Platform Percentage
- Thread starter mphhot2
- Start date
Aastii
VIP Member
I can't find the numbers for players, or games sold, or DLC bought, or anything like that, but for a very, very rough estimate, taking the total units sold for the top 5 selling games for each platform (all in millions):
Xbox 360: 41.75
Wii: 152
PS3: 24.49
PC: 61.3
Total units for all 4 = 279.54
Percentages:
Xbox 360: 14.93%
Wii: 54.38
PS3: 8.76%
PC: 21.93 %
There should be a few things to note with the numbers though:
That is numbers sold, not hours played, that doesn't take into account the number of people who game and who own each platform (though the pattern emerging of wii being way out ahead and xbox + PS3 being roughly equal to PC is about right)
Some games are quite old, so shows past performance in with that, not just todays, for example Gears of War for Xbox, Sims 1 & 2 for PC etc
Some people will own more than 1 platform, but not game on more than 1 platform, for example, I have a PC, Wii and 360. I spend 99% of my gaming time on PC, and contribute to most of the top game sales for it, but then I own, and occasionally play on my other 2 consoles, but only have 2 of the games for Wii, and none for 360, so I'm not taken into account for those, which will be the case for a very large number of people
People will say "look at games that come out multi platform, more console than PC gamers buy them", well yes, that is true, but the PC exclusive games, especially ones such as WoW, The Sims, RTS games (Civ, Starcraft etc), the PC figures rocket, you are looking at much higher numbers buying those than are buying the "blockbuster" titles for consoles, and the number that play those games for long periods is even greater than the numbers that play consoles
People also make the mistake of hearing the news saying that "such and such a game is the best selling game of all time", you probably heard that at the release of MW2 and BO, but it isn't true, it isn't even close to true. They base that claim on profit made, not units sold, and as such games are very overpriced compared to other games (compare £55 to £25-35 for a Wii or PC game), it isn't a fair comparison.
Also, the percentage you are asking is fairly vague, do you mean anyone who has at some point played on one of the platforms, someone that owns the platform, the % of time played on each?
Do people that have played Solitaire, or play flash games on their PC count? Is it only modern gaming computers that count, because technically, all computers can play games, just maybe not the latest and greatest? If that is the case, the console market will be only 1 or 2% beacuse the number of computers owned is in the billions, not millions like consoles
epidemik
Active Member
If thats all you're wondering, it's pretty easy to see that although people are griping about DRM and awful ports of console games to the PC, there are still a ton of people gaming on PC.
You can look at Steam Stats (and that JUST counts steam), it shows theyre are over 3 million people on steam. Granted they are not all playing games but only some-what dedicated gamers have steam running at all times (I wouldn't consider myself hardcore gamer but I do my fair share and steam is not running right now). Also on the website, you can see there are tens of thousands of people playing each game.
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
Xfire (although its dyeing down in my opinion) also shows that there are quite a few people online. They tracked 6.5 million minutes of WoW and 4.8 million minutes of COD4 today (keep in mind that neither of those games show up in steams top10 nearly all of those gamers are independent from what steam tracked)
http://www.xfire.com/
Finally, its important to keep in mind that those two methods of tracking gamers only take into account the small portion of users who voluntarily install and run their programs. However, in defense of consoles, there is no arguing that they sell WAY more copies of games (aastii adresses this really nicely though!). I'm just saying PC is not dead at this point.
Also, this is overlooking people who waste their time with flash games. If you consider that gaming, I promise you just by walking down my college dorm hall that there are millions upon millions of people playing online flash games. Runescape (I personally hate it but it's pretty popular based on stats) has around 10 million active players in 2009 (didnt bother to find updated stats- just the first google search) and has had over 100 million registered accounts.
I'd say pc gaming is doing fine. Heres an interesting article about what the Crytek CEO has to say about PCs http://www.techolive.com/2010/11/crytek-ceo-pcs-easily-a-generation-ahead-of-consoles
You can look at Steam Stats (and that JUST counts steam), it shows theyre are over 3 million people on steam. Granted they are not all playing games but only some-what dedicated gamers have steam running at all times (I wouldn't consider myself hardcore gamer but I do my fair share and steam is not running right now). Also on the website, you can see there are tens of thousands of people playing each game.
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
Xfire (although its dyeing down in my opinion) also shows that there are quite a few people online. They tracked 6.5 million minutes of WoW and 4.8 million minutes of COD4 today (keep in mind that neither of those games show up in steams top10 nearly all of those gamers are independent from what steam tracked)
http://www.xfire.com/
Finally, its important to keep in mind that those two methods of tracking gamers only take into account the small portion of users who voluntarily install and run their programs. However, in defense of consoles, there is no arguing that they sell WAY more copies of games (aastii adresses this really nicely though!). I'm just saying PC is not dead at this point.
Also, this is overlooking people who waste their time with flash games. If you consider that gaming, I promise you just by walking down my college dorm hall that there are millions upon millions of people playing online flash games. Runescape (I personally hate it but it's pretty popular based on stats) has around 10 million active players in 2009 (didnt bother to find updated stats- just the first google search) and has had over 100 million registered accounts.
I'd say pc gaming is doing fine. Heres an interesting article about what the Crytek CEO has to say about PCs http://www.techolive.com/2010/11/crytek-ceo-pcs-easily-a-generation-ahead-of-consoles
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