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Steam Hardware & Software Survey:

Windows 10 64 bit .... 57.03%
Windows 7 64 bit ..... 32.38%
Windows 8.1 64 bit ... 4.05%
Windows 7 ............ 1.93%

all other version of Windows are <1% (8 64-bit, 10 32-bit, 8.1 32-bit, XP)
all versions of Linux combined are <1%
all versions of MacOS X combined is 2.93%

Conclusion: Windows 10 has been a big deal for quite some time, at least in gaming.

This is all unfortunate news for me because long ago (~5 years) I had decided that Win7 is the last version I will use in my home. So convinced of this I bought a 5-pack of builder licenses to cover any future systems I build. It seemed reasonable because for creative work Linux happens to meet my needs. For gaming I had high hopes that Steam OS or Android TV or something would have taken hold. I'm not really a consoles guy, so I may have to adapt to running Spyware-from-Redmond, or limit myself to 10 year old games.

If most of the back end of this system is going to be loaded in the cloud... then why the fuck even bother having a console at all??

For the same reason Valve has the Steam Link extender.

Just turn X-box live into a new Steam and be done with it.

I imagine on average (median), the display connected to an Xbox One is much larger in inches or centimeters than the display connected to a PC running Steam. (Unfortunately, Steam Hardware & Software Survey data do not include the physical size of the primary monitor, only its pixel count.) People choose Xbox for the living-room-first experience, or because they don't own and/or don't want the upkeep burden of a gaming PC.

According to some Steam Hardware Survey stats, ~0.44% of Intel CPUs are under 1.4GHz of which I'm not sure if that's a lot of Pentium 3s, misconfigured CPUs/incorrect answers, or what.

The clock rate is likely to be accurate as its likely coming from the various CPUID strings that come from the CPU itself.

Clock is a poor proxy for chip generation. I have an Intel Core based Celeron running at 1.2 GHz and its not a mobile device. When you consider mobile devices you get even more "under 1.4 GHz". Intel still sells CPUs "under 1.4GHz" today, for example a Celeron N4000 at 1.1 Ghz base, a Pentium Silver N5000 at 1.1 Ghz base. If Steam happens to report a base clock rate rather than a burst clock rate you may be looking at such current dual and quad core CPUs.

Point is, it's not very hard to imagine a bunch of old PCs doing some PoS or other job for which they get monthly or quarterly patch updates and for which there are millions that exist.

"old" in a general sense yes, "old" as in Pentium III, no, that is too old. Pentium III's are going to be an aberration far far below 0.5%. Pentium III's do not constitute 1 in 200 computers.

As a company, you don't pull out of supporting something you promised to support without a good reason. Even if there is only one user on a Pentium 3s (which is highly unlikely), they're still obligated to continue support. Why is that so hard to understand?

That's a topic change. The criticism was about removing windows from your environment. The truth is every supported OS drops support for CPUs at some point and businesses have to be ready to adapt whether they are windows, os/2 or linux.

Most of those have already been replaced and sent off to the metal recyclers. Congratulations, you managed to offer even dumber numbers than the GP.

Actually, I was using the GP's numbers. Total Windows PCs is over a billion (of which according to MS as of April 2017 400 million were on Windows 10). According to some Steam Hardware Survey stats, ~0.44% of Intel CPUs are under 1.4GHz of which I'm not sure if that's a lot of Pentium 3s, misconfigured CPUs/incorrect answers, or what. Point is, it's not very hard to imagine a bunch of old PCs doing some PoS or other job for which they get monthly or quarterly patch updates and for which there are millions that exist.

Likely to be used as a botnet? No. Likely to be infected by malware by a user? No. Still officially supported until 2020? Apparently irrelevant to Microsoft. The rest is just irrelevant, really. As a company, you don't pull out of supporting something you promised to support without a good reason. Even if there is only one user on a Pentium 3s (which is highly unlikely), they're still obligated to continue support. Why is that so hard to understand? If Microsoft didn't want to offer support until 2020 under the listed required specs for Windows 7, they simply shouldn't have promised such. It wouldn't have been hard to have required SSE2 back when Windows 7 was released.

Steam has an offline mode.

It is not perfect, but should allow continuing playing of these games:
https://support.steampowered.c...

Another option is gog connect, which will liberate (a small subset of) your games from drm
https://www.gog.com/connect

According to the latest Steam Survey, https://store.steampowered.com... , apparently 0.22% of the Steam user still does.

Steam will be removed from apple as they do censorship in there app store.

The Steam client isn't available in Apple's App Store, never has been. Apple users wanting a Steam client have always downloaded the .dmg installer directly from Steam, https://store.steampowered.com...

It is already fixed and has been so. If parents aren't using the controls available that is on them as guardians.

https://support.steampowered.c...

Steam OS was a casualty? https://store.steampowered.com... Steam Machines perhaps? https://www.polygon.com/2018/4...

Or Hatred, more recently.

https://store.steampowered.com...

All you can shoot buffet for just 2 EUR.

Well, you're being obtuse and stupid now.

And you're being a pedantic prick.

Your point was that Steam Link had no purpose as people would either game natively on their device or sit at their PC to game

Thank you for confirming that you missed my point entirely. My point was, actually, that Steam Link wouldn't cut into iOS game sales because scenarios still (abundantly) exist in which people will wish to play games while Steam Link simply will not operate.

My point is that people buy Steam Link because they find the two options to which you want to constrain them to be too limiting.

Well, then, your point is entirely off base because people don't buy Steam Link. It's a free app. Yes, there is a piece of hardware with the same name, but that is not what is being discussed here.

Thus, you're talking shit and have failed miserably to address my core argument that people actually use Steam Link.

I don't need to address that point, as I never argued otherwise. You're the one who's talking shit here, since you apparently have no clue what is even being discussed. Come back once you've figured it out.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/866890/Active_Shooter/

This "most sophisticated software" question is from the same doofus who also asked / answered:

How is murdering people considered fun in video games? What happened to all those innocent games such as Frogger, Qbert, and Donkey Kong?

Apparently he doesn't understand games are an escape from reality and has to be told what fun is. Games are fun because we don't have to worry about real-life consequences and can do things that we normally could never do in physical reality, dumbass.

e.g. Frag my buddies, drive an expensive sports car, slay dragons, virtual fishing, etc.

Maybe he should go play DnD to actually learn the answer.

Genocide in video games isn't (solely) the problem when you want to take a break from the stress of day-to-day responsibility. It becomes a problem when you do that to the exclusion of all your other responsibilities.

If you don't like violence in games there are enough good puzzle games like The Witness, Pythagorea, Top 10 Geometric Puzzles for iOS (2016), etc.

Oh good, now my wife won't see how much time I have spent playing Hatoful Boyfriend.

This change came just in time for the release of VR Kanojo.

it will also specifically let players hide both game ownership and gameplay time counts from friends

I can finally purchase Secret of the Magic Crystals and breed new ponies to my heart's content without everyone giving me a hard time about trying to breed a unicorn!

Shenzhen IO
http://store.steampowered.com/...
All of Zachtronics' games are programming based but this sounds closest to what you want.

Notch did NOT invent a new genre; he even admitted he blatantly ripped off Infiminer

And ironically, You can get Minecraft: Story Mode on Steam, although to be fair that postdates Notch's sellout to Microsoft (after having promised to eventually open source the game). Notch is just a big liar, but I'm sure he's sleeping fine on his Scrooge McDuck-scale pile of cash.

More AA and AAA games:
War thunder, almost all Total War games, the two newer tomb raider, MiddleEarth - Shadow of Mordor, Stelaris, City Skylines, CSGO, Dota2, Portal series, Half-live series, TF2, Hitman, Mad Max, Company of Heros series, Football manager series, newer civilization games, Payday2, Dying lights, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, witcher2, age of wonders 3, Alien: Isolation, newer Warhammer series, Dirt series, F1 2015 and 2017 ... hey, go check the list : http://store.steampowered.com/...

> but others like Ark - Survival evolved (which is insanely graphics demanding) will even on a 1080ti - get the "light ray" bug, where there's "rays" of darkness that will overshadow the game, psychedelic rain that will make it impossible to fly - and they all blame Nvidia drivers...which in turn blame bad coding on the game devs, or game engine devs. etc.

ARK was built with a heavily modified Unreal Engine 4. I seriously doubt that the (GPU) shaders running Linux are different from the shaders running on Windows -- but it would be good to confirmation on that.

Still, that sucks that nVidia + Epic won't take responsibility for it. :-/

Have you tried turning off light shafts ( god rays) and bloom?

r.BloomQuality=0
r.LightShafts=0

> I still run Linux 90% of my time at home

If anyone is curious you can filter in Steam games that run on Linux via this link:

http://store.steampowered.com/linux

The Mac has no game community so no game developers to worry about.

I can't say that I know the whole community since there are games you can buy for the Mac outside of Steam, but the latest statistics on Steam report about 1.64% of their users are on Mac.

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

According to the stats page, 0.33% of steam users are running linux, mostly Ubuntu. Personally, I'm running steam on debian.

Buying a new machine to run steam might be a big ask, but support for running steam on linux is appreciated by those of us that want to play games on our favourite OS.

What happens if someone with lawyers requests to remove or unlink his or her owned library of Steam-dependent games from the Steam service? Does Steam have the legal right to keep games you paid money to own locked into their DRM garden and DRM client? Or could someone successfully argue "I own these games. I should have the right to leave Steam and keep my games running!" in court? That argument could well be the "design flaw" in Steam's Death Star. One change in the applicable laws, and Steam might be FORCED to let you take your Steam games out of Steam's service and allow them to run like normal, independently executable Windows or MacOS apps again.

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

" The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services.".

Unless you can revive Johnnie Cochran, I'd say your're pretty much SOL.

let alone how to strip and assemble one

No, for that you need http://store.steampowered.com/...

One day I'm going to work out how to put that Flak 88 back together again.

Valve saw the writing on the wall. People called Tim Sweeney paranoid. Who's laughing now?

I would say Subnautica is pretty close to a "must play" killer-app for VR. As in, the VR experience itself is incredibly compelling... swimming and piloting submersibles is a perfect fit for VR, and it's a gorgeous world to explore (and a fantastic game to boot).

Unfortunately the VR has quite a few rough edges when it comes to the UI. Hopefully they will fix these, as with a bit of polish I wouldn't hesitate to call Subnautica the first VR gaming masterpiece.

Elite Dangerous is also decent if you're into it, but it's certainly not for everyone.

There's plenty of games out there that don't use lootboxes. Once again, capitalism's got your desired use case covered.

It wouldn't be a stretch to think that sales would be bolstered by 2.5% (1/40th the number of Switches that have already been sold) by this news, thanks to people like us.

Oh, that would be a HUGE stretch. People buy the Switch to easily play games. You and people like you aren't even a blip on the radar compared to all the parents who buy a Switch for their kids, or teens who buy it to play specific games.

And if you think they'll still play games with Linux, consider that Steam, which has a client especially for Linux and more than 3000 games for Linux only has 0.41% users with Linux according to the latest survey. That's the market share when actively trying to get Linux users.

You probably actually want the answer to the question "when will the software I care about run on Linux"?

And the answer is "if there is a market for it, developers will port their software."

There are a fair number of games available via Valve Steam for Linux, there would probably be more if more if more people bought games on Linux. Hopefully Valve will put some more time into SteamOS as Windows 10 S is a threat to Steam's business model.

One thing that might also help is to set your browsers user agent to a Linux. The low representation of Linux on netcraft is used by larger companies to justify not supporting Linux.

This is literally what Steam collects.

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

I'm sure nobody here bitching runs Steam, right? Because that'd make you a complete hypocrite and we know nobody here is a massive raging hypocrite.

If Canonical wasn't run by complete morons, they would have called it a "Hardware Survey".

Steam In-home Streaming encodes your desktop in real-time via MPEG4/h.264, and does it with so little latency that you can use it to play FPS games. It's not like you're encoding it over and over so the latency builds up. You encode it once just before you stream it.

Cost shouldn't be an issue. Broadcast equipment typically costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. The addition of a few dollars for a GPU with hardware h.264 encode (now commonly found on phones and tablets) would be trivial.

I suspect the issue is simply foot dragging due to backwards compatibility. If you want your HD distribution broadcast to work with the largest number of legacy client devices, MPEG2 is what you need to use. Switching to MPEG4/h.264 would require the cable company send out a newer cable box to all those customers who've been dutifully been paying $15/mo to rent a cable box which was paid off a decade ago.

For gaming it is a tough business model to be Linux friendly. Not impossible but it takes a lot of effort and resources for a small return.

It doesn't have to be that way.

Consider the Linux version a console port, no different than you would the PS3 or XBOX. Then instead of worrying about every possible hardware setup out there make sure it works with the systems on this page and say fuck-all to the rest. Once it works on those systems on factory settings it's going to work for most of what's out there.

Doing that with the right titles will create a feed-back loop. More people will risk adopting the Linux systems, on that page as a console, and more developers will risk developing for them. There has to be a critical mass point.

Yes AC consider the average CPU speed and generation.
http://store.steampowered.com/...
All China has to do is be in that CPU speed range for desktop games at a much lower cost every generation.

This is basically what Steam In-Home Streaming does. The PC playing the game converts it into a h.264 video stream in real-time (using dedicated encoding hardware present on all modern GPUs). The device displaying the game just thinks it's playing back a streamed h.264 movie (using its hardware h.264 decoder which is also present on all modern GPUs, even on phones). The only bits that are missing are getting input from the display device and feeding it back to the game PC. That's probably the only reason the client hasn't come to tablets (and phones) yet - they generally don't come with keyboard+mouse or gamepad support.

Seems like an unnecessary performance penalty to push on AMD users. Most likely down for simplicity/consistency on Microsoft's side for kernel code management.

Doesn't seem to have any impact at all on my AMD machine, though I'm seeing around a 5-13% drop in performance with my Intel machine. Both are running the current version of Win10, I'm sure there's going to be a lot of screeching on gaming forums later today when people suddenly start having serious performance issues, especially since Intel holds around 80-90% of the gaming marketshare according to steam. My development machine that's in slow ring right now hasn't seen a patch pushed out yet, probably won't for a few days as a guess. Though there's a lot of talk on the MS boards about it and "when" they're going to push one out.

and if you miss the fights then there is this

More data to back that up:

Steam Hardware and Software Survey: http://store.steampowered.com/...
Currently showing data between April 2016 and September 2017. Includes the launch dates of AMD's latest major CPU and GPU products. AMD's GPU% dropped from 25.4% to 17.1% during the period. In the CPU Graph, AMD dropped from 23.3% to 16.53%.

GPU detailed data here: http://store.steampowered.com/...
CPU detailed data here: http://store.steampowered.com/...

Reasons for this:
- Vega was a total flop.
- Ryzen was hit by the a rare Linux compile bug (some source here: https://hothardware.com/news/a...).
- Ryzen OC potential is modest.
- Threadripper is awesome but very, very niche and not recommended for gaming due to lower IPC and frequency compared to its Intel counterpart.
- And most importantly, AMD was the underdog for way too long. It's like getting back up in the boxing ring after most spectators have left for home.

More data to back that up:

Steam Hardware and Software Survey: http://store.steampowered.com/...
Currently showing data between April 2016 and September 2017. Includes the launch dates of AMD's latest major CPU and GPU products. AMD's GPU% dropped from 25.4% to 17.1% during the period. In the CPU Graph, AMD dropped from 23.3% to 16.53%.

GPU detailed data here: http://store.steampowered.com/...
CPU detailed data here: http://store.steampowered.com/...

Reasons for this:
- Vega was a total flop.
- Ryzen was hit by the a rare Linux compile bug (some source here: https://hothardware.com/news/a...).
- Ryzen OC potential is modest.
- Threadripper is awesome but very, very niche and not recommended for gaming due to lower IPC and frequency compared to its Intel counterpart.
- And most importantly, AMD was the underdog for way too long. It's like getting back up in the boxing ring after most spectators have left for home.

More data to back that up:

Steam Hardware and Software Survey: http://store.steampowered.com/...
Currently showing data between April 2016 and September 2017. Includes the launch dates of AMD's latest major CPU and GPU products. AMD's GPU% dropped from 25.4% to 17.1% during the period. In the CPU Graph, AMD dropped from 23.3% to 16.53%.

GPU detailed data here: http://store.steampowered.com/...
CPU detailed data here: http://store.steampowered.com/...

Reasons for this:
- Vega was a total flop.
- Ryzen was hit by the a rare Linux compile bug (some source here: https://hothardware.com/news/a...).
- Ryzen OC potential is modest.
- Threadripper is awesome but very, very niche and not recommended for gaming due to lower IPC and frequency compared to its Intel counterpart.
- And most importantly, AMD was the underdog for way too long. It's like getting back up in the boxing ring after most spectators have left for home.

Other good puzzle games include:

* Pythagorea, iOS, Android
* Pythagorea 60 iOS, Android
* The Witness
* The Talos Principle
 

Other good puzzle games include:

* Pythagorea, iOS, Android
* Pythagorea 60 iOS, Android
* The Witness
* The Talos Principle
 

And if you want to get a better understanding of Nuclear War, try this game:
Defcon
https://www.introversion.co.uk...

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

The only winning move is not to play!

> I remember with great nostalgia the old Xwing VS Tie fighter, and have been waiting for nigh 20 years for something to come along and basically give me the exact same thing, but with updated graphics etc...

Have you tried Elite: Dangerous? Not the same thing, but...

and as soon as you factor in the higher cost for games it melts away anyway.

What higher cost? did you just time travel in from 1995? While there WAS a price differential at one time, there isn't one NOW. Things change.

Project Cars 2 $59.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Factotum 90 $5.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Rocket League $19.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

The Bard's Tale (resnarked version) $9.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Rebel Galaxy, $19.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Final Fantasy IX remaster $20.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Minecraft PS4: $19.95
https://store.playstation.com/...

Minecraft PC (Java edition) $26.95
https://minecraft.net/en-us/

and as soon as you factor in the higher cost for games it melts away anyway.

What higher cost? did you just time travel in from 1995? While there WAS a price differential at one time, there isn't one NOW. Things change.

Project Cars 2 $59.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Factotum 90 $5.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Rocket League $19.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

The Bard's Tale (resnarked version) $9.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Rebel Galaxy, $19.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Final Fantasy IX remaster $20.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Minecraft PS4: $19.95
https://store.playstation.com/...

Minecraft PC (Java edition) $26.95
https://minecraft.net/en-us/

and as soon as you factor in the higher cost for games it melts away anyway.

What higher cost? did you just time travel in from 1995? While there WAS a price differential at one time, there isn't one NOW. Things change.

Project Cars 2 $59.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Factotum 90 $5.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Rocket League $19.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

The Bard's Tale (resnarked version) $9.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Rebel Galaxy, $19.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Final Fantasy IX remaster $20.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Minecraft PS4: $19.95
https://store.playstation.com/...

Minecraft PC (Java edition) $26.95
https://minecraft.net/en-us/

and as soon as you factor in the higher cost for games it melts away anyway.

What higher cost? did you just time travel in from 1995? While there WAS a price differential at one time, there isn't one NOW. Things change.

Project Cars 2 $59.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Factotum 90 $5.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Rocket League $19.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

The Bard's Tale (resnarked version) $9.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Rebel Galaxy, $19.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Final Fantasy IX remaster $20.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Minecraft PS4: $19.95
https://store.playstation.com/...

Minecraft PC (Java edition) $26.95
https://minecraft.net/en-us/

and as soon as you factor in the higher cost for games it melts away anyway.

What higher cost? did you just time travel in from 1995? While there WAS a price differential at one time, there isn't one NOW. Things change.

Project Cars 2 $59.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Factotum 90 $5.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Rocket League $19.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

The Bard's Tale (resnarked version) $9.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Rebel Galaxy, $19.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Final Fantasy IX remaster $20.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Minecraft PS4: $19.95
https://store.playstation.com/...

Minecraft PC (Java edition) $26.95
https://minecraft.net/en-us/

and as soon as you factor in the higher cost for games it melts away anyway.

What higher cost? did you just time travel in from 1995? While there WAS a price differential at one time, there isn't one NOW. Things change.

Project Cars 2 $59.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Factotum 90 $5.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Rocket League $19.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

The Bard's Tale (resnarked version) $9.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Rebel Galaxy, $19.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Final Fantasy IX remaster $20.99 on both PSN and Steam

https://store.playstation.com/...

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

Minecraft PS4: $19.95
https://store.playstation.com/...

Minecraft PC (Java edition) $26.95
https://minecraft.net/en-us/

Who bothers with a console?

I'm going to take it that either you live in Australia or some country without PSN access. I'm also going to assume that you're a PC Master Race sort of guy.

I hit steam, buy a PC game for $19.99.

I hit PSN, buy a PSwhatever game for $19.99

I am paying $79.99 for the physical media

Australia? Bandwidth caps and slow internet? Because here in the US new "AAA" PS4 games cost $59.99, unless they're some kind of "Deluxe edition". Also All games are available in digital form, in fact, some games are ONLY available digitally and don't have retail releases.

Of course, since the saves are locked to the console, I'm hosed, where with the PC, I can do a game restore and be OK.

I don't know where you got that idea because that is NOT the case in the Playstation ecosystem. There's cloud saves and you can still physically back them up on top of that, which I just did to USB on the PS3 and PS4. They will be saved at: /PS3/SAVEDATA/game-id-number-foo (for example the PS3 Skyrim option save is in BLUS-30778-OPTION- and /PS4/SAVEDATA/ps4-id-number/game-id-number (PS4 skyrim digital saves are in the CUSA05333 folder)

And to the PC with the Vita via QCMA. where they will be in ~/PS Vita/APP/vita-id-number/game-id/savedata

opens the wallet when EA or Ubisoft demands more cash

Really, and there aren't EA or Ubisoft games on PC?

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

for the same tired old IP that hasn't changed since the early 2000s,

Considering the top games being played on Steam right now are:

Dota 2 (MOBA)
PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS (yet another shooter)
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (yet another shooter)
H1Z1: King of the Kill (shooter)
Grand Theft Auto V
Team Fortress 2 (shooter)
Football Manager 2017 yearly sports game
PAYDAY 2 (co-op shooter)
Path of Exile (diablo clone)
Warframe (co-op mmo shooter)

You really think PC gamers are some kind of "cerebral master race"? They're no different from the Madden addled Xboxers.

If you like actual gaming, PC is where it is

That's silly, gaming is on any platform you want to do it on. PC, console, mobile-console, phone, tablet, whatever.