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Apparently 1680 x 1050 is still winning, by a little bit, Though lower resolutions overall are still quite common.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

Wow a lot of lamer CRT users out there. They need to destroy their crts for a shiny new 1280x1024 LCD 19" monitor. And kick their 1988 3dfx card from their Windows 97 system in their 2ghz Pentium II with 583mb ram. they really need to get an life. theres more to games than valves game of the year 'half flie' which is what steam is made for and only for and what the surveys about.

captcha: changes. CAN YOU FEEL THE WINDOWS OF CHANGE?

Apparently 1680 x 1050 is still winning, by a little bit, Though lower resolutions overall are still quite common. http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

What do you consider Steam? It isn't physical media, and it isn't the Apple app store either.

Steam probably sells a sizeable percentage of all video games right now, and is steadily increasing it's market share.

Or Steam for a dollar cheaper.

Here is an example of an indie developer who has been extremely active on the forums, and the game is all the better for it. Honestly, based on how much time SnowBrigade spends on the forum, it's a wonder he gets any coding done. :) And yet there are regular updates including many player suggested features, addressing player brought up balancing issues, etc. One of my own suggestions was recently implemented as well.

Steam is currently selling BF:BC2 for £19.99; when it was released back in May it was £39.99, so while it's going for £12.99 on Amazon & Play, it's still halved in price on Steam since its release (and it was available for under a tenner during the Christmas sales).

Before someone claims this is an isolated case, every single one of Valve's games has done the same thing. The only exceptions that I can think of are the ones they originally offered in packs, where the pack has dropped in price while the standalone game hasn't (barring sales).

Steam is currently selling BF:BC2 for £19.99; when it was released back in May it was £39.99, so while it's going for £12.99 on Amazon & Play, it's still halved in price on Steam since its release (and it was available for under a tenner during the Christmas sales).

Before someone claims this is an isolated case, every single one of Valve's games has done the same thing. The only exceptions that I can think of are the ones they originally offered in packs, where the pack has dropped in price while the standalone game hasn't (barring sales).

At the end of the day there is still a competition. I've bought way more $5-$15 WiiShop games than I have bought $60 titles that required I buy a physical disk. You are right, it's kind of odd to compare the two, as they are about as different as different gets. However, I have quite a few games for my Wii that only cost $10 that are about 100 times better than a lot of the stuff they used to for $30 or $20 in the bargain bin at Walmart. What it really means is that developers won't be able to charge a premium for crap games as they did in the past. Sure, top rated titles will still demand a high price tag, but games that require very little development and could be done by a couple of good developers in their spare time will no longer be able to sell for $30+. Which is probably a good thing for all gamers in the end.

Steam already offers this for the Mac. However, Steam also sells the beefier titles as well... sometimes for cheap. Steam also tends to have sales, including two back-to-back sales covering almost all of December.

See: Steam's Mac section.

While not a sampling of the average computer user, gamers seem to (rightly) prefer Windows 7 64-bit over the 32-bit version: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

XP 64-bit has a pretty small usage on that survey.

I got the GSB complete pack on a sale some time back, included all the DLC that was available back then. Overall I didn't like it much and there's no way I would have bought those race addons individually, $5 for a sprite swap? If we're talking about reasonable pricing try AI War Fleet Command, that game is gigantic, the DLC tends to be a major game-changer instead of just a sprite swap and the game gets constant and HUGE updates for free. They just did a complete engine replacement a few months back.

I hate ignorant people. I'm really just at that point this holiday season Slashdot. So much bad news someone cheer me up...please.

Me too new friend! Whenever someone I know tries to claim that Reiki, Numerology, Homeopathy, Astrology or any of those other kinds of bullshit are "real" and that they are "free to believe in it if they want to" so I can just go STFU, I fire up Left 4 Dead 2, bust out a chainsaw, axe or a katana and just go to town on some Zombies. Very very very therapeutic. Try it :)

They're doing it on the source engine too though which helps.

Of course, Valve already sells a port of Half-Life to the Source engine (appropriately named Half-Life: Source)... and the Black Mesa mod will require you to own at least one Source game already.

Commander Keen pack on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/9180/

it's not a terrible percentage. only 10% of computer users as a whole use a Mac.
So, no it's not bad at all.

Of course, you numbers are meaningless in this contexts without the total numbers of steam users, the market percentage of platform owners, and games.

Mac run many steam games just fine. I know a lot of twitch gamers that use Macs.
So about 3.3 million people use steam. 4 or so percent are Macs. Considering most MAc owners aren't 'gamers' how can you conclude it's a terrible percentage?

And it's not a 20% performance hit. Stop lying.
Plus, using steam asd a metric for 'gamers' is stupid. Do you consider plants vs. zombies as a 'gamers' game?

You need to get the numbers of people who actively play the games you consider 'gamer' games.
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

it's not a terrible percentage. only 10% of computer users as a whole use a Mac.
So, no it's not bad at all.

Of course, you numbers are meaningless in this contexts without the total numbers of steam users, the market percentage of platform owners, and games.

Mac run many steam games just fine. I know a lot of twitch gamers that use Macs.
So about 3.3 million people use steam. 4 or so percent are Macs. Considering most MAc owners aren't 'gamers' how can you conclude it's a terrible percentage?

And it's not a 20% performance hit. Stop lying.
Plus, using steam asd a metric for 'gamers' is stupid. Do you consider plants vs. zombies as a 'gamers' game?

You need to get the numbers of people who actively play the games you consider 'gamer' games.
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

The embedded MOTD screen used some flaw in the embedded IE engine that was able to infect my system.

This wouldn't have happened if you just had logged in as a normal user (in Windows terms; restricted user) instead of administrator. You said:

go as far as to say I think I know what I'm doing.

but actually, I don't think you've taken into account the good practice of NOT logging in as administrator. And before you reply 'but Steam needs administrator rights', I say: Installing Steam on a Limited Windows User Account.

All major publishers have games on steam, so I'm sure they have a reasonable idea of how well their games are selling even if we don't, just looking at the steam stats can give a rough idea.

To be honest I like being able to play the latest games with the settings on full, "developments will be pretty much limited to what their creative expressions is, what the content is" is not necessarily a bad thing, its the game play vs graphics argument.

Take up cards or something.

So, Poker Night at the Inventory then?

http://store.steampowered.com/app/31280/

Or are you sure it won't be released via steam as well?

http://store.steampowered.com/app/20920/

You can also get it on Steam and D2D also with the 10% pre-order discount. The big deal about GOG having it was that it's the first time they've had a brand new game available first day in their store. Although CD Projekt owning GOG helped that. http://store.steampowered.com/app/20920/ http://www.direct2drive.com/10030/product/Buy-The-Witcher-2:-Assassins-of-Kings-Digital-Premium-Download

Yep, they even offer some mods distributed through Steam, not just a token link. Here are a few examples.

Yeah I've become kind of a Steam Sniper recently. Games I've been wanting to play for ages show up for cheap, and I grab them. Like this. Can you believe that? Commander Keen? What is the chance that you can walk into a retail store, and find something like that? It would have to be somewhere in the range of -20%. No retail store can ever hope to match the selection of an online distributor. Bandwidth and storage are a lot cheaper than real-estate, and once you get the licensing worked out you are golden on inventory.

Two nights ago you got some of the benefits.
http://store.steampowered.com/news/4629/

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?s=3584a3bb4ea90284f57d4e4dd4e4141d&ref=1456-EUDN-2493 It eludes me why we have to cope with custom ports & firewall rules just to login to a service and download software that could be delivered using HTTPS and web services. Note that I don't mean to play online but to merely log-in in the service, browsing the catalog, spend my money and download software. That's why other Digital Deliverers (mostly represented by Impulse) are gaining ground over Steam. I guess that iTunes will marginalize Steam on Mac as soon Apple will deply the new MacStore, since it is a lot easier to live with it on very strict network configurations.

People still play MW2?

According to http://store.steampowered.com/stats/ it's in the 14th place today, so yes.

The problem with Windows is the stable API which they can't kill off because no-one would buy Windows if it didn't support proprietary binaries from 1990 that they still run.

Actually, the 64-bit version of Windows wouldn't run binaries from 1990 since it doesn't include the WOW subsystem for 16-bit code. The inability to run Window 3.1 software doesn't seem to have affected the adoption of the 64-bit version of Windows 7.

And since the old code was handled by a separate subsystem (eg. GDI system is in gdi.exe for 16-bit and gdi32.dll for 32-bit), it didn't stop Micrsoft from making changes to the API when the moved to 32-bit (and later 64-bit).

2) It's unusual for more than 50% of the people who beat the first level of your game to beat the last level.

Very true--For those unaware, Valve publishes statistics (lower right panel) for some of their games. For Half-Life: Episodes 1 and 2, they've published the highest map reached. The graph is slightly S-shaped (greatest percentage at the first map, lowest at the last, and evener in the middle), with about 100% beating the first level and a bit less than 50% beating the last.

For Episode 2, they also published death heatmaps--maps showing where people died the most frequently. Of course, boss battles and the like appear pretty hot, but what I found particularly interesting is this map, the first level. That hot spot you see there marks the cliff facing the far-off superportal, which the player is instructed to look at (it's pretty cinematic). Newbie players likely think, "hey, I wonder if I can jump down there." (You can, but the fall kills you.)

Because it couldn't be that the later levels were rushed, sloppy, unimaginative, and ultimately just boring. Or the game in general wasn't that good to begin with. Nah, it must be the gamer's fault. *facepalm*

http://www.steampowered.com/status/ep2/ep2_stats.php

Man, that Half-Life game. Only 50% of people who started it, finished it. Probably because the later levels were rushed, sloppy, unimaginative, and ultimately just boring. Or the game in general wasn't that good to begin with. Nah, it must be the gamer's fault.

*facepalm*

There's several variations on this reply, so I'll address yours and hope the others read it. Put simply there's no business case for doing what you suggest. Consider: apt-get and yum are designed for developers and users by developers and users. It's in the interest of the developers to make the system work with multiple repositories because it's likely to make their lives easier too. This system is designed by a for profit company. What you're asking them to do is not simply be "open" you're asking them to give their competitors a leg up to compete with them.

You're asking then not merely to allow competition with their app store, but essentially say to potential competitors: "Hey look, we did most of the work for you. All the API's are there and you can hook into them. Just get some cheap bandwidth, hook up a repo and charge a fraction of what we are, kay?" It would be suicidal.

They're already allowing competing repo systems to exist. There's at least two that I'm aware of Fink (which is a more or less standard Free software repo system based on apt-get) and Steam (a direct commercial competitor, albeit narrowly focused). I know there's a couple more Free apt-get style systems to, though I don't know names. There's nothing stopping another company from building yet another system if they want. Just don't expect Apple to hand over the keys.

Please note that I no point have I argued that this system is better than, or even as good as, Linux repo systems. I'm sure it will have better aspects (Apple rarely releases something that's not pretty polished), but it will also be more limited in same ways. That's fine. If I want to use something like apt-get I'll use Fink. If I need a commercial app, I'll check this store. Just because it's not just like apt-get doesn't make it evil.

Oh, com'on, you don't need to import anything when you have digital delivery! http://store.steampowered.com/app/22300/

Not true for games, especially cheap ones. There's Steam, GameTree Online and Macgamestore.com, all selling Windows games. Granted, only the Steam ones are officially multiplatform, but the EA ones are in practice, and that was the direction we were heading for before this announcement.

There's also lots of shareware with both mac and windows version where you get access to both with a single license.

XP no longer receives graphics driver updates, so it won't be long until commercial games drop XP support entirely. Most gamers are running 7 already. Even Steam, which makes it easier to be an XP gamer, has 70% share between Vista/7, and only 30% for XP (falling fast).

For some reason you think global XP share is actually relevant. Don't you know anything about marketing? It's not the XP users who are buying new games, it's those on Vista and 7. Lots of the world's XP machines are used simply for Facebook and email.

For the record I stopped playing TF2 around the time they started introducing upgrades. Partly because I didn't like the upgrades and couldn't be bothered to keep track of- and grind in order to get new weapons but mainly because I just got bored of the game.

You didn't play the game for very long, then. Upgrades* were introduced 7 months or so after the game launched, in April 2008's Goldrush update. This update introduced 3 new items for the medic and a new game type. It was clear then that Valve planned on doing one update for each class, which they finally completed when the Engineer Update was introduced in mid-2010.

Originally, you did need to grind to get the new items, but with the Spy vs. Sniper update in mid-2009, Valve introduced the random drop system to help alleviate this. When they did add a way to get the new Sniper and Spy items through achievements as well, they were at drastically lower number of achievements than the previous updates... 7, 12, and 17 achievements rather than 11, 18, and 25 (I believe; I can't currently check the TFWiki).

As of right now, I have nearly every weapon unlock in the game, including the new ones. This gives me lots of different ways of playing each class.

Strangely, one of my favorite items is the Gunslinger... which allows an Engineer to build non-upgradeable mini-sentries that are less powerful than a level 1 sentry, but go up in less time.

* I use the word upgrade loosely, as TF2's new items tend to have both positives and negatives. Valve finally released the final TF2 class update a few months ago.

A recent survey suggested that the majority of gamers prefer physical discs, and digital downloads have the secondary effect of entirely cutting out the popular market for second-hand films and games

OK, that explains the console market, but for PCs, most games on disc contain DRM. Given that fact, I'm going to look at my options for digital downloads first, starting with Steam.

If the game is on Steam, I'll check the game page and look to see if it includes Third-party DRM, which is noted on the right side of the game page for those that have it. Example: Batman: Arkham Asylum.

If it does contain Third-Party DRM, I'll skip the game entirely, as likely every version of the game for PC has some form of DRM.

You can only gift new games. So if I wanted to buy you a game, I could do that. I'd purchase it, say it was a gift, and then specify who for. However existing games can't be gifted:

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?p_faqid=549

If casual games cost $10-15, yeah, I'd buy them.

Uh. What are you talking about? Yes they do. May I redirect you to the $10 and below section of the games sold at Steam? There's a ton of gems in there.

May I also redirect you to the Mega-Love Indie Bundles: which pack in these excellent indie casual games: Aaaaa! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, Brainpipe, Captain Forever, Cogs, Saira, Space Giraffe or And Yet It Moves, Auditorium, Aztaka, Eufloria, Machinarium & Osmos for $19.99 or all 12 games for $29.99?

Finally, check Steam Game Sales which lists all the recent promos/sales/discounts on Steam, Direct2Drive, EA & Impulse, updated daily. Look! Stuff's up to 85% off right now!

Worms would be my most recent, and that feels like ages ago

What, last week?

The cruel truth about the game development industry is even if you have good graphics, good gameplay, a great storyline and writing, there is still a chance that your game will flop, you will lose your publisher and with that your studio. A hit driven industry is always cruel to some games, none more so than psychonauts

They used a wrapper bought from another company so they wouldn't have to rewrite their code from DX9 to OpenGL for the OSX version.

No they didn't.

A one-line unsourced rumor at the end of an article is not an announcement from Valve. An announcement from Valve would be something like this.

It's not a replacement for a brick and mortar store. At the store I can get a refund or at least credit towards a different game; steam? Tough shit because you're obviously a pirate or cheap stake that has already finished the game if you're asking such a thing.

When I asked for a refund because the game I bought that day was crashing on startup they re-directed me to this.

I bought a game with my credit card through Steam and either don't like it or don't want it anymore. Can I get a refund?

The fuck? Don't want it anymore... don't like it? It's a defective product and steam has a ton of third party developers that release poorly programmed games.

Steam is setup as a win win situation for publishers. Once they've got your money you're screwed because there is no incentive for a publisher to release a game that works. The only thing they care about is spending enough money on advertising to THINK you're getting a good game.

That's why Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 are pc only, why Portal was such a major flop that nobody has ever heard of and why there are currently over 2 million people playing multi-player on steam as well as millions playing eve-online, everquest 2, Guildwars, Puzzle Pirates, Star Trek Online, War Hammer, etc, etc..

It's linked to from TFA but Valve's technical article Game Performance Improvements in Latest Mac OS X Update gives a lot of insight into the OS X driver situation.

Personally, I have a MacBook Pro with a NVIDIA 9600 chip. I was kind of disappointed when I got StarCraft II. I had to run on one of the lowest resolutions with medium defaults. Increasing any setting made the game close to unplayable when complex graphics were being displayed (such as the lava level). Then I updated the graphics drivers. I was able to bump to the highest supported resolution and bumped the graphic settings to high defaults without noticeable slowdowns. I had to go to the ultra defaults before I started getting slowdowns and warnings.

I haven't had a chance to really sit down with it and play for an extended time (damn real life...) but there certainly is a huge improvement. The urge to upgrade is fading...

Thats because you're part of apples target market, which lets users pay for all the expensive "cool" hardware to actually not use it.

Apple fixed occlusion query in OpenGL, which matters when you're looking into a light source. Useful when sun near horizon in game. Nice, but no big deal.

It's linked to from TFA but Valve's technical article Game Performance Improvements in Latest Mac OS X Update gives a lot of insight into the OS X driver situation.

Personally, I have a MacBook Pro with a NVIDIA 9600 chip. I was kind of disappointed when I got StarCraft II. I had to run on one of the lowest resolutions with medium defaults. Increasing any setting made the game close to unplayable when complex graphics were being displayed (such as the lava level). Then I updated the graphics drivers. I was able to bump to the highest supported resolution and bumped the graphic settings to high defaults without noticeable slowdowns. I had to go to the ultra defaults before I started getting slowdowns and warnings.

I haven't had a chance to really sit down with it and play for an extended time (damn real life...) but there certainly is a huge improvement. The urge to upgrade is fading...

despite it's weird aspect ratio 1280x1024 was a common resoloution for both CRTs and LCDs for quite a while and in places with slower replacement cycles is likely to still be common.

Afiact it's only fairly recently that 1280x1024 has been replaced as the common low end desktop option by various widescreen formats (I think 1440x900 is the most common though I have seen some desktops as low as 1280x800!).

even according to steams hardware survey ( http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ ) which is likely to be biased towards gamers (who tend to be on shorter replacement cycles) 1280x1024 is still the single most common resoloution.

and most low end laptops are on 1280x800 afaict (generally web pages are intended to be scrolled vertically so width is more important to web designers than hight).

Not a hard release date, but they did originally say "this holiday season". So I count this is attempt #2 already.

<marketing guy>Ah, but they never specified which holiday! So as you can see, they're still on track!</marketing guy>

Of course, in order to get to step 3. Profit, you have to actually release the game. DNF hasn't proved it will ever happen.

Valve has a history of delayed releases, and making it worth the wait once it is released. I"m still waiting for HL2 Episode 3, which might be the reason for the delay, to package together with Portal 2. If anyone hasn't seem them yet, here are the trailers for Portal 2, which are pretty creepy at times.

Not a hard release date, but they did originally say "this holiday season". So I count this is attempt #2 already.

Not that I think this game would hit any 32 bit architecture limitations, but why is there no 64 bit build for Windows provided? I have seen this with many projects. OpenOffice, Inkscape and Mozilla do this, Eclipse only recently began to offer all of its preassembled packages for both Windows platforms. Developers of proprietary consumer software, with the partial exception of Adobe, seem to be largely oblivious of the existance of 64 bit platforms, probably because switching will not reap them more cash. But why do OSS developers opt to ignore this platform? The Steam Hardware Survey has Windows 7 x64 at 28%, double that of its 32 bit version and following closely to the 32% of XP 32 bit. 64 bit is not any more the domain of nerds or early adopters, it is becoming the dominating platform in the Windows ecosystem.

So my question is: Why is it ignored? Would it really be hard to provide 64 bit builds? Would this require a lot of additional development work?