Casual gaming on the rise – Video Games Update
A Steam hardware survey has shown that the majority of the PC gamers using the service do not have a high end PC and there has been a rise in the single-core and dual-core machines which only support Microsoft DirectX 9 (DX9).
Ever since the advent of mobile gaming and browser based games, the whole industry seems to be shifting towards the casual market. This might be bad news for the core gamers who want state of the art technology in their games as it turns out that they are
the minority in a huge market filled with casuals. So naturally, the focus is bound to shift as developers start to leave the core crowd behind and start catering exclusively to the casuals.
The survey has shown that 1920x1080 is the most commonly used resolution at 25 percent followed by 1366x768 at 18 percent and 1600x900 with only 7 percent. This means that only 25 percent of Steam users are playing games at 1080p which is the standard high
definition resolution these days. The information also reveals that most of the Steam users use laptops for gaming instead of the high end desktop.
The survey also pointed out that Intel processors are the popular choice for gamers as almost 72 percent of gamers own Intel powered PCs and laptops compared to the 27.96 percent for AMD. The division between graphics card was somewhat closer as nVidia has
a slightly greater number of users with 47.36 percent compared to the 35.63 percent of AMD/ATI graphics cards.
This might be disturbing news for game developers such as Square Enix, Dice, Epic Games and IO Interactive which have recently developed and showcased new game engines that would fully support DirectX 11 (Dx11). It seems that their effort might be in vain
as the majority of gamers are not willing to upgrade their PCs because of the high costs and are currently satisfied with playing low end casual or indie games.
Bad news for core developers but not so much for Valve as the Source engine is old and is well optimised for low end machines. Valve games like Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2 are based on the source engine and are known to be compatible with really old
machines. Valve will be thriving even if Indie or casual games become the norm, but core gamers might have to look elsewhere for their fix.
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