PC gamers in the uk

Zbebda · 9 Apr 2013 at 12:53

Hello all

I am new to Overclockers but the reason I am on this forum is that I have a general interest in how many PC gamer's there are in the UK. I have googled to find if there are any statistics on the matter but cant find anything that gives any good information.

I ask this weird question because I am intending to start up a game server company for games like terraria, minecraft, gary's mod and counter strike ect.

I have some experience in running and maintaining game servers from home but I now have the idea of getting some dedicated servers and make this a larger scale operation. I am aware that this is a hard market to get into and this is why I am trying to gather some information as to whether there is a big enough audience for me to invest the start up and get this idea rolling.

any insight, thoughts or information anyone can give me on the matter would be very much appreciated.

agnes · 9 Apr 2013 at 12:57

I think there are only a handful of games at any given time that run with a large enough user base that warrants dedicated servers. Enough to be a competitive market.

The market is VERY tough to get into.

Good luck mate.

doofer · 9 Apr 2013 at 12:57

Over 9000!

SpaghettiOs · 9 Apr 2013 at 13:01

The margins on a small operation would be tiny, and the capital required to start anything bigger would be huge. I don't think this is a brilliant plan, but best of luck to you.

Zbebda · 9 Apr 2013 at 13:01

agnes said:
I think there are only a handful of games at any given time that run with a large enough user base that warrants dedicated servers. Enough to be a competitive market.

The market is VERY tough to get into.

Good luck mate.

Thanks, I agree with you completely, there are very few people looking for these kinds of servers. I currently have around 35 users on my current servers but they are all very local to me.

bsoltan · 9 Apr 2013 at 13:11

What information do you have?

http://www.iabuk.net/blog/10-uk-video-game-audience-stats
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/sci_nat/05/state_of_play/html/1.stm
http://ukie.info/sites/default/files/documents/UKIE_Fact_Sheet.pdf

I don't know if the Steam Survey filters by region. Might be worth looking at.

You could also check the games themselves and browse to see how many UK based servers are active.

I don't really see how the number of UK PC gamers correlates to managing gaming servers though. It is going to be a completely different number.

Might also be worth looking at the niche market for servers, games that the big companies don't focus on but there is still some demand for.

Zbebda · 9 Apr 2013 at 13:32

bsoltan said:
What information do you have?

http://www.iabuk.net/blog/10-uk-video-game-audience-stats
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/sci_nat/05/state_of_play/html/1.stm
http://ukie.info/sites/default/files/documents/UKIE_Fact_Sheet.pdf

I don't know if the Steam Survey filters by region. Might be worth looking at.

You could also check the games themselves and browse to see how many UK based servers are active.

I don't really see how the number of UK PC gamers correlates to managing gaming servers though. It is going to be a completely different number.

Might also be worth looking at the niche market for servers, games that the big companies don't focus on but there is still some demand for.

I will be honest I was look to see how big the pc gaming market is because local to me it isn't very big more Xbox and play station
and that would be my first decision if there is enough pc gamers in the uk to warrant me going bigger

silly child mind of mine.

I have cost of servers and specs of servers, games i'd like to host and amount of each server I would be able to run. so really basic figures.

and thank you for that information that's really helpful

SiDeards73 · 9 Apr 2013 at 13:37

The real reason is you think england is the land of milk and honey and just want to bandwagon r4pe our wallets like everyone else, and this is your chosen method

BaDBoY_uK · 9 Apr 2013 at 13:41

1 bazillion

Zbebda · 9 Apr 2013 at 13:59

SiDeards73 said:
The real reason is you think england is the land of milk and honey and just want to bandwagon r4pe our wallets like everyone else, and this is your chosen method

Yes i want to sexually assault your wallets, no the only confirmed figures i have is the minecraft and terraria servers

minecraft server:
4096MB RAM, unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, Multicraft Control Panel
No setup fee = £24/PCM

1024MB RAM, Unlimited disk space, Unlimited bandwidth
Multicraft Control Panel, No setup fee = £8/PCM

would that be too expensive? because I think that is a reasonable price.

Smoogels · 9 Apr 2013 at 14:04

Zbebda said:
Yes i want to sexually assault your wallets, no the only confirmed figures i have is the minecraft and terraria servers

minecraft server:
4096MB RAM, unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, Multicraft Control Panel
No setup fee = £24/PCM

1024MB RAM, Unlimited disk space, Unlimited bandwidth
Multicraft Control Panel, No setup fee = £8/PCM

would that be too expensive? because I think that is a reasonable price.

I know nothing about minecraft but if you want to offer a competitive service you should look around at what competitors are offering (price and feature wise) and find out why people are using them. It could be things like their low price, mod collection, server location, features etc

SiDeards73 · 9 Apr 2013 at 14:06

Incidentally i work in Telecoms, would love to know what type of money your going to be paying to rent the lines needed to run all those servers

Zbebda · 9 Apr 2013 at 14:13

SiDeards73 said:
Incidentally i work in Telecoms, would love to know what type of money your going to be paying to rent the lines needed to run all those servers

Well i have a dedicated server with a nice hosting company ATM, they provide a great service. I currently pay £59 for Intel® Core™ i7-2600 Quadcore, 64 GB
DDR3 RAM, 2 x 3 TB SATA ,6 Gb/s HDD 7200 rpm Software- RAID 1

which i see as pretty good.

SiDeards73 · 9 Apr 2013 at 14:15

Clearly you misunderstood my question....

Server specs are fine, however they need to run the service over a line, what type of line are you looking at and how much are you paying in rental for it? i have visions of you trying to host 30 servers over a 2mb Plusnet link ahah

SiDeards73 · 9 Apr 2013 at 14:16

Oh wait re-read your comment, so your paying a hosting company to host servers, and then are going to charge people to rent space on those servers.. heh

BuToNz · 9 Apr 2013 at 14:44

Going to be hard to estimate considering most people I speak to about PC Gaming think Facebook games count.

"OH YEAH, I'm always on farmville!"

*Giant face palm*

nin9abadga · 9 Apr 2013 at 14:45

1 meeeelion dollars

Zbebda · 9 Apr 2013 at 14:46

SiDeards73 said:
Clearly you misunderstood my question....

Server specs are fine, however they need to run the service over a line, what type of line are you looking at and how much are you paying in rental for it? i have visions of you trying to host 30 servers over a 2mb Plusnet link ahah

Oh right, no they don't actually say tbh

all the info i have is:
100mBit connection because the server is in a data centre it can be upgraded to a 1Gbit connection though.

ci_newman · 9 Apr 2013 at 15:46

Good luck to you, but if you can buy server space from someone at £59/month, why would someone else buy your minecraft hosting server @ £24/month rather than going the little bit extra and getting a dedicated server like the one that you are reselling?

Zbebda · 9 Apr 2013 at 15:51

ci_newman said:
Good luck to you, but if you can buy server space from someone at £59/month, why would someone else buy your minecraft hosting server @ £24/month rather than going the little bit extra and getting a dedicated server like the one that you are reselling?

you make a good point, but my logic behind this is that there are people who enjoy the game but aren't that technically minded to set up run and maintain a good working server at an affordable cost.