I would bet a year’s wages it’s a statistically insignificant number of people.
I have a 9800 GTX and so far it’s still pumping out good graphics on modern games on a 1280x1024 monitor. I realize that monitor size is the key to the continued performance, but I’m pretty satisfied with everything.
At 1280x1024, a 9800GT 512 Mb will run Witcher 2 and DX:HR quite happily at attractively high settings, and nearly everything else I’ve thrown at it.
Amazing card.
My 8800GT SLI setup is rocking DX:HR at 1920x1200. I wanted to splurge on a 6950, but had to back away from the credit card lately, and really there is no critical reason not to stay with the dual 8800s a bit longer. In the era where all my top AAA titles are also on the Xbox 360 (DX, Rage, Skyrim, Arkham City), a pair of four-year-old cards can still hold their own.
The Lonesome Road numbers are interesting, especially after the game showed up in the NPD top 10 in July after the general price drop.
I had no issues with a 9600GT even at 1920x1080 resolution for most games, though I ended up upgrading to another card earlier this year. The only game that really gave me problems was Crysis 1 - pretty much everything else looked good. That whole Nvidia 8/9 series was just a great value.
Space marine will be back in the charts with a bullet as it falls through the price points, should have a good long tail of sales I reckon, much like DOW II. It’s also very DLC worthy.
Re Civ 5 and F:NV, remember these are steamworks games so anyone playing anywhere, no matter where purchased shows up in stats. Not so for others in list.
But if Space Marine have a discount price “soon”, it’s actually bad for THQ/Relic (even if it will be good for us gamers). It will indicate the game didn’t sell a lot at the normal price so they are obligated at try it at a lower price.
An example, that’s why the Alien Vs Predator 2010 game price fell sharply in a few months.
True, Civ 5 and FNV are Steamworks games, so they can’t be compared to Bad Company 2 (which isn’t, for example my own copy didn’t show up in Steam number) but they can be compared to Dead Island, Deus Ex, both CoD games, Space Marine, the two Total War games, Red Ochestra 2… mmm i am noticing it would be shorter to name the non-Steamworks games than the Steamworks games from the top 20.
Wait a moment… every game in the Steam top 20 most played except BC2 IS a Steamworks game. LOL
The graphics really are quite good; it makes excellent use of cel shading. There are some vids on Youtube if you want to see it in action (sorry, can’t post links yet). Gameplay-wise, it’s similar to other action-MMO’s. I’ve put a couple of hours in, and it seemed… ok I guess. The game is in open beta, so it might be a little rough around the edges (some folks mentioned they were coming across text that was still in Korean).
When I started reading your post, I thought it was something from Teiman (this is neither a slight against you or him). I was sort of disappointed when it didn’t end in a bizarre, non sequitur analogy :(
Sigh, i shouldn’t post before 09.00 AM. edit: damn i wrote it at 10.00am :P
3840 x 1080 9.58%
Seriously? The most popular setup for Steam users is two 1080p monitors? I think I need to catch up as I don’t even have one!
Take a deep breath and look again. Here, quoted:
Primary Display Resolution 1920 x 1080 22.59% +0.81% [U]Multi-Monitor[/U] Desktop Resolution 3840 x 1080 9.58% +1.34%
That’s the most used… in the category of multi monitor systems.
Erm I have a 32" 1080p monitor next to a erm 20" 1680x1050 monitor.
Just about everyone I know has a dual monitor setup , going on 3-4 years now.
Infact I was running dual monitors back in 1999 , 2 giant 19" CRTs @ 1280x1024, took up my entire desk.
Everyone you know have a dual monitor setup? Really, really?
Yep…
At one point I had 4 monitors, but that was just for a few months as I was doing some web work for a friend and needed screen space to visualize what I was doing.
I think it’s safe to say your circle of acquaintances isn’t a representative sample.
Best way to learn TF2 while contributing is to either be a soldier and spam rockets at choke points or be a pyro and help defend turrets and bust up charging ubers. That’ll help your team more than you think and should keep you alive for a while as the strategy seeps in.
H.
When looking at Steam numbers, these two things are most interesting to me:
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Tripwire was on the PC Gamer Podcast last year, and mentioned that their total # unique players throughout the day is at least 10x the concurrent number you see. While that’s obvious if you consider the amount of time an average gamer might play a game on a given day, it’s still pretty telling. That would mean that Killing Floor still has around 15,000-20,000 unique people playing every day, and Red Orchestra 2 is at around 40,000-45,000 unique people per day.
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Some games like Bastion actually have total player counts in-game. I loaded up the game yesterday and noticed that it’s sold almost 100,000 copies on Steam alone. Not bad at all considering that it also sold more than 150,000 copies on XBLA, and the Steam version came out when the XBLA version was available for a month.
Also doesn’t hurt that Bastion has never been on sale yet, so all of those purchases on both Steam and XBLA are at full-price.
Again, from Bluesnews
Here’s Valve’s list of the 10 bestselling games on Steam for the past week:
1 Dead Island
2 The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
3 A Game of Thrones: Genesis
4 Total War: Shogun 2
5 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
6 F1 2011
7 Deus Ex: Human Revolution
8 Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition
9 Total War: Shogun 2 - Rise of the Samurai
10 Fallout: New Vegas - Lonesome Road
Bolded the new releases, again.
What do we have here? We have Dead Island still number 1, clearing up any confusion about the game’s appeal: no, it’s not there just by some gimmick or marketing. The other way around, the game had mixed reviews but very good word of mouth in forums.
The Witcher 2 reappears again, and this time even better than before, the discount and the 2.0 release jumped the game into the second position. Very nice job.
A game of Thrones: Genesis is a new release from this week, but i doubt it will maintain itself there, there was barely marketing or reviews about it, most people expected a bad or mediocre game. But curiously, in this very same forum some interesting opinions appeared, it seems a very interesting game.
MW3 appeared and in a good position, even if the game is still more than one month away from release. Strangely, Rage doesn’t appear in the top10, but i have seen it first in the low position of the table early this week, in the middle positions later, and this Friday was already number 1, above Dead Island.
We close with the two DLC of two games very popular in the pc community, Shogun 2 and Fallout: NV.
Top games by current number of players (Sunday @ 20.00 GMT)
59,440 63,818 Team Fortress 2
58,763 62,216 Counter-Strike
53,439 57,626 Counter-Strike: Source
28,239 30,253 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Multiplayer
26,188 26,188 Sid Meier’s Civilization V
21,140 21,140 Football Manager 2011
18,272 19,039 Call of Duty Black Ops - Multiplayer
11,518 11,518 Left 4 Dead 2
10,310 10,310 Fallout New Vegas
10,073 10,309 Dead Island
9,673 9,825 Total War SHOGUN 2
8,939 9,033 Deus Ex - Human Revolution
8,161 8,403 Empire: Total War
8,134 8,214 Garry’s Mod
7,021 7,119 Terraria
5,128 5,128 Battlefield: Bad Company 2
5,012 5,810 Call of Duty Black Ops
4,681 4,826 Mount&Blade: Warband
4,314 4,459 Condition Zero
3,586 3,816 Napoleon: Total War
Overall the numbers are a bit lower than the past week. CS steal the number 1 pos. to TF2. MW2, Civ V, FM2011 and Blackops are exactly in the same positions. Dead island loses almost 1/3 of their playerbase, normal as people are already finishing the game. DX:HR also falls but in less amount, strangely. The long-term surprise is how Fallout New Vegas continues week after week in good positions.
Red Orchetra 2 disappear from the TOP 20, and i doubt it will return until the game have a price discount.
The TW games are very popular, not only Shogun 2 is very played, but both the not very popular here Empire TW and also Napoleon TW appear in the list, even if they are older games with a more modern iteration. People likes that age of warfare!
Bad Company 2 also is falling steadly, i suppose because the beta of BF3?
Oh fuck, even more stats!
http://steamgraph.burstpixel.net
Examples.
Deus Ex vs Dead Island!
MW2 vs Black Ops
Looking at that, it seems the free weekend promos don’t attract new players.