would end up being the company that sells their games and games from others that have been out for five months at a discounted price of $40.

Risen has many common traits to every other traditional RPG in the past. The player is given a hero who is set in a medieval world surrounded by men with swords or magic and cool monsters of various types. Just like any other RPG the player is the center of the storyline and only the player could solve everyones problems and save the world from impending doom. Those who have played Oblivion would know what I am talking about and would be familiar to the type of gameplay Risen have to offer.

Piranha Bytes is a German developer who is famous for their Gothic series especially Gothic III. Gothic III was a disaster of a game with unsatisfed gameplay and major performance issues giving the developer a sore spot to their name. Risen, thankfully, have redeemed the German developers name by offering a game that has competitive graphics, fun combat, and no real performance issues with consistantly high frame rates.

Unlike Oblivion, Risen does not hold your hand by giving your arrows or waypoints on the ground to guide through every single quest. Alot of quests require the player to hear what the quest giver is saying, reading the quest logs, and explore the world to be able to complete quests. The player coming into contact and fighting enemies while trying to complete a quest is inevitable.

There are many types of enemies the player will encounter throughout the game. All the enemies will have a set difficulty level and will not decrease or increase with the player. There are a few enemies, mostly at the beginning, will very challenging to nearly impossible to complete. It would be wise to advance through the game by completing quests and fighting enemies will the players character have the opporunity to get stronger. The once challenging Boar and hungry wolves, will be easily beatable by one or two hits.

Risen will offer many more advance and challenging characters to fight, such as gnomes, skeletons and other humans. These characters will have body armor, sword and shield making combat more challenging. Active use of a shield to provide a defense to enemy blows and timing just right to return a hit. This kind of interactive combat gives Risen more realistic feel and slows down the tempo of the game.

How poorly did Wolfenstein fare? According to NPD numbers obtained by GameSpot, the 360 version sold just over 59,000 units, with the PS3 edition barely clearing 30,000. Add in the PC iteration's 17,000 units, and Wolfenstein sold only around 106,000 units in the five days from its August 25 launch to August 29, when NPD's monthly reporting period ended. http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/returntocastlewolfenstein/news.html?sid=6217169

Wolfenstein is a high profile franchise name that should have gotten better sales then it did within its first week. Activision did responded in disappointment to the low outcome. The article above does list the total amount of box sales within its initital week of sale. Futher reading the article, it does not explain or make any kind of presumation to why it did so poorly.

Batman was released for the consoles on Aug 25th, about one week after Wolfenstein. According to VGchartz.com, 900,000 retail boxes were sold within its first week. Its may be possible that Batman may have contributed to the low sales of Wolfenstein, as people were to just wait one week. We are still in a recession, because of this people would decide on limiting down to one game per month instead of two or three. Adam Sessler did mention on his video blogs about how publishers are becoming more selective on which dates to release games to increase the likeihood of success.

Wolfenstein was only offered on the retail box, it was not avaliable through Steam of Direct2drive. This is a mistake that could have led to low sales for the PC. There are alot of people who will only buy PC games via digital distribution and by Activision not putting Wolfenstein on a download service, they would be ignoring alot of potential consumers. Any publisher ignoring digital distribution as a method to sell more games would be completely idiotic.