I’m more surprised how evenly it’s split between PC (43%) and console (41%), with 19% playing on both. With the price of hardware on PC and price of games on console it’s quite an expensive hobby to maintain both.
I was going to say, I wonder how many are like me and do pc and switch. But now that the steam deck is out, and emulation is getting good, my switch is going bye bye.
You don’t need the latest and greatest in either case. If you were to slap any recent budget GPU into a Dell Optiplex or similar that can be found for cheap, then pick up an Xbox Series S for $300 or less, you’d have a PC for eSports titles, older games, checking out free game giveaways like on Epic and GOG, plenty of Prime Gaming games if a Prime member, and anything with lower system requirements, then a box that’ll get games for the next ~7 years, can do game emulation when in the $20 developer mode, and has a $15/mo gaming Netflix subscription that is regularly updated and hundreds of titles strong.
That’s a lot of value, and with the prices I’ve seen it’d come out to about $700 or less before any subscriptions come into play, which have also gotten way less necessary recently thanks to the rise of F2P titles.
Yeah, a lot of my kids friends are PC gamers with $600-1000 systems, tops. They might not be the greatest, but they work. Even my kids systems were only ~$1500 and they’re both at least a year or two old now, and still running just about everything.
I almost wanted to get a copy of the report, as something doesn’t seem totally right. 73% of the “online population” plays games, and 43% of that is people gaming on PC?
I’m curious about how people are actually polled. If only because I’m curious how someone who was only gaming on consoles would be polled? According to the website, they use an online computer survey, which would seem to self-select towards people gaming on a PC.
I would expect a higher percentage on PC, because casuals play low end indie games and older games on PC, and there are bound to be a lot more of them than hardcore gamers.
PC players are (from my personal experience) the most dedicated gamers. Where as Console players tend more towards the casual approach to gaming.
Consoles typically being the cheaper solution and it plugs into peoples already existing ‘media centers.’
PC’s “needs” extra gear and facilities, from monitors, keyboard & mouse, desktop, maybe an extra controller and an OS (if you didn’t buy it pre-made) and such.
Few casual ‘anythings’ would opt for the PC option to begin with, just because of the set-up requirements alone.
Just examples of why PCs can run up the bill. That’s why I put Needs in quotation marks.
In actuality, you’ll probably only need the Monitor, Headset/Speakers, Keyboard & Mouse and something to put it on. And non of those have to be expensive. And that’s only if you bought a stationary. Laptops have become a cheaper alternative nowadays. And you’ll only really need a mouse for those.
But laptops aren’t known for being the best solution when it comes to gaming. They tend to overheat, even without pushing them.
But alas, it was more about my personal experience when it comes to the types of people that play, PC vs. Console. And the console players are typically the “casual gamers” in that scenario.
Thing is, generally everyone has a PC. You can get a higher end laptop and play a lot of games on it. That way, you can choose a specific console but still have access to games not on that console, and old games.
I’ve always been a Playstation gamer but I use PC to play Sims 4, Alan Wake and Quantum Break, and Star Trek Online when in a trekkie mood.
Tons. Lots of good ones too. GOG has a large chunk of the older ones (Bridge Commander with mods, Elite Force, and Armada II are my favourites). Everything from point and click adventure games to ship sims, to FPS’s, RTS’s, and an online MMO.
Star trek has many games. I enjoyed watching the VR bridge simulator one with a few popular internet personalities joining together to attempt and figure out the hilariously obtuse switch board on the original Enterprise.
HAS a game. In addition to the other comments, there’s an MMO. Star Trek Online’s been going for like, 11 or 12 years now. It’s actually pretty neat because the missions are “Episode” format and they go by “seasons” for content. They have a LOT of Trek actors for voice acting. Like, they did have a lot of content voiced by Rene Auberjonois and Aron Eisenberg before they passed. They had some sequences with Leonard Nimoy voicing too.
They had one season that had most of the Voyager cast, except for Janeway and Chakotay, and then they got Kate Mulgrew for the current storyline. They had another season that was a DS9 reunion with a whole storyline set from the DS9 hub.
Right now I’m a bit checked out because it’s a HUGE mirrorverse storyline, but they got Wil Wheaton, Gates McFadden, and Kate Mulgrew doing voiceover so I’m almost certainly going back to play through.
It is, however, a free to play model with lockboxes. If you’re competitive you end up spending money or a lot of time, but if you just want a story you can ignore all that.
https://www.playstartrekonline.com/en/ – You can play PC or there’s a version on Playstation or XBox. The communities and accounts don’t link up, though, so I never tried the console version. All my stuff is on the PC account.
Sadly, the STO subreddit did not move to lemmy with the major Star Trek subreddits.
Most hobbies of any kind are expensive if you really get into them. If you don’t have to have new releases, even consoles and console games can be had at great discounts. I’m honestly surprised that so many people limit themselves to one platform. Even though my wife and I are in a low income bracket, we’ve managed to get a PC (nothing crazy like an “i9, 3090, 64gb RAM” PC but it is enough to play most games), Xbox One (I know, last gen), Switch, Switch Lite, and (our biggest splurge) a PS5. Don’t get me wrong, these all have been major purchases for us, as we make sub $30,000 a year, but we’ve made it work. To be fair, most people have other/multiple hobbies that divide their money, or they have other expenses that we don’t have (the big example being crazy high rent, where rent in our area is generally much lower than the national average. We moved recently but our previous apartment was only $375 a month). It’s just interesting to me that many people in our area who I talk to personally make more money than us and then say they can’t afford to have multiple gaming platforms like we do. I think the reality in that case is that it’s simply not that high of a priority for them like we’ve made it for us, and that’s perfectly okay.
I wonder what the metric for PC gaming is. When I was 10-16 I was definitely a Nintendo and PC gamer, but the “PC games” I was playing was flash games on Kongregate. It wasn’t until I was 15 or 16 that I made my Steam account which was on the family 2010 MacBook pro, relegated to titles supported by SteamPlay (Linux and OSX compatible titles).
For purposes of the article, I’d have been a statistic reporting under both, despite never knowing that PC gaming hardware was a thing back then.
Of course, it’s a different story if it’s built/bought a computer for gaming and also a console in addition.
I think one other thing to keep in mind is products are gathered over time. A PC gamer may buy a console a few years after they’ve had their PC, and vice versa for the console owner.
I’m more surprised how evenly it’s split between PC (43%) and console (41%), with 19% playing on both. With the price of hardware on PC and price of games on console it’s quite an expensive hobby to maintain both.
I was going to say, I wonder how many are like me and do pc and switch. But now that the steam deck is out, and emulation is getting good, my switch is going bye bye.
You don’t need the latest and greatest in either case. If you were to slap any recent budget GPU into a Dell Optiplex or similar that can be found for cheap, then pick up an Xbox Series S for $300 or less, you’d have a PC for eSports titles, older games, checking out free game giveaways like on Epic and GOG, plenty of Prime Gaming games if a Prime member, and anything with lower system requirements, then a box that’ll get games for the next ~7 years, can do game emulation when in the $20 developer mode, and has a $15/mo gaming Netflix subscription that is regularly updated and hundreds of titles strong.
That’s a lot of value, and with the prices I’ve seen it’d come out to about $700 or less before any subscriptions come into play, which have also gotten way less necessary recently thanks to the rise of F2P titles.
You can also scour the used market for a Switch Lite in the $100 range, and boom, 3 platforms.
don’t even need a switch at this point with emulation unless you want to play multiplayer with others on the switch
Yeah, a lot of my kids friends are PC gamers with $600-1000 systems, tops. They might not be the greatest, but they work. Even my kids systems were only ~$1500 and they’re both at least a year or two old now, and still running just about everything.
I almost wanted to get a copy of the report, as something doesn’t seem totally right. 73% of the “online population” plays games, and 43% of that is people gaming on PC?
I’m curious about how people are actually polled. If only because I’m curious how someone who was only gaming on consoles would be polled? According to the website, they use an online computer survey, which would seem to self-select towards people gaming on a PC.
I would expect a higher percentage on PC, because casuals play low end indie games and older games on PC, and there are bound to be a lot more of them than hardcore gamers.
These days I am less inclined to believe casual players would be bothering with gaming on a PC over their phone as much as the survey indicates.
I personally think it’s the other way around.
PC players are (from my personal experience) the most dedicated gamers. Where as Console players tend more towards the casual approach to gaming.
Consoles typically being the cheaper solution and it plugs into peoples already existing ‘media centers.’ PC’s “needs” extra gear and facilities, from monitors, keyboard & mouse, desktop, maybe an extra controller and an OS (if you didn’t buy it pre-made) and such.
Few casual ‘anythings’ would opt for the PC option to begin with, just because of the set-up requirements alone.
I never needed to get all those extras to play an MMO or most indie games. Not every game is a system hog.
Just examples of why PCs can run up the bill. That’s why I put Needs in quotation marks.
In actuality, you’ll probably only need the Monitor, Headset/Speakers, Keyboard & Mouse and something to put it on. And non of those have to be expensive. And that’s only if you bought a stationary. Laptops have become a cheaper alternative nowadays. And you’ll only really need a mouse for those.
But laptops aren’t known for being the best solution when it comes to gaming. They tend to overheat, even without pushing them.
But alas, it was more about my personal experience when it comes to the types of people that play, PC vs. Console. And the console players are typically the “casual gamers” in that scenario.
Thing is, generally everyone has a PC. You can get a higher end laptop and play a lot of games on it. That way, you can choose a specific console but still have access to games not on that console, and old games.
I’ve always been a Playstation gamer but I use PC to play Sims 4, Alan Wake and Quantum Break, and Star Trek Online when in a trekkie mood.
Star Trek had a game?
Tons. Lots of good ones too. GOG has a large chunk of the older ones (Bridge Commander with mods, Elite Force, and Armada II are my favourites). Everything from point and click adventure games to ship sims, to FPS’s, RTS’s, and an online MMO.
Star trek has many games. I enjoyed watching the VR bridge simulator one with a few popular internet personalities joining together to attempt and figure out the hilariously obtuse switch board on the original Enterprise.
HAS a game. In addition to the other comments, there’s an MMO. Star Trek Online’s been going for like, 11 or 12 years now. It’s actually pretty neat because the missions are “Episode” format and they go by “seasons” for content. They have a LOT of Trek actors for voice acting. Like, they did have a lot of content voiced by Rene Auberjonois and Aron Eisenberg before they passed. They had some sequences with Leonard Nimoy voicing too.
They had one season that had most of the Voyager cast, except for Janeway and Chakotay, and then they got Kate Mulgrew for the current storyline. They had another season that was a DS9 reunion with a whole storyline set from the DS9 hub.
Right now I’m a bit checked out because it’s a HUGE mirrorverse storyline, but they got Wil Wheaton, Gates McFadden, and Kate Mulgrew doing voiceover so I’m almost certainly going back to play through.
It is, however, a free to play model with lockboxes. If you’re competitive you end up spending money or a lot of time, but if you just want a story you can ignore all that.
https://www.playstartrekonline.com/en/ – You can play PC or there’s a version on Playstation or XBox. The communities and accounts don’t link up, though, so I never tried the console version. All my stuff is on the PC account.
Sadly, the STO subreddit did not move to lemmy with the major Star Trek subreddits.
Most hobbies of any kind are expensive if you really get into them. If you don’t have to have new releases, even consoles and console games can be had at great discounts. I’m honestly surprised that so many people limit themselves to one platform. Even though my wife and I are in a low income bracket, we’ve managed to get a PC (nothing crazy like an “i9, 3090, 64gb RAM” PC but it is enough to play most games), Xbox One (I know, last gen), Switch, Switch Lite, and (our biggest splurge) a PS5. Don’t get me wrong, these all have been major purchases for us, as we make sub $30,000 a year, but we’ve made it work. To be fair, most people have other/multiple hobbies that divide their money, or they have other expenses that we don’t have (the big example being crazy high rent, where rent in our area is generally much lower than the national average. We moved recently but our previous apartment was only $375 a month). It’s just interesting to me that many people in our area who I talk to personally make more money than us and then say they can’t afford to have multiple gaming platforms like we do. I think the reality in that case is that it’s simply not that high of a priority for them like we’ve made it for us, and that’s perfectly okay.
I wonder what the metric for PC gaming is. When I was 10-16 I was definitely a Nintendo and PC gamer, but the “PC games” I was playing was flash games on Kongregate. It wasn’t until I was 15 or 16 that I made my Steam account which was on the family 2010 MacBook pro, relegated to titles supported by SteamPlay (Linux and OSX compatible titles).
For purposes of the article, I’d have been a statistic reporting under both, despite never knowing that PC gaming hardware was a thing back then.
Of course, it’s a different story if it’s built/bought a computer for gaming and also a console in addition.
I think one other thing to keep in mind is products are gathered over time. A PC gamer may buy a console a few years after they’ve had their PC, and vice versa for the console owner.