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Steam Hardware Survey For February 2015

By - | Views: 15,822
Here's the Steam Hardware survey results for February 2015 with one interesting difference from the past surveys.
Oh, and you might have noticed that this article has been arriving a little later than it used to.... that would be because I decided that it was better to wait like a week or so to avoid getting numbers that Valve could change in the first few days.
To the numbers now:

Linux results for February 2015
Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS 64 bit 0.30% -0.09%
Ubuntu 14.10 64 bit 0.14% 0.00%
Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca 64 bit 0.09% +0.01%
Linux 3.10 64 bit 0.08% -0.02%
Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS 64 bit 0.07% +0.07%

Total: 1.02% -0.07%
Last Month: 1.09%

My thoughts on it

Well, first, Linux had quite a drop this month, and I don’t know if that has any relation with the second point; but did you notice the lower amount of distributions? For the first time I believe, only 64 bits distributions appeared in the survey! Valve probably didn’t decide to just ignore the 32 bits ones, so those distros probably just didn’t make it into the 0.01% cut....
I wonder if the games announced this week, will make those numbers start to get a little higher, though I don’t expect much to change at least before the dawn of the Steam Machines, which we will have to wait until November to see, unfortunately.

Important things to remember

Be aware these results will probably not be that accurate as we don't know how they do their percentage results, they could be rounding up, rounding down or truncating the percentages. So a 0.5% could actually be nearly 0.6% as it could be 0.59% but they could do no rounding and simply truncate it.

Also remember it is a survey, so it won't ask every single one of you to do it. It would only be truly accurate if it did it behind the scenes, but that's not what a survey is for this is just to get a general idea.

Final Note: Look at it this way, Steam has around 100 million active users, 1% of 100 million is about 1,000,000 (1 million) people. What developer wouldn't want to hook into a market that big? Of course it doesn't mean they are guaranteed that amount of sales, but it's something fun to remember.

See the survey on Steam here. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Editorial
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About the author -
Gaming on Linux since '12.
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Maelrane Mar 8, 2015
The final note is the important part. Also, Linux gaming has just begun (in "AAA" terms) and I think and hope that the coming years will change a bit.

On a sidenote: I also hope that Microsoft will drop DX after its 12th iteration completely and start embracing Vulkan. I mean they could benefit as well, without losing too much.
salsadoom Mar 8, 2015
I'd love to see MS drop DX, but IMO, DX was invented for platform lock-in, and it destroyed cross-platform gaming for probably decade. They'll continue to push DX until its all but completely abandoned by developers, and that'll be a long time.
Liam Dawe Mar 8, 2015
They will never drop DX, sad, but true.
Kallestofeles Mar 8, 2015
Quoting: liamdaweThey will never drop DX, sad, but true.
Agreed. DX will live on as long as there is Windows and, more importantly, as there is Xbox. Freely speaking, DX does its job and does it kind of well. So we'll have to wait and see if Vulkan will clean up the mess that OpenGL's iterations have left behind. I've loved OpenGL since the win98 days when it beat the crap out of DX but sadly, thanks to the former managers of OpenGL and some bad decisions, they left the API to rot as MS managed to pick up DX and polish it.

I have such high hopes for Vulkan and maybe, we'll eventually see OpenGL rise back to its former glory.
Liam Dawe Mar 8, 2015
If anything, we want DirectX to live, but have it open, so that way it can be on Linux and bring all the older titles with it with less porting involved ;)
dubigrasu Mar 8, 2015
In my experience I always received that survey only at Steam install (or re-install time) time.
Is this true for everyone else?
minj Mar 8, 2015
I actually got it this time around after a hiatus of a year or more. No reinstall required.

QuoteLinux 3.10 64 bit
I wonder why SteamOS still uses 3.10 and why it manages to enter the charts contrary to all non-debian distros.
kalin Mar 8, 2015
Before few days I started thread about initiative of implement d3d through vulkan but there is no great response from community
dubigrasu Mar 8, 2015
Quoting: minjI actually got it this time around after a hiatus of a year or more. No reinstall required.
Well, I'm thinking that you have a better chance to get the survey when you install Steam. So for those with older and stable installations the chances to get it are very slim.
Maybe Windows users are reinstalling the OS more frequently?
I know that at least among my friends/relatives/coworkers the method of reinstall Windows is the solution of choice when something is going wrong/sluggish etc.

Just a thought.
Maelrane Mar 8, 2015
Actually Microsoft has joined (again) the Khronos Group ;) Just for WebGL for now, but who knows.
I wouldn't put it past them to actually see the benefits.

I guess their whole "vendor-lock in" won't be working many more years. They have to become more open and go more in the direction of a service provider than a software manufacturer. But that's just my thoughts.
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