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Steam Survey Takes PC Gaming's Pulse
Via Rock Paper Shotgun and Primotech, the latest in Valve's ongoing PC hardware survey via the Steam service. Some very interesting stuff in there, though probably nothing too surprising. From RPS's analysis: "Vista has shown a small increase in representation, but clearly nowhere near where Microsoft would have desperately hoped. Previously 7.99% of gamers were using the latest operating system. Now it's 16.91%, with a vast 81.13% sticking with XP. Rather confirming Valve's position on DX10, and what a massive waste of time it is developing for Vista only."
If it hasn't become apparent that DX10 is not a reason folks will "upgrade" to Vista by now I don't know what else to say.
They should allow XP users to download and use DX10 as they have all along for other revisions of DirectX.
Those numbers in a vacuum don't mean anything though. What was the upgrade rate from ME/2k to XP? Also, I don't know whether they do or not, but if they're complaining about developing only for Vista, I sure hope they don't have anything that is *nix/Mac compatible, as Vista easily beat every flavor of those.
- RAM went way up, almost 1/2 are using 2GB or more.
- AMD is losing more ground with Intel up almost 4%
- Almost 1/2 of gamers are using more than one physical CPU now (which includes dual/quad core)
- Nvidia has taken a bigger lead at the expense of ATI
Obviously an increase in system RAM and CPU numbers/speed is expected, but this is only over about a 6 month period.I was much more fascinated/saddened/aroused by the fact that I instantly knew the TF2 screenshot from the article was in Dustbowl-- right around the corner from the final cap-- and was on to estimating that Spy's chance of survival (noticing that the sentry hasn't tracked him yet).
Last time I saw this, the screen resolution section listed 1280x800, but not 1280x960. Now it lists 1280x960, but not 1280x800. And it has never listed 1280x1024, which happens to be the resolution that over 90% of the steam users that i know use. The "Other" category is not large enough to cover these discrepancies. And, to top that off, there isnt even a category for 5:4 aspect monitor sizes. Are those people getting lumped into the 4:3 ratio section? WTF all around
If 20% (roughly) of Windows users are using Vista, and Valve considers it a colossal waste of time to do DX10 development, they have a strange idea of "colossal waste of time". I consider 20% of my userbase well worth development time. Not to mention that the numbers will go up eventually... I guarantee you that all but the most die-hard Vista-hating gamers would flock to Vista if a) enough games had sweet DX10 graphics, and b) some hot new game was DX10/Vista only (no, Halo 2 doesn't count here. While I built my new computer for Vista because of Halo 2, I certainly would never upgrade from an existing copy of XP for a port of a 3-year-old Xbox game).
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Not that I don't agree with the article but I run steam using wine and it doesn't show that I am using Ubuntu on Valve's survey statistics. Also not all gamers play steam games so you're only measuring their own player base.
I still agree with the conclusion building your game just for one OS is just stupid if you want to make money.
I recently (less than a week ago) built a gaming machine for my birthday and decided to buy Vista Ultimate. Strangely, I couldn't get the HL survey uploader to send the data back to Valve. Everything else works just fine though. Maybe other people are having similar issues? for the curious its running on an E6850, 2GB 1066, 500gb, 8800GTS-640oc. I really wanted to upload the info to help skew the results :)
Falcon 3.0 (please don't hang me on the number at my age the mind is becoming more and more like a) required me to upgrade to a new Dos. (5?)I did. (legally too)
That was the last time a game pushed me on a new MS release.
Back then 99% of games were DOS, only a handfull of games required Windows (3.X) and most DOS games ran a lot faster without windows loaded.
This didn't change for a long time even with the release of Windows 95. Quake was an important game back then,and running it under 95 just meant you sacrificed a lot memory the game could have been using. There was no benefit I can remember, and so I stuck with DOS for a long time. I have no recollection how long it took between 95's release and me finally getting and seeing games that were WIN95 only AND worth it. But it was at least a year.
Remember that dos to WIN95 was a HUGE change.
DirectX must have been introduced at some time, but I don't recall it being widely used until it was a couple of major releases old. Even MS own games didn't use it for a long time. MS Flightsimulator and Close Combat come to mind. In fact, MS games were notorious for being rather primitive, Close Combat was one of those games were you had to manuall set the desktop to reduced colors, this was AFTER DirectX had gotten some traction.
But we moved away from DOS, we now have DirectX games mostly and one day Vista will be the norm and so will DirectX 10, because just as games once become Windows9X only and games became DirectX only, so will they become Vista only and DirectX10 only.
The article notes that Vista has only 18% users. This is very noteworthy, but check the chart, how many Windows 9X users? For that many 2000 users? 9X ain't even listed, 2000 doesn't even get a full percentage.
Remember all the people who said they would stick with 9X or 2K? Where are they now? Not on steam at least.
We move on. I won't be getting Vista for a while, I like my linux desktop and for games I don't need it. Yet.
I think the biggest thing hurting MS at the moment is NOT Vista's tech woes, but something far more deadly. It is piracy. It ain't there. I am a freak for trying the latest software, but I also hate cripple ware and store bought machines, so I either look at spending a couple of hundred euro's on Vista because all the pirated versions seem to have problems.
How much of MS old early adoptor market consisted of pirates? I got 95Se 98 98SE 2K etc ALL from that subscription thing an old employer had. Illegal, sure. But those machines showed up in surveys like this. How any Steam players would run Vista if they could?
More and more games will be directx 10, or will look at their best in directx10. Support for XP will dry up, new computers will come with Vista pre-installed and people will move on.
Just as we did before.
The only difference as I have said is that this time it will be a lot harder to do it without paying MS, and for some of us, that is a big hurdle. I wouldn't mind trying Vista, it is not like I use my gaming machine for anything critical, but not for the current price tag.
But some day? Sure, if I can find an unused key somewhere for a non-crippled version. Because lets admit it, I want to see how shiny it is. Precious...
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Only shitty low-end LCDs run 1280x1024. And only an idiot would consider that acceptable. There's a reason everything moved to wide screen aspect ratios, it fits our natural field of vision better. What kind of moron is going to intentionally get a narrow screen aspect ratio monitor? They are only acceptable if you have two of them, and don't play games.
That's about as much use as developing for Linux only! Except in one years time 30% will be able to play your game.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
By writing a game for dx10, you are limiting yourself to that little 20% section of users. By using directx9, or opengel, you still get those same 20% of users, but you also can get 90+% of the other users as well. Which is better, 99% of potential users, or 20%?
So it's been just under a year and we're finding that Vista user growth is slowly increasing. Some users may refuse to upgrade out of principle, other are like me and waiting it out. I don't really find the results that surprising.
I've got XP SP2 on my gaming rig and I don't see myself upgrading to Vista anytime soon. I may do so in time when there are a couple games that I consider must haves available only on Vista. But I just don't see the point in spending money on a new OS when I don't feel there are any Vista-only must haves. Once there are a couple must haves and my PC needs upgrading, I'll probably add drive for Vista and get the games. But for now, I'm content with TF2 and the Orange Box. Hell, I haven't even had a chance to look at The Witcher yet. Plus, I can wait and find out what SP1 breaks.
Off-topic: I want to get a mic for TF2 but I don't know if I should get a headset or just a mic. Anyone have opinions?
after having actually used Vista on my nephew's computer, my GOD I hate it. It's like MS asked all their designers, "Hey guys, what are some of the most stupid changes you could think of to make to our interface?" and then when ahead and did them. I already knew about the performance issues, and the infamous 'cancel or allow', but the interface changes are absolutely moronic in many cases. They changed many things simply because they wanted something different by the looks of it, and in most cases in a very bad way (still looking for the save as button in the new MS WORD).
Oh, this is so great. I _just_ wanted to rant about Windows Vista. Alright, let me explain this to everyone from the beginning:
:-P
Since the release of Windows Vista, I've always been hating it. I told my customers to not upgrade to Vista and to stick with XP. Whenever I heard anyone in stores talking about Vista, I immediately explained why Vista is not superior to XP. I have installed Windows Vista numerous times inside of virtual computers to try it out.
This week, I decided to do the extreme test. Install Windows Vista as a bootcamp partition on my Mac. What a disaster it was! Let me explain you the primary reasons why I hate Vista:
1) Performance!
The darn thing gobs up 600MB of RAM when it has nothing open, and even more when you open up applications. The bootup time is slow and the whole system feels very slow. This is unacceptable. This is bloated code to hell.
2) Lock-Ins
Want to disable the stupid Windows indexing search thing? You can't! Want to uninstall all the stupid apps that are bundled in with Windows? You can't do that either.
3) The look
I don't understand how Aero is supposed to be revolutionary. The interface is unbelievably distracting. The semi-transparent and blurry window borders look like a joke. Aswell, most programs will use that old-school rectangular look. It feels like I'd be running Wine.
4) Lack of innovation
What does it offer more than than XP? XP is perfectly stable, it's fast and it WORKS. The features that Microsoft is touting are simply pathetic. An integrated Anti-Virus (I have a brain and AVG for that) and some other applications in the system.
In addition to this, I have experienced many bugs since my installation of Vista. I know that drivers are to blame, but I would assume that the Bootcamp drivers are well made. Here's what I had so far:
1) Windows can't find it's partition on bootup. It complaints for two minutes and then continues on to booting properly.
2) Whenever it turns off the screen it can't turn the screen back on.
3) Random freezes. Nuff' said. I've had Vista freeze 3 times since the install. Just freeze dead. No CTRL+ALT+DELETE, just a restart will fix it.
4) The new Windows+TAB switching is buggy, it twitches and it isn't smooth.
But, I think that the slowdowns and performance problems are making this a very undesirable operating system for gamers. I know that I'll be re-installing XP. Anyone want to buy a slightly used Vista CD?
It's a pathetic operating system while Leopard is kicking everyone's asses. XP will be good enough for gaming for years to come.
The hip way to get your IP. No ads, ever.
This is a pretty common native resolution for a great many of those 17" and 19" screens that are so popular, yet it doesn't even show up in the list. Is Valves methodology flawed, or are there really only 430 people (out of potentially 8000 or so) using the native resolution on their screen?
My gaming rig is running vista. Let me explain first that 64bit vista is leaps and bounds better than 64bit XP. So my powerhouse computer when it isn't gaming can put that 64bit goodness to use in the realm of digital audio, and CAD. On the otherhand- I have 4 gigs of ram and an O.Ced E6600. I see so many users with their new laptops that really shouldn't be running vista on their half gig of ram. etc.
This is the most ridiculous take on Vista I have heard yet.
20% of gamers migrate to a new and more demanding OS in less than one year and this is supposed to be bad news for Vista?
Is it 16.91% taking in the consideration that a significant % of vista users switched back to XP? People say that this is expected when MS comes out with a new OS. But I don't know, seems alot worse this time around.
http://bash.org/?813975
I'm not the only one that thinks vista is terrible.
He whom you called four-eyes yesterday, you call Sir tomorrow.
I moved to ubuntu and the only thing i miss is steam games.... (sure i can run them under wine, but it just doesnt feel right).
Valve need to take notes from some more reecent games like COD4 or et:qw and get moving on releaseing a real linux client...
I used to buy games on steam, but since booting windows to the curb i havent bought a single one... (nor have i completed any of your surveys)
Linux on the desktop has been talked about for years.. the only thing i see missing from linux is gaming... and that does seem to be changing now, although slowly.
What I think is strange is that 30-50% of epopel are using thei motherboards on-board sound to listen to stuff. You spend hundreds on a GPU, hundereds on a GPS, and have shitty sound? Sounds silly to me.
I dual boot Vista and Ubuntu on my laptop. I play the games I can under Linux, and the rest under Vista. One thing I can say is that, in my experience so far, the games that do run on Linux (native ports only - I don't bother with Cedega - tried it once a long time ago and found it a pain in the arse), tend to run much faster and smoother. I've seen a few graphics glitches, but if I ever get around to upgrading to more recent nVidia drivers, I think those'll go away. I currently show up as "Vista" in the Steam survey, but if I could, I'd be Linux. It's really hard to make predictions about what the representation of Linux users would be when it is NOT EVEN AN OPTION.
I will say this about the Source engine though - even on Vista it runs great for me, so it's not a huge loss, in this case, because valve did such a great job of optimizing the engine (but I'd still like to run it under Linux). To contrast, I've tried playing Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory under Vista and the experience was *terrible* (under Linux ET runs beautifully though).
I wish more companies would release native ports of the games for Linux. Everyone says that Linux is this tiny percentage of the gaming market, but if companies supported it, it wouldn't be for long. I really think that it makes a much better technical platform for high-end games than any flavor of Windows, because it (usually) has a lot less crap running in the background (yes, it's possible to run a bunch of crap in the background that would kill your performance, but a basic setup doesn't *require* as many crap services as Vista does).
If hardware and software companies support Linux better, I think gamers would *flock* to it.
Why is it that Slashdot always posts the Steam Survey when it gets recycled? The survey was just restarted and has been running for less than a day, you're currently looking at about 3% of what their overall results will be.
Sure, you can form a few opinions and conjecture over a sampling of 30k, but then again, over the course of less than a full day (AFAIK it was recycled at midnight), you're not even looking at the players from prime-time yet.
More appropriate numbers will be known after a month or two.
Me: 10/30/07 This game hangs at the "Preparing to launch..." from Steam. I tried verifying it, un-installing it, re-installing it, but no success. I even looked on the forums and tried a few things from there with no luck. I would like a refund for this game and for it to be removed from my account. Thanks.
/add Local service
Steam: 11/08/07 Hello, Have you already gone through this FAQ?
Me: 11/08/07 Hi there. I tried reading the FAQ and the forums and spent two or three hours on it. Here's a link to the thread on your forums with the list of many people who had the same problem:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=617610
I gave up and purchased a physical copy.
I think Steam is great for Valve Games and has worked well with older games. I would love to keep using it, but will need Company of Heroes: Opposing Forces removed and refunded.
Thanks.
Steam: 11/09/07 Hello XXXXXX, I see many mentions of Vista in that Forum post. If you installed Steam when UAC was enabled, there is a reasonable likelihood that UAC prevent a few keys from being properly generated. Assuming that you have already attempted to disable UAC to fix the issue, please try re-installing Steam with UAC disabled. Please use the latest Steam installer:
http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=getsteamnow&cc=US
You may prevent all of your game files from being lost by moving the Steamapps folder out of the steam directory before uninstalling and putting it back after re-installing.
If the issue persists, please right-click on the game and go to Properties > Local Content > Verify Game Cache, and try again.
Finally, the the following suggestion is usually used for a specifie error message, but I would be very interested to know if this affects the issue you are experiencing:
Vista Home Users
Go to: Start > Run and type in: cmd
type in the following:
net localgroup Administrators
Restart your computer.
Vista Business & Ultimate Users
Right-click on Computer and select Manage.
Go to: Groups > Administrators > Add to group > Add > Advanced > Find Now > Local Service and click OK.
Restart your computer.
Me: 11/09/07 I already tried several things before to get it to work, including messing about with UAC, finding the key, and verifying the local game files, etc... I'm sorry, but as I said I purchased a physical copy a week ago and I'm not interested in using Steam for COF:OF at this point.
Here are my choices:
1) Get a refund, continue to use Steam to purchase Valve products and other games after reading the steampowered forum to ensure other people are successful using them. Share my experience with other gamers.
2) Do a chargeback, at which point I am assuming my Steam account will be disabled from what I've read online. Share my experience with other gamers.
As I also said, I would very much like to continue using Steam. I haven't yet chosen whether to buy Orange Box. At this point Valve's response will be a deciding factor.
Thanks,
Steam: 11/13/07:Hello,
As requested, we have processed a refund to your account.
Your confirmation number is: XXXXX
Your bank or credit card issuer will return the funds to your account - please allow 3-5 business days for the funds to be posted.
Please note in the future that Steam purchases, per the Steam Subscriber Agreement, are not refunda
I'd say the Vista numbers are uinder represented. When I took the hardware survey it didn't complete - I assume something to do with not running as an administrator. Others may have had the same problem.
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
Back in 2001 Valve included a hardware survey in one of the Half-Life patches. The results are still online: http://valve.speakeasy.net/survey/
This survey is still in progress. As time goes on, I'm already seeing the percentage of Vista users going down. Right now, it's 15.35%, over a full percent drop from what was in the story summary.
Unpleasantries.
Obviosly, if your Hardware supports it, and you run as Administrator, you can get DirectX 10 level graphics from a DirectX 10 capable Video card.
But:
DX9 has a bajillion extensions, shader model revisions, and lots of flags that drivers can set to say they support HDR, or AA, or both, etc. etc. If a feature is on your hardware, but DX9 dosn't support it, you can code to the metal and get the same visual effect.
But, if you want to do it as an ordinary user, without crashing the machine, DirectX 10 is nice.
And if a video card says 'DirectX 10', and the game says 'DirectX 10', they are pretty likely to work well together, while a DX9 card might support shader model 3.0, and have 128 megs ram, while a DX 9 game might only use shader 2.0, but require 256 megs ram... eaiser to just say 'DX10' and know the the minimal requirements are met.
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=360717&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=21353931#21359297
They will show up, relax...
One that hath name thou can not otter
...when the survey ends
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=360717&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=21353931#21359297
One that hath name thou can not otter
but what's the motivation for posting a story with a summary sounding like it came from the fingers of some angry, frustrated teen who just compiled his kernel?
The skew is due to the performance and availability of the competing flagship GPU's. ATI really hasn't had anything that can stand level to the 8800GTX for a while, and the HD2900 is a scarce upgrade over a 1950 PRO-- both are still amiable performers, but no longer considered "the BEST" by the eye-candy starved gear heads. Expect that gap to widen even more once the newly revised ~$200 8800 GT hits the streets.
Crap, let's try that again.
Wow, you installed Vista in a VM and expect that to be representative of the average Vista user's experience?
No offence, but presumably Vista was not coded for running inside virtual environments, and doing so is likely to introduce more bugs than if you were running it on real hardware. Vista has it's problems but running it in a way it wasn't designed to run and then calling foul when it doesn't work correctly doesn't cut any ice with me.
I'll go through your problems one by one:
1) This sounds like an issue to do with running inside a VM, as I've never once experienced this problem or heard of anyone else experiencing similar. You can blame Microsoft for not testing for how Vista behaves under a VM but because this problem doesn't occur on real hardware, I'm more inclined to believe this is a problem with Bootcamp rather than the OS.
2) Again, I cannot say I've ever heard of this occurring, so I'd be inclined to blame this on the VM too.
3) This is a genuine issue. I've had my Vista machine lock up twice in the six weeks I've had it and I've been very close to posting a rant about it myself. Quite how Microsoft have managed to spend the amount of money they have and still have an OS that freezes at random (the only apps that were open both times my machine crashed were MSN Messenger and Word 2007, and you'd expect MS products to play nice with other MS products, at the very least).
4) Smooth for me. It's a sample size of one, I know, but it's all I've got for this one. Perhaps you've allocated too small an amount of RAM to Vista to display it properly - do you have Aero turned on? - the fact that the thing needs 600Mb of memory just to run is rediculous, but is not a bug.
My pet hatred with Vista is the fact that installing a userland app can still render the machine unbootable. Installing the supposedly Vista version of ZoneAlarm Free causes the OS to bluescreen after install, and will thenafter bluescreen on reboot. Even Safe Mode managed to bluescreen itself, presumably because the app interfered with one of the 'safe' drivers. I had to launch System Restore from a recovery CD. I like Vista, I genuinely do (though I'm sure that will get me nailed to a tree around these parts), but there's no way with all it's new supposed security and stability, I should be able to render my machine unbootable and - without outside media - unrecoverable just by installing an application. It's rediculous.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.