5 ms·

Most people are in fact not gamers. Like.. at all. And even those that are probably don't own an OLED or mini-LED monitor. Most people just want a computer tha

by hypfer 4mo ago

Most people are in fact not gamers. Like.. at all. And even those that are probably don't own an OLED or mini-LED monitor. Most people just want a computer that does the word, the chrome and that's about it.

Grombobulous 4mo ago
There are over 900 million PC gamers in the world. PCs have 43% marketshare in the total game console market. Yes, that includes marketshare against the Nintendo Switch. There’s a bit of a bubble of non-gaming in this forum, but gaming is definitely a top use case for PCs. Just walk into your local Best Buy in the laptop section and count up how many of the laptops are marketed as gaming systems. That should give you a rough idea of how many systems are purchased with gaming as the primary intent. Sure, HDR is a niche at this point in time, but technologies like OLED and mini LED are increasingly common. If you buy a gaming laptop in 2026 at most reasonable price points it’s very likely to have an OLED monitor. Example: Legion 5a Gen 11 AMD, price on Lenovo’s site is $1500, has an OLED monitor. You can buy OLED gaming monitors below $500 nowadays, so a lot of people upgrading have that as their next upgrade path…if not today, then tomorrow. On that subject, most people just use the copy of Windows that comes with the computer, so the whole debate about Windows 10 is perhaps not worth having in the first place. Microsoft most likely just misjudged the pace of hardware replacement especially in the AI era where computer sales have slowed.
- hypfer 4mo ago
  Yes and how many of those people have the cash for cutting edge tech? And how much does that cutting edge tech truly matter for the core game experience. I think the steam hardware survey might have some answers there and can tell us for which level of hardware currently developed games are being optimized for. And that's just the currently developed ones. Not the massive backlog that existed before OLED or microLED HDR screens. Tiny group. Tiny. ___ Btw, super lame to try to improve your argument after the fact with edits, but, well. Anyway. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
  - Grombobulous 4mo ago
    Certainly, I agree that most gamers do not have cutting edge tech. The cutting edge tech does improve the core experience. Quite a lot. You do have to have the money for it, though, and like anything else, diminishing returns on investment. Steam hardware survey shows Windows 11 gained 2% this month over Windows 10. That’s a significant rate of change. I recognize that you don’t like my use of edits, however, they are part of this platform and I’m not using them to diss anyone or engage in any kind of negative conversation. Just trying to make my point and support it.
- throwawaytea 4mo ago
  Calling 1 in 7 people on Earth a gamer is a stretch, unless we're calling preloaded trivial game players, gamers.. and even then I'm not sure.
  - Grombobulous 4mo ago
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/420621/number-of-pc-gamers/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/420621/number-of-pc-game... https://www.demandsage.com/most-played-games-right-now/ https://www.demandsage.com/most-played-games-right-now/ Some of it is unclear about multi-platform splits and mobile gaming but I don’t think I’m incredibly far off. Gamers across all platform estimated at over 3 billion: https://explodingtopics.com/blog/number-of-gamers https://explodingtopics.com/blog/number-of-gamers
    - throwawaytea 4mo ago
      Half the world's population is easily too young or too old or too poor or too rich to be gamers. So that 3 billion stat alone shows me people love just counting any moments spent in a video game at all for who knows what reason on any super bad quality 'game' as gamers.
      - Grombobulous 4mo ago
        Anyone with a smartphone can be a gamer. I think my mom playing Wordle on her smartphone does indeed make her a gamer.
        throwawaytea 4mo ago
        Yes and the world has 6 billion researchers too because we Google things. It's a lot more useful though when words have meaning and we take them seriously, otherwise nothing really makes sense.
        Grombobulous 4mo ago
        I think you would agree that playing games and being a researcher are very different levels of depth. If you have decent public transit in your area, you'll definitely see at least one person on your commute playing some kind of candy crush-like phone game every single day. Yes, that's a "gamer." Humans by their very nature use games to pass time and stimulate their mind and body, it's one of the most universal things about us. That game of Wordle my mom plays once per day is probably what keeps her paying a subscription to NYT. That's real money. She'd probably drop the subscription otherwise. NYT sells a games-only subscription for $50/year, $80/year per family. I think NYT executives would be happy to consider someone who plays games for 5 minutes per day or even 5 minutes per week a gamer.
- kasabali 4mo ago
  What is this 7-paragraph OLED talk about? I can plug an OLED display to a fricking Windows XP system with a Maxwell GPU and it'll work perfectly fine as long as it has a goddamn HDMI port. Has nothing to do with OS support.
  - jogu 4mo ago
    I guess you missed the part where they’re talking about HDR? Yes, the monitor will work but if you want to take full advantage of the panels you enable HDR.
    - kasabali 4mo ago
      No I didn't. I intentionally only wrote just OLED because it doesn't have anything to do with HDR not it requires any special support and it doesn't make any fucking sense why they included it along with HDR.
      - RussianCow 4mo ago
        Probably because HDR on the vast majority of non-OLED monitors is useless. You really need a monitor with great contrast and a good HDR implementation for it to be of any benefit.
        Grombobulous 4mo ago
        This is exactly why I mentioned it. In practice, mini-LED monitors or TVs are just not really making a whole lot of sense for HDR by comparison. I also focused on OLED because I think it’s a very common way for consumers to have access to HDR, whether it be via a TV or gaming laptop. Outside of Apple, Mini-LED monitors are a rarity in laptops. Usually manufacturers choose OLED for more mid to premium laptops. Apple is fussy about color accuracy, the other manufacturers want a display that pops on a showroom floor and/or they’re targeting a gaming market that appreciates the latency, motion performance, and contrast benefits OLED brings to gaming.
Ferret7446 4mo ago
Non gamers who need a PC (most people are mobile only now) can probably use Linux at this point.
- Grombobulous 4mo ago
  I am a gamer who uses Linux! Gaming on Linux is lovely. I actually left Windows to fix driver stability, which worked and did the trick. I couldn’t play Indiana Jones without crashing. I should have maybe been more clear (grandparent to your comment) that I didn’t mean to be out defending Windows or anything like that. I migrated away from Windows this year. I just find that the arguments for sticking to Windows 10 are super weak and overstated. Windows 11 is a decent OS and a clear improvement over 10, in my opinion. It’s just that for me, Linux is now better.
  - hypfer 4mo ago
    So you're saying the cutting edge HDR features(?) in windows 11 are not all that important to you personally and thus do not warrant windows 11 usage? Makes sense, yeah. Nice talking to you.
    - Grombobulous 4mo ago
      Not sure why you’re being so bitter toward me in particular. I don’t personally own a monitor capable of HDR but if I had one I would prioritize it a little more, and in my case, I migrated to Linux to resolve specific graphics driver problems. Getting my games to work at all was more important than HDR. I also recognize that laptops are generally more popular than desktops and OLED is far more common in that form factor. So when I talked about what gamers in general should prioritize regarding running windows 10 versus 11, I figure that many of them have laptops that therefore have OLED monitors capable of HDR. Also, I was only using HDR as a single example of the gaming enhancements that Windows 11 has, we don’t have to dwell on that one in particular. We could talk about support for enhanced polling rate mice, or better windowed fullscreen, or better VRR.
      - 4mo ago

by hypfer 4mo ago

Grombobulous 4mo ago

There are over 900 million PC gamers in the world. PCs have 43% marketshare in the total game console market. Yes, that includes marketshare against the Nintendo Switch. There’s a bit of a bubble of non-gaming in this forum, but gaming is definitely a top use case for PCs. Just walk into your local Best Buy in the laptop section and count up how many of the laptops are marketed as gaming systems. That should give you a rough idea of how many systems are purchased with gaming as the primary intent. Sure, HDR is a niche at this point in time, but technologies like OLED and mini LED are increasingly common. If you buy a gaming laptop in 2026 at most reasonable price points it’s very likely to have an OLED monitor. Example: Legion 5a Gen 11 AMD, price on Lenovo’s site is $1500, has an OLED monitor. You can buy OLED gaming monitors below $500 nowadays, so a lot of people upgrading have that as their next upgrade path…if not today, then tomorrow. On that subject, most people just use the copy of Windows that comes with the computer, so the whole debate about Windows 10 is perhaps not worth having in the first place. Microsoft most likely just misjudged the pace of hardware replacement especially in the AI era where computer sales have slowed.

hypfer 4mo ago
Yes and how many of those people have the cash for cutting edge tech? And how much does that cutting edge tech truly matter for the core game experience. I think the steam hardware survey might have some answers there and can tell us for which level of hardware currently developed games are being optimized for. And that's just the currently developed ones. Not the massive backlog that existed before OLED or microLED HDR screens. Tiny group. Tiny. ___ Btw, super lame to try to improve your argument after the fact with edits, but, well. Anyway. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
- Grombobulous 4mo ago
  Certainly, I agree that most gamers do not have cutting edge tech. The cutting edge tech does improve the core experience. Quite a lot. You do have to have the money for it, though, and like anything else, diminishing returns on investment. Steam hardware survey shows Windows 11 gained 2% this month over Windows 10. That’s a significant rate of change. I recognize that you don’t like my use of edits, however, they are part of this platform and I’m not using them to diss anyone or engage in any kind of negative conversation. Just trying to make my point and support it.
throwawaytea 4mo ago
Calling 1 in 7 people on Earth a gamer is a stretch, unless we're calling preloaded trivial game players, gamers.. and even then I'm not sure.
- Grombobulous 4mo ago
  https://www.statista.com/statistics/420621/number-of-pc-gamers/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/420621/number-of-pc-game... https://www.demandsage.com/most-played-games-right-now/ https://www.demandsage.com/most-played-games-right-now/ Some of it is unclear about multi-platform splits and mobile gaming but I don’t think I’m incredibly far off. Gamers across all platform estimated at over 3 billion: https://explodingtopics.com/blog/number-of-gamers https://explodingtopics.com/blog/number-of-gamers
  - throwawaytea 4mo ago
    Half the world's population is easily too young or too old or too poor or too rich to be gamers. So that 3 billion stat alone shows me people love just counting any moments spent in a video game at all for who knows what reason on any super bad quality 'game' as gamers.
    - Grombobulous 4mo ago
      Anyone with a smartphone can be a gamer. I think my mom playing Wordle on her smartphone does indeed make her a gamer.
      - throwawaytea 4mo ago
        Yes and the world has 6 billion researchers too because we Google things. It's a lot more useful though when words have meaning and we take them seriously, otherwise nothing really makes sense.
        Grombobulous 4mo ago
        I think you would agree that playing games and being a researcher are very different levels of depth. If you have decent public transit in your area, you'll definitely see at least one person on your commute playing some kind of candy crush-like phone game every single day. Yes, that's a "gamer." Humans by their very nature use games to pass time and stimulate their mind and body, it's one of the most universal things about us. That game of Wordle my mom plays once per day is probably what keeps her paying a subscription to NYT. That's real money. She'd probably drop the subscription otherwise. NYT sells a games-only subscription for $50/year, $80/year per family. I think NYT executives would be happy to consider someone who plays games for 5 minutes per day or even 5 minutes per week a gamer.
kasabali 4mo ago
What is this 7-paragraph OLED talk about? I can plug an OLED display to a fricking Windows XP system with a Maxwell GPU and it'll work perfectly fine as long as it has a goddamn HDMI port. Has nothing to do with OS support.
- jogu 4mo ago
  I guess you missed the part where they’re talking about HDR? Yes, the monitor will work but if you want to take full advantage of the panels you enable HDR.
  - kasabali 4mo ago
    No I didn't. I intentionally only wrote just OLED because it doesn't have anything to do with HDR not it requires any special support and it doesn't make any fucking sense why they included it along with HDR.
    - RussianCow 4mo ago
      Probably because HDR on the vast majority of non-OLED monitors is useless. You really need a monitor with great contrast and a good HDR implementation for it to be of any benefit.
      - Grombobulous 4mo ago
        This is exactly why I mentioned it. In practice, mini-LED monitors or TVs are just not really making a whole lot of sense for HDR by comparison. I also focused on OLED because I think it’s a very common way for consumers to have access to HDR, whether it be via a TV or gaming laptop. Outside of Apple, Mini-LED monitors are a rarity in laptops. Usually manufacturers choose OLED for more mid to premium laptops. Apple is fussy about color accuracy, the other manufacturers want a display that pops on a showroom floor and/or they’re targeting a gaming market that appreciates the latency, motion performance, and contrast benefits OLED brings to gaming.

Ferret7446 4mo ago

Non gamers who need a PC (most people are mobile only now) can probably use Linux at this point.

Grombobulous 4mo ago
I am a gamer who uses Linux! Gaming on Linux is lovely. I actually left Windows to fix driver stability, which worked and did the trick. I couldn’t play Indiana Jones without crashing. I should have maybe been more clear (grandparent to your comment) that I didn’t mean to be out defending Windows or anything like that. I migrated away from Windows this year. I just find that the arguments for sticking to Windows 10 are super weak and overstated. Windows 11 is a decent OS and a clear improvement over 10, in my opinion. It’s just that for me, Linux is now better.
- hypfer 4mo ago
  So you're saying the cutting edge HDR features(?) in windows 11 are not all that important to you personally and thus do not warrant windows 11 usage? Makes sense, yeah. Nice talking to you.
  - Grombobulous 4mo ago
    Not sure why you’re being so bitter toward me in particular. I don’t personally own a monitor capable of HDR but if I had one I would prioritize it a little more, and in my case, I migrated to Linux to resolve specific graphics driver problems. Getting my games to work at all was more important than HDR. I also recognize that laptops are generally more popular than desktops and OLED is far more common in that form factor. So when I talked about what gamers in general should prioritize regarding running windows 10 versus 11, I figure that many of them have laptops that therefore have OLED monitors capable of HDR. Also, I was only using HDR as a single example of the gaming enhancements that Windows 11 has, we don’t have to dwell on that one in particular. We could talk about support for enhanced polling rate mice, or better windowed fullscreen, or better VRR.
    - 4mo ago