Changing fortunes for PC gaming..??

The whole origin thing won't last long, I would love for there to be a competitor to steam competition is a good thing. However restricting your games from selling on steam to try and bolster uptake of your own platform is a strategy that won't work in the long run. Plus Origin is really not very nice to use. :/

I don't see Origin ever being the go to platform for PC gaming so eventually EA have little choice but to just publish at the same time on steam.
 
Borsch said:
Meanwhile games sales suggests that PC gamers are several times smaller in number than console gamers, which is strictly not true.
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it wouldnt suprise me if pc gaming started to become popular again seeing as you dont need to upgrade every 6=12months anymore

im still happily gaming with a xmd x6 and a geforce 460.

i should probably upgrade my gpu soon but my cpu is coping fine
 
m4rk84 said:
The whole origin thing won't last long, I would love for there to be a competitor to steam competition is a good thing. However restricting your games from selling on steam to try and bolster uptake of your own platform is a strategy that won't work in the long run. Plus Origin is really not very nice to use. :/

I don't see Origin ever being the go to platform for PC gaming so eventually EA have little choice but to just publish at the same time on steam.
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origin is still a bit buggy..i was trying to buy shift 2 today but it didnt let me!
 
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Borsch said:
THe article talks about consoles and PC in the same vein - machines. The ratio of machines to persons is not defined for any of them. BUT. It talks of "user base"- are those users not persons, but machines? Nvidia statement about "active geforce users"- machines?

I tell you that statistics takes care of this ratio, because median gfx card buying PERSON is not rich, does not buy top of the line, has one card etc. People buy 80-100 million gfx cards EACH year. Median will use them for gaming, very small outliers use them for work. Median people buy ONE card for its prime purpose - Which means the average user base will not adjust all the way down to being less than both consoles MACHINE park (40mill).
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Seriously? Still with the same article.

People buy gaming consoles for one thing. Games.

Gaming capable PCs are bought by people for, graphic design, multimonitors, F@H, educational purposes, video editing, just because they have the cash.

You cannot say that the ratio is the same. People buying an Xbox are Xbox gamers, not everyone that buys a gaming capable PC is a PC gamer.

Borsch said:
How is buying a separate video card like 8800gt and not gaming on it is different from buying an PS3 and not gaming on it? If there is no difference, then the adjustment of machine:user ratio is symmetric.
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It would be the same... but people aren't doing that. You think people buy Xboxs and PS3s for their tea and coffee making functionality and don't play games on them? One of the big advantages of the PC is it is not solely a gaming tool. You can do more with it.

Borsch said:
Meanwhile games sales suggests that PC gamers are several times smaller in number than console gamers, which is strictly not true.
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Yet the market of PC gamers interested in new games just is smaller. You can't count all the teenage girls playing farmville, office workers doing CAD design, or anyone with a second monitor as gamers.

Look past that silly tweak guides article. It's not a detailed report compiled by some industry expert like you seem to think. It's some bloke that writes tweaking guides having a ten page opinion, that I disagree with and think is flawed (as do others clearly). I remember reading it back in 08 when he first put it up.
He selectively quotes, makes assumptions when calculating values, and cleanly avoids obvious logic that doesn't match his statements. You seem to have a lot in common with him...

Martini1991 said:
EDIT : Borsch is a troll, no one can be that....... Stupid?
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I didn't think so. But I'd have thought even the most dedicated troll would have got bored by now. :confused: :(
 
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NZXT30 said:
making an exclusive game for any platform is always profitable but making it a multiplatform is much more profitable. that's all. stop beeing a drama queen. i've never heard of a good pc exclusive not turning profit.
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True

Sony / Microsoft have exclusives for their consoles not because its more profitable, but because they pay the developers or use in house development studios to make them exclusive, so they can in turn use them as marketing tools.

With no single company in charge of the PC platform, developers are always going to chose to make a game cross platform to maximize return, unless its a type of game that just doesnt work on consoles (eg MMO, RTS)
 
Amnesia said:
are you admitting that every graphics card sold isnt for gaming purposes ?
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Not all of them - of course, read my previous post about bell shaped distirubution where MOST gfx crads ARE sold to game. So while EVERY PS3 is bought for gaming, MOST 8800gt et al were also sold not for AutoCAD etc but to play games.
Graphics card/ gaming PC for gaming user base is huge, but that does not sit well wit pro-piracy/anti-DRM sentiment and people invent stories how console market is bigger. Its not bigger, its better - because of DRM being one of the main things.
 
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orderoftheflame said:
People buy gaming consoles for one thing. Games.

Gaming capable PCs are bought by people for, graphic design, multimonitors, F@H, educational purposes, video editing, just because they have the cash.

You cannot say that the ratio is the same. People buying an Xbox are Xbox gamers, not everyone that buys a gaming capable PC is a PC gamer.



It would be the same... but people aren't doing that. You think people buy Xboxs and PS3s for their tea and coffee making functionality and don't play games on them? One of the big advantages of the PC is it is not solely a gaming tool. You can do more with it.
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Ok, but ltes say even silly percentage like 10% buys gaming rigs like Alienware to play games, the other 90% buy them for other stuff (its silly but lets assume that). Even then we have 19 million gaming PCs- more than PS3s base!

2nd point is that you ignored the STAND ALONE GFX CARDS SALES- 90 million of them each year. Lets say once again, suppose that a crazy low number of them is used for their primary purpose -50%, also some gamers replace their previous cards , but again user base is HUGE and further adds to actual gaimng PCs, because separate gfx cards turns a non gaming pc into gaming one just like that.

orderoftheflame said:
Look past that silly tweak guides article. It's not a detailed report compiled by some industry expert like you seem to think. It's some bloke that writes tweaking guides having a ten page opinion, that I disagree with and think is flawed (as do others clearly). I remember reading it back in 08 when he first put it up.
He selectively quotes, makes assumptions when calculating values, and cleanly avoids obvious logic that doesn't match his statements. You seem to have a lot in common with him...
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I disagree that its a sillly article- apart from selective quotes (which are difficult to dismiss due to outo f context or whatever), it also uses numbers, numbers that just eat out of the page at ya...


orderoftheflame said:
But I'd have thought even the most dedicated troll would have got bored by now. :confused: :(
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I'm getting there:p I wanted to see some numbers, balanced arguments, but its tough going... You, for example, dont even say waht is the size of PC gaming user base and what are your sources to think that.
 
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Borsch said:
You, for example, dont even say waht is the size of PC gaming user base and what are your sources to think that.
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I haven't said because its an impossible number to calculate, which is what I've been saying all a long.

There is no way to take hardware sales and go "yep, there's X million gamers" with any degree of reliable accuracy. It's all a guess based on figures without a definable and calculatable relationship. You can't work out from sales figures how many new gamers are entering the fray, and how many existing gamers might be buying a replacement or second card or PC.

There is no one distributor you can count on for active accounts that cover the market accurately. There is on the consoles.
 
orderoftheflame said:
I haven't said because its an impossible number to calculate, which is what I've been saying all a long.

There is no way to take hardware sales and go "yep, there's X million gamers" with any degree of reliable accuracy. It's all a guess based on figures without a definable and calculatable relationship. You can't work out from sales figures how many new gamers are entering the fray, and how many existing gamers might be buying a replacement or second card or PC.

There is no one distributor you can count on for active accounts that cover the market accurately. There is on the consoles.
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Oh come on! There are 90 million cards sold each year, there are 40 million gaming pcs sold each year. The stand alone cards figures are particularly important because their prime purpose is gaming. It does not matter if PC gamer population grows or upgrades and stays at the same number- it is complete nonsense to say that PC gaming population is 2-4 million! Which it seems to be if you compare games sales (PC's are 5-10 times less than Xbox's). 40 million gaming PCs each year, 90 million stand alone gfx cards each year CANNOT amount to pathetic numbers evident in games sales. Cards in particular are bought just like consoles - to game and yet where are these gamers when it comes to games sales? And that is the big point.

No, we cant say precisely eg " there are 81.000.000 pc gamers", but what we can say is that PC gamers population is easily as large as console user base - at least. And at very-very least it is not 5-10 smaller like games sales suggest.
 
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I partially agree with Borch pc gaming is huge, much bigger than any console in terms of user base. The evidence of that is everywhere for example steam ( which is only one service ) has more online users than xbox live and wow more players than cod etc. Saying that pc gaming is a niche market is total non-sense.

There are many factors why many multiplatform games dont sell as much on pc but one of the main reasons is piracy. You need to get out of the UK to realise how big piracy really is in other countries and most of the time in those countries pc gaming dominates in terms of popularity.
 
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Practically every PC gamer that actually games on their PC has Steam, therefore Steam Account numbers are a "fairly decent" method of counting PC Gamers, but by no means perfect.
Much better than counting total PC's with the name "Gaming" in them or GPU's (Gaming on Dat G210!)
 
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Martini1991 said:
Practically every PC gamer that actually games on their PC has Steam, therefore Steam Account numbers are a "fairly decent" method of counting PC Gamers, but by no means perfect.
Much better than counting total PC's with the name "Gaming" in them or GPU's (Gaming on Dat G210!)
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no chance too many steam haters ( dd haters to be honest) around and thats why steam enjoys double digit growth every year because there are so many pc gamers that still dont use steam. every time a franchise goes steam works the outrage is massive. plus steam is completely unknown in asian countries, mmo gamers etc. when you add steam, battle net, xfire, origin, mmos (especially asian) and retail numbers together an astronomical number comes up that completely dwarfs any console user base.
 
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Borsch said:
Yes, we can still dream though and not pretend that currnet situation is "progress". No, in terms of PC gaming, its a regress. Piracy has severely wounded PC gaming.
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Piracy has been around since the spectrum days (tape to tape) and even the Snes had it (super magicom). This is sadly the way of the world and the best we can do is hope that the genuines out weigh the pirates.
 
NZXT30 said:
I partially agree with Borch pc gaming is huge, much bigger than any console in terms of user base. The evidence of that is everywhere for example steam ( which is only one service ) has more online users than xbox live and wow more players than cod etc. Saying that pc gaming is a niche market is total non-sense.

There are many factors why many multiplatform games dont sell as much on pc but one of the main reasons is piracy. You need to get out of the UK to realise how big piracy really is in other countries and most of the time in those countries pc gaming dominates in terms of popularity.
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I dispute it is the main reason..
You only need to get out the UK to realise the vast majority of games played on consoles aren't legitimate either.. you actually buy copied games in shops instead of originals in some places.

Make a good game at a good price point and people will buy it, going after people who pirate is a completely pointless exercise, this is proven again and again by good games.
What companies should be focussing on is winning gamers into buying legit copies by providing the perception of value and stop this silly crusade.

For example
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/313121/portal-2-drives-42-jump-in-steam-revenue/
Portal 2 shifted $56.4 million despite being one of the most pirated games (don't say 'it could have done much more without piracy you have no way of proving this), the above was doubled i believe over the steam christmas sale
 
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