PC Gaming dying...Steam says NO!!!

[HumblePie]

I totally agree.

What percentage of the overall PC gaming market that represents I don't know; I believe it's bad to assume Steam Users represent all PC gamers.
I could be wrong.

All? No.

At 5 mill concurrent users on at once for NA I would say that it is a fairly LARGE portion though. More than large enough for a statistical sampling size to be be fairly accurate. This isn't some mall survey of 1000 participants.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

I only started using Steam about a year ago. Had I known about the sales, I'd have used it long before. I know Steam's been around since 2003 but how long have they actually had a big enough library to have sales like they do now?

 

[Texashiker]

I know Steam's been around since 2003 but how long have they actually had a big enough library to have sales like they do now?

I remember watching the sales starting around 3 years ago (2009).

Before 2009, I do not remember seeing the holiday sales. Steam might have had the sales and I was not paying attention.

My steam account was created November 2004, the day half-life 2 was released.

 

[Golgatha]

I totally agree.

What percentage of the overall PC gaming market that represents I don't know; I believe it's bad to assume Steam Users represent all PC gamers.
I could be wrong.

Even if we assume Steam represents all PC gamers...there are still 40M accounts and 4-5M logged in at any given time of the day. That's a huge market and one that can't be ignored if you're in business to make money.

Edit: Actually 40M users is bigger than I thought.

http://www.digital-digest.com/blog/...onsoles-april-2010-npd-sales-figure-analysis/

I would only consider the XBox 360 and PS3 to be competitors for PC gaming dollars because the good games available on the Wii are exclusives for the most part. 32.2M consoles sold (PS3 and 360 combined) vs 40M users on Steam.

 

[sigurros81]

I've been hearing this whole "PC gaming is dead" since 2004. When are people going to stop talking about it. I mean aren't these fear-mongering dumbasses tired of flapping their mouths yet? I'm still playing games on my PC while I watch blueray and netflix on my PS3. I actually have a backorder list of games I need to catch up on that are award winning.

 

[KaOTiK]

I totally agree.

What percentage of the overall PC gaming market that represents I don't know; I believe it's bad to assume Steam Users represent all PC gamers.
I could be wrong.

We will probably never know that percentage. But as others pointed out, the sample size is very large and probably gives a very fair view of a gamers PC nowadays.

 

[Crow550]

PC gaming is dead when no developers make PC games.

 

[Larries]

Have you checked the steam hardware survey lately?

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Dual core cpu - 48.22%
Quad core cpu - 42.97%
Directx 11 - 31.43%
Drectx 10 - 48.24%
Dirtectx 9 - 4.29%

With directx 9 making up on 4.29% of the market, please to me why developers even release a Dx9 product?

Would it make sense to make a product targeted towards the majority of gaming systems, instead of a microscope minority?

The reason why developers use Dx9, is because consoles use Dx9.

The PC gaming should be years ahead of where we are today. But instead, we are being held back by outdated console technology.

Because a DX11 card does not mean it can run DX11 games smoothly.

This may sound crazy, but for example, the 5770 is DX11, and is one of the most popular card in Steam hardware survey, but it will be difficult to run Directx11 games in high resolution and high quality mode and have high FPS. But it is good enough to run DirectX9 games.

 

[Anteaus]

Because a DX11 card does not mean it can run DX11 games smoothly.

This may sound crazy, but for example, the 5770 is DX11, and is one of the most popular card in Steam hardware survey, but it will be difficult to run Directx11 games in high resolution and high quality mode and have high FPS. But it is good enough to run DirectX9 games.

It's not just about speed. It's about driver architecture and feature sets. Directx 10 and 11 cards are capable of rendering things that don't exist under Directx 9. It's true in some cases you won't render as many frames, but the fact is you have so much more GPU processing going on behind the scenes to make everything look better that it's not a fair comparison unless your just talking raw FPS.

 

[irishScott]

My step-son gamed for close to 10 years before I finally got him to install Steam. He mostly played MMORPGs like world of warcraft. 2 - 3 years later he has somewhere around 13 games in his steam account.

Then there are the halo kiddies who know nothing outside their xbox / live account.

From time to time I see people on various forum who post they will never install steam. They even go as far as boycotting all steamworks games. Over on the Y2K forums there were a lot of people saying they were going to boycott duke nukem forever if it was a steamworks game.

What gamers need is more programs like steam. I keep looking for Blizzard to introduce its own game management program.

I think steam is one of the greatest things for the PC gaming market. If you want a game that came out 2 or 3 years ago, its either amazon, direct2drive, greenmangaming, ebay or steam. Physical store like best buy and wal-mart have neglected the PC gaming market.

Screw the department stores, even gaming specialists like Gamestop usually only have one, small solitary rack devoted to PC gaming. Once I went into a Gamestop that had no PC games at all (at least not on display).

My one issue with Steam is what would happen if Valve went under. Granted there's basically zero chance of that happening for the foreseeable future, but I wonder what would happen if 10 or 20 years from now they do. In that sense we really are in unexplored territory, digital distribution of games as we know it is less than a decade old and still being developed.

Beyond that caveat I think Steam is amazing. I don't mind the DRM mainly because I've experienced bad DRM breaking games that I legitimately bought (I'm looking at you secuROM). Steam is painless in that regard. And the deals are sweet. Where else can you get quality games for <$2?

 

[wuliheron]

Ten or twenty years from now all my current games will be archaic garbage. When and if Steam ever has financial problems I'll start to think twice about buying games from them.

 

[irishScott]

Ten or twenty years from now all my current games will be archaic garbage. When and if Steam ever has financial problems I'll start to think twice about buying games from them.

I still play games from 20 years ago, sometimes older. *shrug*