Changing fortunes for PC gaming..??

no_1_dave · 23 Feb 2012 at 00:09

Borsch said:
Did you even read the previous posts? I've quoted the source articles/official research that came up with these numbers- 1 billion PCs world wide, of them 80-200 million can be classed as gaming PCs. 180 million were classed by nvidia as "active geforce users", 195 million gaming pcs sold. Read previous posts.

Anyone who believes there are 180 million PC gamers out there, playing the latest games is an idiot. I know so many people who if they wanted to could fire up a game on their PC or laptop and it would work flawlessly. However they don't. The average PC and laptop sold today could be classed as a gaming capable machine but the average person buying them will never ever even try & play a game. You do not seem to grasp that those figures you are quoting are simply figures for the amount of PC/laptops sold that could play a game of the owner chooses to.

Edit - As for 1 billion total PC sales so 180 million must play games? NO, that is incorrect. It simply means 180 million of the 1 billion sales are capable of playing games. How can you honestly sit there and believe there are 180 million people actively playing modern PC games?

Borsch · 23 Feb 2012 at 00:24

Amnesia said:
so if the xbox had over 1 million downloads and the ps3 had none what actual difference has the piracy made ?
you still havent proven that the piracy has lessened the sales

Amnesia said:
also whilst you're at it....prove that strict working drm = better sales on pc(compare pc titles)

And who told you that PS3 has ZERO piracy? PS3 has piracy too. Check the usual sources for pirate games, PS3 is not absent there by any means. Xbox does have some problem with piracy but it has bigger user base; ps3 has smaller problem with piracy (but its still there!) and smaller user base. Both are a lot more involved than PC piracy, both have comparable return rates for developers.

For PC (which is the topic here) piracy is past being "some problem", as its conversion rate numbers show clearly (6% pc vs 40% ps3 vs 54% xbox). How much more clear do you like your data?

Amnesia said:
also whilst you're at it....prove that strict working drm = better sales on pc(compare pc titles)

Pc in late 90s - efficient enough DRM, efficient user to sales conversion rate , evidence- investment for further PC exclusives in early 2000s.

Current situation is the opposite with result being nearly no single player PC exclusives right now.

Borsch · 23 Feb 2012 at 00:29

no_1_dave said:
As for 1 billion total PC sales so 180 million must play games? NO, that is incorrect. It simply means 180 million of the 1 billion sales are capable of playing games. How can you honestly sit there and believe there are 180 million people actively playing modern PC games?

195 million gaming PCs shipped between 2005 and 2010, 80-100 million gfx cards sold each year on average. Thus the estimate that there are between 80-200 million gaming PCs that actually play games sounds reasonable.

Amnesia · 23 Feb 2012 at 00:36

Borsch said:
And who told you that PS3 has ZERO piracy? PS3 has piracy too. Check the usual sources for pirate games, PS3 is not absent there by any means. Xbox does have some problem with piracy but it has bigger user base; ps3 has smaller problem with piracy (but its still there!) and smaller user base. Both are a lot more involved than PC piracy, both have comparable return rates for developers.

well i tried piratebay and it wouldnt load up....so maybe you can give the figures of how heavily the game was pirated on ps3 compared to xbox

so far the numbers you have given have shown the console with higher piracy has had more sales....

Borsch said:
For PC (which is the topic here) piracy is past being "some problem", as its conversion rate numbers show clearly (6 pc vs 40 ps3 vs 54 xbox). How much more clear do you like your data?

like i said earlier, when someone buys an xbox or ps3 you know its pretty much for gaming....with pcs it isnt the case but you seem to be insistant that if a pc is capable of playing games then its a gamer sat behind the desk and i already gave you an example of why that isnt the case.

and still you havent proved that stronger drm = better sales.
saying the pc had better sales in the late 90's is hardly doing it

Amnesia · 23 Feb 2012 at 00:40

Borsch said:
195 million gaming PCs shipped between 2005 and 2010, 80-100 million gfx cards sold each year on average. Thus the estimate that there are between 80-200 million gaming PCs that actually play games sounds reasonable.

yes makes perfect sense....195 million pcs shipped so there are 200 million gaming pcs.

Borsch · 23 Feb 2012 at 00:47

PS3 has piracy, ok? Games for PS3 are available not just from the bay but from all other usual sources. So your original move (PS3=zero piracy) does not work in this argument- it clearly does, and then its a question of extent to which its a problem. So you dont have a clear argument. Plus different size user bases for xbox and PS3 confound it further.

DRM - I am only aware of one water tight DRM -Rise of FLight. THey said that for them DRM was a matter of life or death. Game companies spent a lot of money on DRM - were they doing it just for fun or to maximise sales? The problem is that once DRM leaks, its finished - the pirate copy is freely availabe from then on. But the quest for water tight DRM was and is still pursued by game companies.

Borsch · 23 Feb 2012 at 00:48

Amnesia said:
yes makes perfect sense....195 million pcs shipped so there are 200 million gaming pcs.

People do not buy 80-100 million of stand alone graphics cards per year to enjoy youtube and facebook or keep them in the drawer

On top of those 195 mil gaming PCs.

Amnesia · 23 Feb 2012 at 00:59

Borsch said:
PS3 has piracy, ok? Games for PS3 are available not just from the bay but from all other usual sources. So your original move (PS3=zero piracy) does not work in this argument- it clearly does, and then its a question of extent to which its a problem. So you dont have a clear argument.

so what are the figures....or are they so low that they didnt even bother publishing them....also consoles sold does not = consoles in use. the xbox has a massive failure rate and the ps3 does not. so are the xbox figures really higher than ps3 ?
even if they were it still shows that the console with a much much much much higher piracy rate has better sales.

Borsch said:
DRM - I am only aware of one water tight DRM -Rise of FLight. THey said that for them DRM was a matter of life or death. Game companies spent a lot of money on DRM - were they doing it just for fun or to maximise sales? The problem is that once DRM leaks, its finished - the pirate copy is freely availabe from then on. But the quest for water tight DRM was and is still pursued by game companies.

you are aware of one water tight drm ? so how did you come to the conclusion that stronger drm = more sales....im clearly missing something so can you explain it a bit more clearly for me.

Borsch · 23 Feb 2012 at 01:18

Amnesia said:
so what are the figures.... much much much much higher

How much is that? In figures

You've brought the PS3 argument so you are the one who should find support for it, at the moment you talk about "much" " and "much much". Your PS3 argument is pointless to this discussion because consoles have :
1. Smaller user base 50mil vs PC's 80-200mil
2. Tougher anti piracy barier
3. Higher rates of user/sales than on PC (evident from 94% vs 6% numbers for MW3's sample)

Which means that better DRM positively correlates with better returns for game dev. (

Amnesia said:
you are aware of one water tight drm ? so how did you come to the conclusion that stronger drm = more sales....im clearly missing something so can you explain it a bit more clearly for me.

See points 1,2,3

Martini1991 · 23 Feb 2012 at 01:31

One thing about the torrent figures for console games and PC games.
When a PC gamer torrents a game, it's usually for themselves, the console lot usually get their games from a mothers friend etc, so that one torrent is actually many more copies.

Borsch = Anti piracy lunatic then?

Tombo · 23 Feb 2012 at 01:47

Martini1991 said:
One thing about the torrent figures for console games and PC games.
When a PC gamer torrents a game, it's usually for themselves, the console lot usually get their games from a mothers friend etc, so that one torrent is actually many more copies.

Borsch = Anti piracy lunatic then?

Completed with flawed arguments.

Martini1991 · 23 Feb 2012 at 01:52

Tombo said:
Completed with flawed arguments.

It's late, I've no idea what you're saying there, are you agreeing or disagreeing

?
Borsch with the flawed argument would make sense

Amnesia · 23 Feb 2012 at 01:57

Borsch said:
How much is that? In figures You've brought the PS3 argument so you are the one who should find support for it, at the moment you talk about "much" " and "much much". Your PS3 argument is pointless to this discussion because consoles have :
1. Smaller user base 50mil vs PC's 80-200mil
2. Tougher anti piracy barier
3. Higher rates of user/sales than on PC (evident from 94% vs 6% numbers for MW3's sample)

Which means that better DRM positively correlates with better returns for game dev. (

i asked for a like for like comparison to show that the heavily pirated console sold less, a console which is heavily pirated (xbox) vs a console which hardly sees any piracy(ps3) atleast so low that when i search for figures i get 'PS3 games were not included, as the platform sees considerably less torrent abuse'.

you have failed to do that repeatedly and the very first figures you used showed that the console with more piracy had more sales.
you had plenty of chances to prove your point

now you keep banging on about these 200mil pc gamers which is neither here or there...firstly prove there are 200 million pc gamers ...not pcs but actual gamers. then as you have still failed to do so, prove that a pc game with strict drm sells more than a pc game that has little to none.

again you keep failing to prove these things....you keep comparing console game sales to pc game sales when the consoles are made for gaming.

no_1_dave · 23 Feb 2012 at 01:57

I can see this just going around in circles.
If you want to believe that 180 million people bought a PC in the last 5 years to play PC games then that's up to you.

And again, Rise of Flight did not have water tight DRM. It was just one of the many titles that have never been released with a working crack. A bit like Arkham City doesn't have a 100% working crack, only broken p2p attempts which need to be mix and matched to get it working. It doesn't have water tight DRM or anything, other games with the same DRM have been released. It has simply been missed somehow. I saw a list of uncracked games a few months ago, if I can find it I'll post it for you. They must have unbelievable, magic and water tight DRM.

LMAO, next you'll be saying that because Street Cleaning Simulator had no DRM it didn't sell very well...

Martini1991 · 23 Feb 2012 at 01:59

no_1_dave said:
I can see this just going around in circles.
If you want to believe that 180 million people bought a PC in the last 5 years to play PC games then that's up to you.

And again, Rise of Flight did not have water tight DRM. It was just one of the many titles that have never been released with a working crack. A bit like Arkham City doesn't have a 100% working crack, only broken p2p attempts which need to be mix and matched to get it working. It doesn't have water tight DRM or anything, other games with the same DRM have been released. It has simply been missed somehow. I saw a list of uncracked games a few months ago, if I can find it I'll post it for you. They must have unbelievable, magic and water tight DRM.

LMAO, next you'll be saying that because Street Cleaning Simulator had no DRM it didn't sell very well...

It has for a while, simple .exe

Tombo · 23 Feb 2012 at 06:02

Martini1991 said:
It's late, I've no idea what you're saying there, are you agreeing or disagreeing ?
Borsch with the flawed argument would make sense

Agreeing of course, there's arguing piracy is bad and then there's this!

dreigns · 23 Feb 2012 at 06:16

Pc's sell games a bit different to consoles

Consoles mainly all sales and profit is over the first few weeks then it tanks as people then sell there games to the next person and thats why they want to stop used games sales.

PC's - sell a load first few weeks hoping to break even then tail off to a low amount of sales per week over years most games on pc will make money but will take along time but unless the company has a lot of money or another company helping it can be hard going if they havn't made there money back in first week.

jonneymendoza · 23 Feb 2012 at 07:25

Borsch said:
Consoles are finally starting to lag big time in terms of gfx behind PC, so the immediate future before new gen consoles are launched, should be bright.

It may still lag even more when the new Xbox comes out as it is rumoured to be using a 6670 card which is a low end £60 card LOL

Borsch · 23 Feb 2012 at 10:41

Tombo said:
Completed with flawed arguments.

So citing official research numbers is a flawed argument :rolleyes:

As opposed to saying "much much more" and " much much less" like some others here -their argument is just solid logic

Mark A · 23 Feb 2012 at 10:49

I think steam should implement a gamerscore, like the consoles have. I don't personally care about that but there are lots of people who seem to buy games just for the achievements and to improve this score.