Gaming

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.