So how many PC gamers really...?

[killcomic]

I often hear that the number of PC gamers are in the bazillions and how PC gaming is technically better than consoles and everyone can run games at 1080P with constant 60 FPS and unicorns powering magical GPUs and shit.

But seriously, how many PC gamers out there actually have good hardware?

Looking at Steam's hardware survey, I can see that a lot of people use some very not-so-great hardware that would collapse into a smouldering heap if you try to run anything more intensive than solitaire. 

 

So I do wonder, how many PC gamer with proper hardware that trumps current consoles are actually out there? Anyone here have an idea?

[SeanBond]

Fairly low amount of people have decent hardware compared to the amount of pc players. The majority of it is league of legends and dota 2. And most of the people who play it use their mom's 3 year old handmedown laptops to play those games. What a wonderful world free to play is.

[Lotus]

You're assuming everyone is playing AAA titles, but that's not the case. Most PC gamers are playing older titles without such demanding requirements. Heck I easily hit 200 FPS in CS:GO, which is one of the more popular games, and that's with an R9 270 which isn't an expensive GPU. As for numbers, I have no idea, but games like Five Nights at Freddy's are everywhere and do not have demanding hardware requirements.

[orangecat]

Many people don't have super high end hardware and nobody knows how many games there actually is because theres probably about 100,000 indie games you don't know about floating around.

[PC-NOOB]

There is no such thing as "proper" hardware that will trump "consoles". Its about the fact that you play on a free and open environment where you can play games on whatever the hell you want. deals. 

[deathjester]

I often hear that the number of PC gamers are in the bazillions and how PC gaming is technically better than consoles and everyone can run games at 1080P with constant 60 FPS and unicorns powering magical GPUs and shit.

But seriously, how many PC gamers out there actually have good hardware?

Looking at Steam's hardware survey, I can see that a lot of people use some very not-so-great hardware that would collapse into a smouldering heap if you try to run anything more intensive than solitaire. 

 

So I do wonder, how many PC gamer with proper hardware that trumps current consoles are actually out there? Anyone here have an idea?

 

Look at the profits of the enthusiast part makers and Nvidia etc. That should tell you it is a lot of people.

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcochiappetta/2014/07/14/the-console-war-is-over-the-pc-already-won/

 

"A report just released by John Peddie Research (JPR) claims that the PC gaming market will tip $21.5B this year and grow to over $23B in 2017."

 

Now the people who can run 4k? Yeah that is small. 1080p 60fps? People were doing that in 2008 on medium end hardware like a GTX 260 and resolution is just one part of the equation. 

 

Also do not confuse bad ports, that might as well be sabotaged, for hardware that should easily be running a game at 1080p 60 fps. A game like Far Cry 4 should be running at 1440p Ultrad out on a mid end PC. The port is simply that bad. 

 

A 150 dollar R9 280 kicks the crap out of a next gen console GPU. Low level API's will alleviate that quite a bit, but like I said. You have to TRY to make ports as bad as Ubisoft does.

[killcomic]

Fairly low amount of people have decent hardware compared to the amount of pc players. The majority of it is league of legends and dota 2. And most of the people who play it use their mom's 3 year old handmedown laptops to play those games. What a wonderful world free to play is.

 

 

You're assuming everyone is playing AAA titles, but that's not the case. Most PC gamers are playing older titles without such demanding requirements. Heck I easily hit 200 FPS in CS:GO, which is one of the more popular games, and that's with an R9 270 which isn't an expensive GPU. As for numbers, I have no idea, but games like Five Nights at Freddy's are everywhere and do not have demanding hardware requirements.

That's what I was thinking. PC gamers always complain that there are no AAA PC exclusives or when AAA titles are not ported over. I guess publishers and developers really don't have much of an incentive to keep us happy since so many people cannot even run their games.

Depressing.

[ForsakenLive]

Actually quite a lot, 1080p 60 fps doesn't mean it's always on AAA titles, and defenitively it doesn't mean it's on high/ultra settings. Medium settings on PC look even better than the console version, consoles are usually on the lower settings of the game.

Pretty much everyone with at least mid end stuff from 6 years ago enjoys 1080p 60+ fps on their daily played games.

 

 

Again, not everything it's Crysis 3 with all the filters on.

[SeanBond]

That's what I was thinking. PC gamers always complain that there are no AAA PC exclusives or when AAA titles are not ported over. I guess publishers and developers really don't have much of an incentive to keep us happy since so many people cannot even run their games.

Depressing.

What I am wondering is why it seems like everyone online says they have a titan or 780ti or 980 yet steam hardware polls say those graphics cards make up about 1% of people on steam COMBINED. 

[killcomic]

Look at the profits of the enthusiast part makers and Nvidia etc. That should tell you it is a lot of people.

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcochiappetta/2014/07/14/the-console-war-is-over-the-pc-already-won/

 

"A report just released by John Peddie Research (JPR) claims that the PC gaming market will tip $21.5B this year and grow to over $23B in 2017."

 

Now the people who can run 4k? Yeah that is small. 1080p 60fps? People were doing that in 2008 on medium end hardware like a GTX 260 and resolution is just one part of the equation. 

 

Also do not confuse bad ports, that might as well be sabotaged, for hardware that should easily be running a game at 1080p 60 fps. A game like Far Cry 4 should be running at 1440p Ultrad out on a mid end PC. The port is simply that bad. 

 

A 150 dollar R9 280 kicks the crap out of a next gen console GPU. Low level API's will alleviate that quite a bit, but like I said. You have to TRY to make ports as bad as Ubisoft does.

Good point about the ports to PC.

Good article, BTW. Thanks for sharing.

[SeanBond]

Good point about the ports to PC.

Good article, BTW. Thanks for sharing.

Lol look at the hardware polls for steam HD4000 and lower make up about 15% of graphics on steam.

[thatguyjerry]

What I am wondering is why it seems like everyone online says they have a titan or 780ti or 980 yet steam hardware polls say those graphics cards make up about 1% of people on steam COMBINED. 

reminds me of a time when I was showing my cousin builds on the forum, his reaction was priceless, "does everyone just have unlimited amounts of money on this forum?!"

 

Yeah the number of PC gamers is pretty high, considering LoL and Dota's fan base is out of this world.

 

However, the ability to build a system thats more powerful than consoles is cheaper now, which is why its growing

[SeanBond]

reminds me of a time when I was showing my cousin builds on the forum, his reaction was priceless, "does everyone just have unlimited amounts of money on this forum?!"

 

Yeah the number of PC gamers is pretty high, considering LoL and Dota's fan base is out of this world.

 

However, the ability to build a system thats more powerful than consoles is cheaper now, which is why its growing

Your response had nothing to do with my quote lol

[deathjester]

Actually quite a lot, 1080p 60 fps doesn't mean it's always on AAA titles, and defenitively it doesn't mean it's on high/ultra settings. Medium settings on PC look even better than the console version, consoles are usually on the lower settings of the game.

Pretty much everyone with at least mid end stuff from 6 years ago enjoys 1080p 60+ fps on their daily played games.

 

 

Again, not everything it's Crysis 3 with all the filters on.

 

I blame sites like IGN for this resolution as a barometer thing, with nothing else mattering.

 

You can run a 8 k downsample on 1080p that requires 8 times the GPU power. AF/AA all this matters.  Like you said, I was running the Mass Effect games at 60 FPS at 1080p years ago on a 2008 GTX 260 and the card was a whole 200 bucks. 

 

When I play them now on my R9 290? I run the first two games at 5.2 k resolution from Gedosato with 4 k texture packs and the 3rd at 4k (due to UI size). They look stupidly better on a 1080p screen/tv.

 

We can already play games from a few years ago PAST 4k on one GPU. All depends how optimized a game is and how ambitious it is (and console games are NOT ambitious, Star Citizen is ambitious). A game like Shadows of Mordor? Stays to scale. You can play 4 k at the same FPS or better than a "next gen console" with no stuttering on a R9 290. A PCS + is a whole 249.99 on pc part picker right now.

 

ALL console ports should be optimized like this. So "4k" is already here on a single card and you don't need to be Bill Gates to afford one. Now if you want to do 60 fps? You need 2. The only reason some games can't do this, is because the developer is incompetent, or being malicious towards the PC port.

 

This is not last gen. They are not porting from power pc architecture to x86 architecture, or from custom gpu's to pc gpu's. They are porting from a x86 pc to a x86 pc and AMD GPU's are the same GCN architecture as the consoles.

 

As I said before. You have to TRY to make ports as bad as we have seen lately. 

[thatguyjerry]

Your response had nothing to do with my quote lol

just the first part did, it was something i noticed online too, that everyone seemed to have the highest end products online but in the surveys that isnt the reality.

[thekeemo]

I can do that in some games with my gtx 650

[deathjester]

What I am wondering is why it seems like everyone online says they have a titan or 780ti or 980 yet steam hardware polls say those graphics cards make up about 1% of people on steam COMBINED. 

 

Probably because people have laptops, net books they log on to steam with? Only one account can be logged on at a time, but you can play on multiple machines you own. That makes the hardware survey useless and it can also inflate the number of people on Win 8/8.1 which is sold with these laptops/notebooks and which people are not running on their desktops.

[SeanBond]

It's funny how people are now chipping in "oh plenty of people have good hardware because hardware has gotten so cheap". No nobody really has good hardware, just people in active communities like this do. http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

 

A quarter of people on pc run 1366x768 which means a quarter of people are using low end laptops just to start. Less than 2% of people have a gpu that is 970 or better and only 6% have 760 or better. I will give it to the people, they apparently like dual 1080p screen (that does not mean anyone has the hardware to run it) because a quarter of steam players run dual 1080p but only .02% have a 4k monitor. I can't tell you how many people I have seen said they had a 4k monitor. All this does is let me know how many people lie. And yes even if the numbers are inflated and deflated or whatever it can't be that far off because the people with the high end stuff are not going to have reaaaaly crap laptops like shown on the poll.

Edited November 24, 2014 by SeanBond

[deathjester]

It's funny how people are now chipping in "oh plenty of people have good hardware because hardware has gotten so cheap". No nobody really has good hardware, just people in active communities like this do. http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

 

A quarter of people on pc run 1366x768 which means a quarter of people are using low end laptops just to start. Less than 2% of people have a gpu that is 970 or better and only 6% have 760 or better. I will give it to the people, they apparently like dual 1080p screen (that does not mean anyone has the hardware to run it) because a quarter of steam players run dual 1080p but only .02% have a 4k monitor. I can't tell you how many people I have seen said they had a 4k monitor. All this does is let me know how many people lie. And yes even if the numbers are inflated and deflated or whatever it can't be that far off because the people with the high end stuff are not going to have reaaaaly crap laptops like shown on the poll.

 

Again you fail to realize you can use multiple computers on a steam account. You just can't be logged on to both at the same time.

 

I use a crappy laptop to play some games. I also have a higher end PC. The survey is skewed due to this and you still want to use it as a barometer. You simply can't. I have seen the same survey used to say that Win 8/8.1 has a high adoption rate among PC Gamers. This is complete and utter BS.

 

I have Win 8.1 on my laptop. I do not have it on my desktop. Why? Cus I am not paying 100 dollars for slightly faster boot and an API patch that is not even used in games. I am also not going to pay to downgrade to Win 7 when 8 is the same thing when you install start is back, and Win 8 can actually make sense when you are on a touchscreen laptop.

[Vedge]

Every time the survey pops up I'm on my laptop then again, given how statistics works, the survey is pretty accurate

[LogicalDrm]

Even though this is about hardware and graphics, I'd like to point out that it seems like most people have forgotten the real reason why console ports are hated in PC gaming community. That is controllability with mouse and keyboard, general UI design and bit graphics related depth in settings. Those are the three things you can see marked as minus points for bad console ports in past. I don't know why people are making such big deal out of graphics and them being developed for consoles rather than higher end PCs.

 

I enjoy more playing the game than drooling over graphics. But seems like gamers like me are becoming minority. Good thing that indie scene with pixel graphics is making things better.

[rentaspoon]

I guess publishers and developers really don't have much of an incentive to keep us happy since so many people cannot even run their games.

Depressing.

I run an 8350 and a R9 270 and can hit 70 to 100 fps without noticeable slow down anyway you don't need high end graphics to be a triple A title, it should be about the story and immersion and it's been a long time since I've had a stomach in my mouth moment.

I switched back from consoles for the freedom the PC gives me

[typographie]

What I am wondering is why it seems like everyone online says they have a titan or 780ti or 980 yet steam hardware polls say those graphics cards make up about 1% of people on steam COMBINED. 

 

What percentage of the PC gaming community do you think is represented on tech forums? The guy with Intel HD graphics that logs into Steam once or twice a month likely isn't posting on LTT in the first place. This community is biased in favor of having reasonably good gaming hardware, but we're a minority of a minority.

[-TesseracT-]

Many players that are actually really pro-PC and know that PC is better, typically have decent rigs. Everyone in my class pretty much have good GPU's.

[lonkarpinak]

I am surprised by the article. I don't have the time to dig up statistics, but I think the number of desktops has severely gone down, and while there are gaming grade laptops out there, I wonder if anyone who truly loves games would go for those over new generation consoles or desktops. 

 

I recently went with a GTX 970 upgrade to my 4 year old quad-core PC but there is no one, and I mean no one in my age-range (25-35) who I know plays hardcore video games, let alone play on PC. Maybe all the video game playing resulted into me not having many friends But there are people who I know at least have consoles, even Wii. I remember the PC gaming market around the globe before Steam, Origin, UPlay was based on one thing - piracy. This statement from the article can be accounted to just that - "It’s far easier for a PC gamer to amass a large collection of titles, for a a lot less money than console games."

 

Anyway, I absolutely love PC gaming, but you can't deny that the whole ordeal is more expensive, cumbersome, and challenging. Just think of all the struggles and fiddling we have to do to make that one game run smooth. I just put down 400 dollars for the graphic card upgrade (after just 4 years) to run COD AW smoothly! I have been using my PS3 for almost 6 years and found myself playing on it more frequently. PC is premium, no doubt. But it is just more work. Console makers must be making far more money just on this one vantage point - ease of usability. Pop the Blu ray or DVD in, switch on the huge screen TV (not sure how many desktop users enjoy this benefit), pick up the controller, and GO! 

 

More importantly, the entire gaming industry including PC grew BECAUSE of consoles. We did not see gigantic posters of a game launch when consoles were very new. Now-a-days it is almost like a big budget Hollywood movie launch. I won't be surprised if they start hiring theaters for a 30 minute premier of a game all over town soon. 

 

A lot of it should be attributed to the age range too. I am sure there's always going to be a PC user base. It also includes the more dedicated game players (a.k.a. people with way too much time on their hands, ouch!), but if you have 20 - 30 minutes to play once in a while, I am not touching that PC.