Study: 47% of gamers play on multiple platforms

Kaldo

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.

gk99

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.

michael

You can also scour the used market for a Switch Lite in the $100 range, and boom, 3 platforms.

@alongwaysgone@beehaw.org

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.

Ragnell

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.

Somewhereunknown7351

Star Trek had a game?

Ragnell

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.

Corvus Nyx

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.

Coskii

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.

Goronmon

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.

Ragnell

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.

Feydaikin

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 cansual 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.

Ragnell

I never needed to get all those extras to play an MMO or most indie games. Not every game is a system hog.

Goronmon

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.

stopthatgirl7

I used to be one of those “play on all three” until recently - I stopped console playing once I decided not to get a PS5, so now only game on PC and mobile.

@worfamerryman@beehaw.org

Up until the 360 era, I used to play on everything. Then it became Nintendo + Xbox. Now it’s Nintendo plus pc. But I’m pretty close to moving on from the switch and getting a steam deck. Then i guess it’s just pc.

@averyminya@beehaw.org

I was always a Nintendo/PC gamer. I made the move the week my Steam Deck shipped (Q3er). I hacked my launch switch and dumped all my my switch games that I didn’t own but were available on PC (for example, DOOM 2016 was skipped but Daemon X Machina was not). I have those dumped games backed up on my computer, but I just have them all on an SD card for the Steam Deck!

Mostly everything I’ve tried has run pretty much perfectly. A while ago Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 had some pretty major texture issues but within the last few months there were some major strides for switch emulation and that seems to have effectively solved a majority of the issues I had run into with the games.

I’m now most of the way through MUA3 on the Steam Deck :) I’ve also got the trilogy all one one console :) format shifting, library consolidation, that’s what the Steam Deck is all about!

I used the hacked switch for a little while, there are some interesting things it can accomplish but it hasn’t been used at all since then. Even before the Steam Deck I had just hardly been using it, and now having the ability to make any control scheme I want make it the easy choice every time.

The Steam Deck is incredible but it’s the Steam Input API that convinced me with the Steam Controller it was worth it.

@worfamerryman@beehaw.org

Yeah, I evaluated my library and there are like 2 games that are switch exclusive that I would care about.

Tears of the kingdom and Mario odyssey.

the w

Fascinating stuff. I think we’ll see a new category emerge in studies like this for Steam Deck, ROG Ally, a Sony’s (ridiculous) project Q. I think these devices have more to do with each other than they do with PC or console - at least when it comes to player behaviour and use case

atocci

I’m not sure the Project Q fits in here. It doesn’t play games on its own, just streams them. Sounds like it has more in common with the Logitech G Cloud.

@Suppoze@beehaw.org

Yeah I think these hardware created their own category, handheld PCs. Separate from PC, console and handheld consoles.

@wintrparkgrl@beehaw.org

In theory, I play them all. In practice it is all on PC thanks to emulators

RadioRat (he/they)

Here’s the link to the “source”. Hard to assess the quality of the data and conclusions on the other side of a paywall :/