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Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports

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Re: Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports

#31
post #28

That has to be hella broad in terms of definition. I'd guess playing a cutting edge PC game at reasonable spec puts you into the top 1% income wise? (gut feel guess) So 3 billion is presumably anything that has a screen and a game? Games are big but near half of humanity is a pretty bold claim.

The article is really short and discusses the breakdown of mobile/console/PC use that you're curious about. You should read it.

Re: Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports

#33
post #8

Anything good on Linux these days?

Every game I've tried so far works either out of the box with Steam's Proton (even ones without official linux support) or through Lutris, or requires you to tweak a config file which you can find by googling. Some have minor glitches but nothing gamebreaking.

Re: Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports

#34
post #6
post #2

If you count Candy Crush then sure

This is such a weird attitude. If someone was to say (figures made up) "over two billion people worldwide now drink beer" then "if you count Budweiser then sure", would be a bizarre response. Candy Crush is clearly a game; this isn't really ambiguous. It's a mass market game that game connoisseurs sneer at, sure, but it's a game.

I get your point, but I think it's more accurately framed like so:

"Over three billion people are now drinkers"

    "If you count having a glass of wine once a week then sure"
The perceived snobbery is less about whether these people are playing games and more about whether they can be accurately described as "gamers", a term which has meaning beyond simply "players of any game(s)" due to its many (largely negative) connotations.

Re: Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports

#36
This is a trend that will continue to accelerate. And I think we grossly underestimated how much time and money people are willing to spend on video games. Although, I think production has somewhat plateau’d in the past five years. There’s VR, but I believe there will be a new category introduced within the next five years that will change the gaming landscape.

Re: Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports

#37
post #8

Anything good on Linux these days?

I would check out game streaming services if you have decent internet. I’ve been playing on Google Stadia over the last few months, and it’s rekindled my love for gaming after years of not being able to play the latest games on my Mac. The age of hardware not being the limiting factor in your selection of games is close upon us.

Re: Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports

#38
> However, only about 250 million people are active console users who regularly buy new games for them. Although they represent only 8% of the total number of gamers, this is the group with the highest revenue per person.

Why is there an "although" at the beginning of that sentence? Why wouldn't they be generating the highest revenue person?

Re: Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports

#39
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://store.steampowered.com/linux If a game is going to support Windows + macOS than it isn't much more work to also support Linux these days. There are many games released on Linux every year.

That's right, Proton is amazing. I've been playing classics like Rome Total War on my Linux setup

Beyond that, most game devs today use established engines like Unity or Unreal, which typically have one-click build buttons for all major platforms. The level of abstraction has been raised, which affects not only game logic but even things like graphics APIs (DirectX vs Vulkan vs Metal) and packaging (installer, icons, etc). The bar has never been lower to throw in Linux support, even if you don't expect a huge market.

Re: Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports

#40
post #38

> However, only about 250 million people are active console users who regularly buy new games for them. Although they represent only 8% of the total number of gamers, this is the group with the highest revenue per person. Why is there an "although" at the beginning of that sentence? Why wouldn't they be generating the highest revenue person?

PCs are more expensive than consoles, so one might be led to think that PC gamers have more money than console gamers and thus spend more on games than their console brethrens.
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