More options and control vs conveinience and dumbed down experience for the "average joe." I think applies perfectly here.

A car is a tool to move from place to place... there are some who enjoy just driving from point A to point Z, but serious to call it and "experience" in the same vien as gaming is reduckules

Some people just wanna play their games and that's that, others enjoy choosing how the game is played on top of just playing it. The thing is, while the PCs let you "just play," they also offer you a huge range of options which you just don't have on the consoles. For instance, in multiplayer, you get both matchmaking and a server browser in a lot of games. Halo, I only get matchmaking.... Yeah I can get friends in there and so on and so forth, but it's just not the same without looking for servers.

P.S. Don't listen to me when it comes to driving, I've been caught waaaay too many times speeding (gotten off of all of the with driving too fast 4 cond. though!).

I agree with vlad321

The average PC gamer is much more mature and serious in his gaming interest than the average "Couch Joe". No offense.

I'm not saying that core gaming is in any way 'better' or more important than casual console gaming. I'm just stating that PC gamers are older, more experienced and serious. Being on Xbox Live just isn't the same.

If that is Elitism, then I guess I'm Elitist.

/

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.

That has to be the most ignorant quote I've ever read in the history of PC gaming.

Unless by 'mature' you mean entirely in age (in which, the median PC gaming user would probably be older), and by 'serious' you mean spends more time playing PC Solitare or Tower Defense games, that may be the case.

But sufficive to say, a prototypical PC gamer is not much different from a console gamer. You have fanatics on both sides of the spectrum, but there's very little difference between them. One just pays a bit more to play (PC) than the other (console).

I encourage you to look up statistics on Newgrounds, Kongregate, and ArmorGames before making such insane claims.

I ninja edited my post. I'll repost below so that you get more of the context:

Wrong still.

You do not understand that the PC market is much more diverse than your giving it credit for. For every XBL kiddo that you deride, there's an even younger PC user playing Thomas The Train's FunTime Adventure on mommy's laptop.

The issue is that when you target PC gamers you are targeting everyone that plays PC games. That goes from Left 4 Dead and Crysis down to Solitare and Yahoo Chess.

And to quantify the argument:

As of this very second, there are under 250,000 games being played on Steam, as per their stats page. This represents the pinnacle of hardcore PC gamers, and comes from a user base of >15,000,000 users.

At this very second, 255,000 PC gamers are on Pogo.com playing games like Jigsaw Treasure Hunter (which has as many people playing it as Counter-Strike, and twice as many as Left 4 Dead). Pogo.com is not the largest PC gaming site, as AOL Games has over 290,000 concurrent gamers, and Yahoo Games is most likely larger.

So I must ask you....Why is the PC gamer older and more mature?

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.

I'd really like to see some sort of proof that a laptop purchased today can play top-end games for the next 7-8 years, shio, because I doubt a 3 year old laptop can play Crysis that cost under $3,000 in '06.