| Panama said: And yet the highest amount of people I've ever seen on any single game is just a little over 100k if not close to 200k when Skyrim launched. I'm assuming the majority just use it to chat. Steam is great, it just feels as though there is no PC community though even with 40million members. The online community of anything but AAA mainstream games die in obscurity within weeks if not days. I received Crysis 2, LotR:WitN, MoH, Fear 3 among others all on the first day of launch, some as gifts so don't judge. All dead within weeks. Worst offenders of this were Brink and Homefront, though they weren't exactly great games. What I do like about steam though, it seems to be a great avenue for indie developers to garner popularity. It might just be more effective at doing so than XBLA. |
I have to disagree.
I think Steams community is great, the forums are usually filled with lots of information required to get a game working if you run into issues and then you have the Steam groups to play with like-minded gamers.
Personally though, I play ALLOT of single player, out of the couple hundred games on Steam that I have... I've only played multi-player a couple of times, that's it. But I still use the voice chat and regular chat whilst gaming rather frequently, but I don't account for everyone.
As for games falling into obscurity... It happens constantly on the consoles. How often on a console do you have a sale which propells a 15 or 20 year game to the top of the sales charts? Almost never, everyone is always focused on the next big thing.
Take Fable: The Lost Chapters as an example as it was recently brought to Steam last year, that game was propelled to the top of the sales charts despite it being almost a decade old. This almost NEVER happens in console land.
Essentially Microsoft gets a sales boost for that game without hardly lifting a finger which gives incentives to developers to release a sequel in the firm knowledge that if they don't hit their sales target the first week that the games sales will be reinvigerated frequently over many many years, it also constantly adds new blood/noobs to a games multi-player keeping that games community alive and healthy.
Console games however usually hit it big on release but then fade into obscurity as the next big thing looms on the horizon.
If you wish to see a service though that has no community... Look no farther than Origin. It's awefull. Overpriced, consumes way to many system resources and is just a plain pain to use in my opinion.
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