| czecherychestnut said: But how many PC gamers would not have Steam installed? I'd say very few... |
I totally agree, the Steam-haters on PC are a vocal minority. Even if they prefer DRM-free alternatives for most of their purchases (GOG, Humble store, retail), there will be a few games with no Steam-alternative where most of them will make an exception.
| czecherychestnut said: ... so the market for PC games must be a subset of the 125 million Steam users, and given 20% of that 125 million are using integrated Intel graphics, and from rough calc's less than 15% of people are using a GPU more modern than a GTX 670 / Radeon HD 7700 series, the actual size of the PC market that overlaps with current consoles is ~ 18 milllion PC's, which is half the number of XB1's/PS4's on the market. |
If my interpretation of the Steam stats is remotely correct, in January there were ~18 million Steam-PCs with a GTX 670 or HD 7800 series (I'm leaving the 7700 series out, too many with only 1 GB RAM) or better. But with an assumed growth of 5 million Steam accounts each month since February, this number should have grown by now to 25 million Steam-PCs with a GTX 670 or HD 7800 series or better:
And I also agree that it is bad business / too risky to make AAA-games only for that audience instead of including PS4 + XBO.
Multiplatform (PS4, PC, XBO) is the way to go if no one is paying for exclusivity. And on PC, no one is paying developers/publishers to keep games away from other platforms.
That doesn't mean that there are no exclusives or timed exclusives on PC... there are a lot! But they are exclusives (or released first on PC) for other reasons than "moneyhatting":
- developers who have decided that their games don't work well enough with gamepads (Total War series, Civilization series, Cities: Skylines, most RTS, most point & click adventures) or won't make hardware compromises (only Chris Roberts with Star Citizen)
- small developers who can't afford a multiplatform development, especially crowdfunded games... most of these games get a headstart on PC first and if they are successful console ports (and/or mobile ports, depends on the game) follow later: Divinity Original Sin, Ether One, Minecraft, Outlast, Project CARS, Shadowrun Returns / Dragonfall, The Talos Principle, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Wasteland 2,... Pillars of Eternity?
