PC Gaming will reclaim the throne during the last half of this Console Gen.

[shio]

mrstickball said:

greenmedic88 said:
50% seems high although I'm sure MS would be elated to see those kinds of numbers, even among a niche market like PC gamers.

It will be pretty easy to check after Steam updates their user survey data.

I'm going to say that adoption will be gradual rather than immediate, despite the advantages of Windows 7/DX 11, even among gamers.

Core i7 really isn't a factor though, even with mainstream CPUs. Vendors may start shipping mainstream PCs using the chips, but it won't lead to an explosion of sales, no matter how Intel markets them.

Quad core intel CPU systems are fairly mainstream in terms of cost, but most users still haven't upgraded, not even gamers just going by Steam user statistics.

Personally, I'd like to see games that took full advantage of the additional cores, but it's not going to happen overnight. Hell, I'd like to see any excuse (not reason) to build an i7/X58 system soon, but unless I was using it as a workstation, it wouldn't be a huge jump for every day use and gaming.

Steam is really not the way to go when it comes to survey data. It represents a very niche part of the PC market. Just look at Unity survey data, and you get a totally different picture.

Realilistically, it WILL be a very slow adoption process. PC gamers on this forum are absolutely oblivious to the truth of hardware: very few gamers need, or use, top-end stuff, and have the specs to run good settings. The trend in hardware sales is more inferior devices like Laptops and Netbooks, as opposed to high-end desktops, which this forum seems to clamor for.

 

The trend only proves how cheap it is to play PC games today. Now you can buy good gaming laptops less than $1000 and will last 7-8 years playing top budget games and +10 years playing indie games. 5 years ago you had to spend atleast $2000 to get a decent gaming laptop.

The hardware is getting cheaper, and the games' requirements are slowing down. There is less need to upgrade so fast.

With the rise of indie gaming you'll see awesome games really cheap, games that can be played on almost a decade old PCs, like Audiosurf. A PC gamer can "live" entirely on indie games for years.