Whale economy as seen in f2p games.

Starve the community around you with higher prices, make all your money with the few who buy bottled mineral water for car wash.

Generally speaking you’re usually from 0 to 720 hours in a month: how many time in a year you have to remind people what month they are into vs. the single day?

Guy A: “Hey, what day is it?”

Guy B: “It’s Sunday, the 13th.”

Guy A: “Of…?” (gesturing to keep going)

Guy B: “Ah, right, we’re just 390 hours into August. You may have missed that.”

Well, that’s counter-intuitive since the archive.org is all about preservation and availability of data, here’s the full link : https://metro.co.uk/2023/08/04/pc-graphics-cards-to-get-more-expensive-again-thanks-to-ai-boom-19269496/

…it their money aren’t already gone for a 999$ monitor stand.

SteamDeck buyers on the other side…

Deliver fake data would be an insanely dangerous game from Valve: that data is what all their partner to make strategic choices… if there’s any proof of that, all their partner would drop the ball and Valve would lose it’s multi billion business in just few weeks.

2. fake that data is plain stupid too: Valve has all the interest to know and share where is the bigger pie piece… so Capcom, Sega, Blizzard etc. can tune their product. For example, let’s say Valve goes crazy and say that the GPU Nvidia RTX 5090Ti got 50% of market share… and all their partner follow this fake data and deliver all their products with no optimizations: results for their customers? (and, before any one mention it: yes, this apply the opposite: if Valve say 50% of GPU market share are shitty old Intel iGPU… all future games on PC will overly tuned towards the lowest end and big publisher won’t even bother trying with next gen videogames).

Same perks and disadvantages apply on all platforms Steam collect data from. My guess Valve do apply some weird AI algorithm to determine missing data. IE (just speculation) if there are Steam Decks that never go in Desktop Mode the algorithm pushes itself more widely in the array of the SDs that do.

One thing worth to remember, Valve always knows which binary executable connect to their server (and today very few use Steam’s windows .exe through WINE), the survey is just them asking permission to eventually use your data: is not a commitment, they can fix/screw the statistical data anyway they see fit… I think mostly to fight those who cheat with the stats… Chinese language jumped few time over English (making English a secondary language on Steam) and Valve “fixed” those published data too!

Fixed link with the whole story: https://archive.is/lc1sb

Didn’t know that. I was used to ol’ reddit. Thanks for the info tho, I’ll come handy later!

970 + PatientGamers = name a more iconic duo

(or current AAA in lowspecgamer mode XD )

There will certainly be new Intel mini PC, just not manufactured directly by Intel.

A bit of context why Microsoft’s lawyers are saying this stuff:

Sony recently expressed concerns about Microsoft’s attempt to buy Activision/Blizzard. Specifically they (Sony) mentioned the fact that Microsoft control’s over popular franchise, such as Call of Duty, could unfairly damage Playstation’s business by making them exclusive to Xbox/Windows.

…basically it’s their way to say “see? it’s not even convenient for us to make CoD exclusive to us!”. Of course, they will make all Blizzard/Bethesda/whatever popular product exclusive to Microsoft’s platform to assets their monopoly in the gaming industry (I am not saying they are succeeding, they are just trying)

If you put things in perspective of performance per $/€ the falling of price is the standard status for PC gaming.

Yeah, of course you may get some GPU more expensive than the older one, but there’s always that GPU that deliver more “fps per ¢” compare the previous generation. 2020~2022 were anomalies pushed by manufacturing issues, a new branch of customers (cryptos) that messed the market and (above anything else) greedy speculation by the bigger players (mostly Nvidia, but AMD did play along). The results was heavy manipulation by the market to push for actually decrease the value of “fps per ¢”. I think were heading back to normal, if you avoid Nvidia you can already find options that pair or deliver more " fps per ¢".

We will see more “fps per ¢”?

Yes, of course; as always has been before the pandemic speculation. During the pandemic speculation you couldn’t be sure about that; Nvidia specifically, strong with their presence in the market, tried multiple time with speculative tactics to mass with the customers.

It’s not like there will not be Intel Mini PC anymore; just not directly manufactured by Intel.

There’s actually a practical problem with Nvidia.

People that use Linux don’t have a single set of reference like, let’s say “Windows 10 or Windows 11”: there are tons of different Linux flavor you can try by simply boot a CD/USB dongle with full Vulkan support… except if it’s Nvidia: since Nvidia closed source driver are restricted in distribution an/or packaging meager.

In short: with AMD/Intel GPU you got latest updated driver coming right to the very core of the OS (right in the Linux’s kernel), it doesn’t matter which Linux you boot, ~100% GPU driver works flawlessly

…on the other side with Nvidia? Good luck with that!

How much of that do we think is down to the steamdeck? (and I guess similar form factor alternatives)

GPU VanGogh (the name Steam gives to SteamDeck GPU) is currently ~40% of the whole Linux userbase on Steam; so, yeah. pretty much everything.

I guess Intel dropping the ball on being competitive for a couple of generations probably hasn’t helped either

Intel has never been competitive in terms of GPUs. PCs running Intel iGPUs are machines waiting for a ‘real’ GPU and the like. Intel Arcs are relatively too young to have a significant weight in the totality of the userbase: naturally, for the sake of Linux, one hopes that Intel can gain more weight… specifically against Nvidia which is currently the only company to have exclusively closed source drivers

Short answer: that 8% in Intel iGPU are basically “PC in wait for a AMD/Nvidia videocard to be installed”

We strongly need Intel to succeed in the PC gaming industry for two reason:

1. they deliver OpenSoucre driver (only for Linux currently, but Linux can make a PC become anything)

2. give more weight to customer against Nvidia (which are openly against the customers)

3. support for more open industry standards (Nvidia still the problem here)