Steam Boasts 7 Million Concurrent Users Over Thanksgiving
- Thread starter Steven Bogos
- Start date
Recommended Videos
Oddly enough, of the sale games from majo publishers, most of the ones I've seen are rivaled by sales of new, physical stock.Adam Jensen said:
It's almost like it being digital is complete superfluous.
Hell, it's used as an excuse to keep the games more expensive year round because there is no need to depreciate for shelf real estate.
I just don't get this line of thinking, praising someone for cutting their arbitrarily high prices every so often to toss you a bone.
Oddly enough, "PC Gaming is dead" is something I see predominantly from people refuting it. It's like "The War on Christmas" or really, any other strawman used to attack a notion that has little to no real support.lancar said:
How fortunate, then, that there were articles from last year talking about Steam overtaking XBL. One really only needed to point to articles on gaming news sites such as this one to demonstrate it.Scrumpmonkey said:
...Of course, few people did, which is a real pity. Steam proponents seemed more interested in the dogma of the claim rather than the actual evidence behind it. And honestly? I don't think this is going to change. People have the right to be skeptical, especially when the 'evidence' given isn't links to news, but "shut up, that's why" statements.
Hopefully, I'm wrong. But I fear, like Adrian Monk, I'm incredibly neurotic I'm not.
Nothing wrong with companies being on the honour system.blackrave said:
Clovus said:
Android is open but how much money do Google take from the google play? SteamOS is going to come with steam built in and they will take a very high market share of all sales on SteamOS, or do you believe that Valve and google do things out of the kindness of their heart. They are both business and they are not going to spend $500000 plus without seeing a return on the bottom lineclippen05 said:
The point still remains that on Xbox and Playstation, there is no competition at all in regards to digital distribution. You either use their online market or you don't use anything. Sure, Steam is likely going to have the majority of the market share of steambox/steamOS users, but at least Steam ALLOWS competition. And I'd reckon that the reason that Steam would have such a good marketshare on SteamOS/Steambox is because they are, I don't know, the cheapest priced with the most features, not necessarily because it is installed by default on SteamOS. Internet Explorer comes installed by default on all Windows PCs, yet is it the most popular Web Browser out there? Nope, so your point about coming by default does not hold true to all accounts. In the case of Steam, as I said before, they will have high marketshare not because its forced (its not), but because they offer the best service.albino boo said:
Valve are company and they do things to make money. They have bet their money on the hope that they will have an even higher market share than they do now with steamOS. They wouldn't spend a cent on it if they didn't think it would make them more money than they are now. Its the same model that Google use with android, get other people to build the hardware and license the O/S and make a profit on sales.clippen05 said:
Where did I say anything indicating that Valve is doing this "out of the kindness of their heart"? Of course Valve is doing this to make money. Although, I think the main goal is to not end up losing insane amounts of money. If MS declares that all purchases have to go through the MS App Store in Windows 9, Valve could be in a very terrible situation if they don't have access to an alternatvie platform.albino boo said:
But, yeah, obviously Valve has big plans to be in everyone's living room, and they definitely would prefer if you buy all your games from them. That's not really comparable to PS and Xbox. You indicated that Valve aim to be "the only game in town", and there is just no indication that's true. No one's denying that Valve want to make money.
I refer you this post I made earlierClovus said:
Alsoalbino boo said:
To me that sounded like you were ascribing an altruistic intent, if that is not the case then I apologize.
Fyi join the family sharing beta so you can share games with eachother. I did it with my cousin and it works great. Of course if you and the wife plan to play the same game at the same time its best to buy your own copy each.Elf Defiler Korgan said:
I'm not quite sure how this bodes well for steam machines. All this means, if I'm understanding correctly, is that a lot of people have Pc's capable of playing games. That doesn't mean that many people will buy the Steam Machine. Given how many people have already bought the new consoles, I don't know what market exactly Valve is trying to reach.Steven Bogos said:
Yeah I am considering it. A remake of kingdom rush is coming to steam, my wife was into that for weeks on end. An account upgrade unlocking everything was one of the best things I ever brought her.GAunderrated said:Fyi join the family sharing beta so you can share games with eachother. I did it with my cousin and it works great. Of course if you and the wife plan to play the same game at the same time its best to buy your own copy each.Elf Defiler Korgan said:
Coop stuff is what we are very interested in.
Also another question I want to ask, are these active accounts of just any account that has ever been registered? I've seen people on steam and psn who haven't been online in years and most likely never will be again. Also take into account psn was free so there certainly were people who made multiple accounts. Same with Steam.
Who's the idiot who keeps saying PC gaming is dead?
Its not, neither is console gaming,
And gaming will never die.
YAY.
Its not, neither is console gaming,
And gaming will never die.
YAY.
Anyone who wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving by playing a round of Civilization: Colonization was unfortunately outta luck, as the Steam version has inexplicably stopped working and they refuse to acknowledge it's their problem.
Therein lies the problem of having thousands of games and millions of users to cater for: at some point your tech support is just going to resort to patronising copy-paste messages.
Therein lies the problem of having thousands of games and millions of users to cater for: at some point your tech support is just going to resort to patronising copy-paste messages.
The best thing about Steam, isn't that the DRM is tolerable, it's that Steam's success deters the much, much worse DRM a lot of companies WANT to push on us. It's still the most practical defense against that ugly always-online future that they want to force onto the market.BigTuk said:
I definitely know that Ubisoft, Acti-Blizzard*, and EA want it. All three of them have pushed for Always Online platforms in the past, and thankfully, it hasn't taken hold as a long term model or standard outside of games that require it (MMOs).
(*D3's attach rate is abysmal, despite its impressive retail sales, though that was just the Diablo brand's value at work. Notice how Blizzard was quick to brag about 14 million sales, but has completely clammed up about usage statistics. And this coming from the same company that's been only too happy to brag about WoW's usage over the years.)
What? Competition is GOOD?BigTuk said:
What a novel concept! So strange how certain big companies seem to act like they own the entire market.
Oh, there's so much more than planned obsolescence.
By wresting total legal and practical control from the consumer, they can impose all sorts of bullshit money making and marketing schemes. Jacking up prices, targeted invasive advertising, subscriptions-for-nothing but to ensure your continued investment into their platform...it's scary.
Blizzard has been hostile and controlling vs all of their customers since the Glider vs Blizzard case.BigTuk said:
Lets just say that in hindsight, that case was the point where Blizzard's handlers changed their entire business philosophy, and slowly started working towards long term dominion. The rampant long term success of WoW only reinforced their ideology of an entirely service-centric prison for their games, and now, they're beyond reason.
Diablo 3 was just...an utterly reprehensible game. Not because of its content, but because of its purpose, and its model.
It is nearly everything I fear gaming will become if Always Online takes off. And again, why Steam is so far, a great deterrent for that. (that, and the cost of hosting every game like that would be INSANE even with planned obsolescence rotating each game in and out as necessary.)
7 million is an impressive number, but it's kinda dragged down when you look at the other number next to it, the one that represents how many of that 7 million were actually playing games. Less than half. It's that way right now, as I'm looking at it, 825K in game, 4.5 million online.
I have corrupted everyone I know. And my family.
It's hard to argue when they ask how I afford so many games on my meager spare cash and I show them that my history has shown that I have barely spent over 50 quid on steam. (Also I get the indie bundles when they look good) For nearly 60 games (this past sale brought me to 59).
Good games. Indie, mainstream, triple A alike. Sure I have to 'wait for the sale' but fuck it, it's a hell of alot better than the sales elsewhere who shave a poxy 20% or 10% off theirs. So...yeah welcome to the future.
And when things are more readily available to you people are more generous and giving with their cash and purchases, my friends and I all buy steam games for each other over the holidays, and it's great, because most of them cost less than a sandwich and a coffee.
It's hard to argue when they ask how I afford so many games on my meager spare cash and I show them that my history has shown that I have barely spent over 50 quid on steam. (Also I get the indie bundles when they look good) For nearly 60 games (this past sale brought me to 59).
Good games. Indie, mainstream, triple A alike. Sure I have to 'wait for the sale' but fuck it, it's a hell of alot better than the sales elsewhere who shave a poxy 20% or 10% off theirs. So...yeah welcome to the future.
And when things are more readily available to you people are more generous and giving with their cash and purchases, my friends and I all buy steam games for each other over the holidays, and it's great, because most of them cost less than a sandwich and a coffee.
Yeah, except that the 8800GT was released at the end of 2007 and was the third fastest graphics card on the market at the time of release(it was the fourth fastest of the generation with the 8800GTS pushing it back a place). Don't misunderstand me, I love the 8800GT, I bought it as soon as it became available in stores, but that doesn't change the fact that it can't run modern games to save it's life.Denamic said:
That's a graphics card that cost around $250 when it came out six years ago, so you can't reasonably expect it to perform well, but the 3 year old GTX460 can barely play Need For Speed Rivals in 720p at High details. The new Assassins Creed, CoD and Battlefield fare even worse. Not to mention that a dual core processor from 2006 can't possibly run new with a reasonable minimum framerate. Even if you do upgrade every 2 years, you can't always muster $300 dollars for a GTX280X or what not, most of the time us low end gamers need to be happy with a HD7700, maybe a GTX650Ti if we're lucky and that makes me a sad gamer. It's always better to invest $250 or $400 in a Wii U/PS4 and know that you're covered for the next seven years than to buy a crappy PC for the same money and pray to god that Crytek doesn't make Crysis 4.
Hardware aside, you guys can't possibly compare a steam acount with 60 AAA games to one with 60 indie games. It's simply not possible indie games are mostly fun little games, but they are little games. You can literally play CoD or Diablo or Skyrim for hundreds of hours and still have a good time, while most indie games last a fraction of that and most often than not provide less fun per hour spent. Sure, you can get AAA games on steam for cheap, but how many years after the release of the game?