Hi,

I finished my first game and am pondering whether I should make the game accessible to the average Win98 user.

As it stands now, The game requires WMA 9.0 and DirectX 7. I think that might be too high of a requirement.

I am thinking of switching to Ogg and GDI. Coverting to Ogg is a challenge in itself, but I really want to know whether all of it is worth the effort. If most potential customer's have WinXP, then the current game will work. Of course...most potential customers may only have Win95...

Does anyone have info on the percent of customers that have Win98 vs. WinMe vs. WinXP?

Thanks,
FinishIWannaBeA

Macromedia (makers of Flash and Shockwave) did a study on this:

http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/shockwaveplayer/user_profile.html

Of course this is targeted at people who have Shockwave installed, but since millions of people have Shockwave this is probably a pretty good representation of people in general.

I'm currently conducting a survey on this. I'll have the results in a month but the prognosis is: nearly everyone has Windows XP. Strange.

Cas :)

Cas, maybe some problem with your code or maybe the download links in sites are in the XP section? I would say that the number of XP users is about the same as W2k and the same as Win98.

About the macromedia report, I wouldn't rely to much on that. First it targets US only (bad bad thing since at least in terms of computer years and connection speed they differ alot) and second it targets Macromedia shockwave users. Opposed to what people think, many people don't have Shockwave (I don't for example). Another thing is that the slice of old computers in the survey is high, and so is the users of XP, afaik, XP isn't the best thing to use with old hardware, so I'm not exactly sure how accurate are those stats.

There's lies, damned lies, and statistics eh :D
Here's what I've got so far this week:

2k: 49 (12.7%)
98: 44 (11.4%)
Me: 29 (7.5%)
XP: 263 (68.3%)
Total: 385

A note about the statistical sample: about 75% of my downloads come from Download.com. In other words, they're random and totally unmarketed. This is just what happens when you unleash a game on the internet without trying to target it at any particular group at all. If you're in denial about the fact that the States is the biggest online presence then you're basically in denial of those statistics, which should tell you that regardless of what you think, 68.3% of random people just surfing to my site use XP.

(And you might be interested to know that hardly *anyone* uses anything slower than a Radeon or Geforce2 these days)

30% of people don't have GL drivers though - almost all of them XP users.

Cas :)

None of that surprises me. All the research I have encountered over the years in the games industry indicates that targeting the lowest common denominator is a mistake. People who upgrade their PC spend money on hardware and software. Those who don't upgrade don't spend money on it, tend not to buy new software and limit their use of the machine to some specific function (indexing their stamp collection).

Still, we've posted our stats here before and we all get different results. :)

(checks one of many sites at random)

XP - 47%
98 - 40%
2000 - 7%
(rest was Mac and Linux - ME wasn't anywhere near even half a percent)

(checks a different site)

XP - 48%
98 - 38%
2000 - 8%

(and a third)

XP,NT,2000 (this counter conglomerates) - 60%
95,98 - 38%

(and a fourth)
XP - 50%
98 - 20%
2000 - 10%
ME - 9%

Interestingly, that last one is the only one that gets traffic from download.com - and those numbers look much more like princec's. So I think this says something to us about *their* users. :)

Originally posted by princec
If you're in denial about the fact that the States is the biggest online presence then you're basically in denial of those statistics, which should tell you that regardless of what you think, 68.3% of random people just surfing to my site use XP.


What I meant is that using the US as the sole country int he stats, makes bad assumptions about the stats in other countries, for example, korea has the biggest online population in the world, scotland has the most (and newer) computers per household, but then again, most countries only have dial up. What I meant is that those stats aren't really conclusive if you want to base your next game around them

Originally posted by princec
(And you might be interested to know that hardly *anyone* uses anything slower than a Radeon or Geforce2 these days)


You must live among rich friends, except for me and a friend, all the other ppl i know have a tnt 2, g400 or geforce1 :)

korea has the biggest online population in the world


Is that as a percentage or raw numbers?

I remeber thinking when I last saw people posting Stats, that no-one commented on the duration of their survey.

If you have been collecting data for 5 years you will find a much higher percentage of Win95 users than now exists.

Akura:
According to the NPD shockwave survey 63% of web users use shockwave (97% for flash but that's not where they harvested the OS figures from). You can assume that that 63% will be weighted a bit towards newer machines a bit because enthusiasts are more likely to install extras, and they are also more likely to own newer machines. There is also the fact that users have to meet the minimum spec for Shockwave (not insignificant).

Princec:
Are you collecting figures on CPU speed? I'd be interested to know that too.
Currently my development system is a 750Mhz geForce2MX (Win2k). By the Time I'm finished my next game I'm wondering about making that the recommended spec. It's so hard judging what I could put in against the speed hit. I'm leaning towards thowing in the kitchen sink at the moment.

I have this to say about my stats:

They are collected not from random surfings to my site - they are actual stats of actual people playing the actual game, which means people who have successfully downloaded it from any one of a number of places and installed it and got it to run successfully and been online when they ran it. Remember that none of these people knew in advance whether it was going to work; they are all told up front that it works on Windows 95 and onwards.

That's a week's worth of stats; in a month's time I'll have more accurate figures. I don't have any rich friends; I don't know any of these people, and they're nearly all using a T&L capable high performance graphics card. Seeing as how a T&L card can be had for less than the price of an indie game now there's little excuse not to have one if you actually pay money to play games. I don't know how to get the CPU speed yet but it honestly doesn't matter any more - anything over 500MHz is blisteringly fast with a T&L 3D card to back it up.

Cas :)

My theory resonates with Obscure's thoughts. I'm thinking that I'm more likely to get a sale from a WinXP user.

I was thinking of making sure my game works with Win98. But eh...I'll paraphrase Obscure here and say...if folks will not spend the money to upgrade their computer then they probably will not buy a new game either. I may lose a few sales based on this assumption, but I'll save a lot of time by avoiding recoding.

-- FinishIWannaBeA
http://www.curiosoft.com

OTOH, some people (like ME!) are actually more resistant to upgrading their computer because 2000/XP doesn't play nicely with their collection of small, casual 2d games! :) Sadly, I was talked into trying out 2000 when I was having severe stability issues (that turned out to be the fault of the motherboard, NOT win98) and many things have never worked since... It does crash less, but I miss my games...

But diehard retro games players aren't generally the market being targeted here.

Originally posted by papillon
OTOH, some people (like ME!) are actually more resistant to upgrading their computer because 2000/XP doesn't play nicely with their collection of small, casual 2d games! You need what I have always wanted. A PC emulator written to the level of accuracy of the emulators for consoles etc. I want something that emulates a simple PC with VGA card (perhaps one of the common SVGA) and SoundBlaster, but it gets everything right to the finest detail, timers, Videro & Sound.

It's astounding that the Amiga emulators do better emulation of their hardware side when they are so much much more complex than a PC.

I think Google Zeitgeist (http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html) is an excellent indication of the people surfing your site and (possibly) downloading your game. According to them, Win98 is 30% as of August 2003. That's a huge market to exclude.

I've got this sneaky feeling that the Win98 die-hards belong to the same set of people that are alluded to in the Big Sales Experiment Thread, i.e. they're tightwads with no intention of buying anything - by and large. C'mon - it's a 5 year old "operating system", most likely running on an ancient bit of shite dedicated to writing letters for Granny. Who's going to want to play games on it?

Cas :)

My experience mimics Obscure's.

When you are talking numbers of people, the Windows 98 crowd may represent around 30%. But if you are talking DOLLARS - typically the guys with the newest hardware and operating system spend several times as much as their counterparts running on an older system. So that 30% of the market is actually only throwing around less than 5% of the cash.

Also, from the commercial game sector - your early adopters also form what is called the "opinion leaders". These guys want games that will really show off their hardware, and help them justify the fact that they blow $5,000 every two years to get a top-of-the-line machine. They tend to ignore the games that look no better than the one they could have played on their old machine three years ago, and focus only on the ones that push the envelope. They tend to be very vocal on the Net, and other people listen to what they say. So when these guys go out and praise your game (or bash it), others follow that opinion and repeat it. So the big names give these guys more attention than their collective spending power typically warrants, simply because they influence the purchasing decisions of others with more mortal machines.

All of this may apply only to traditional, "big-name" retail sales, which differ in many other ways from online, independent game sales. It may not apply here. If it takes you very little additional effort to test your game on Win-98, you may as well do it. But don't do it at the expense of the users of more modern machines.

princec - ME. And Microsoft haters (could be good for Java!) :) who're refusing to upgrade out of hatred of the man.

I skipped Win95 entirely because I thought it was a piece of crap. I only got Win98 because it was handed to me. I only moved off Win98 because someone forcibly installed another OS on me. I play lots of games, though. :) Of course, I definitely do spend less on the 'modern' retail blockbusters than the people who upgrade. But I'm much more interested in small 2d than most of them.

Isn't part of the point of most of our business models to target the people who don't obsessively upgrade their machines to play the latest cutting-edge games? :)

The entire point of me personally being involved in this industry is to make a living and enjoy myself, rather than make world+dog happy. I suppose that's why the rest of us are in the Indie Business forum here too. You belong to a market which just isn't big enough for everyone to exploit effectively. If we put our business hats on we realise we've got to chase after bigger markets with more money floating around in them to make the kind of money we need to live on.

Cas :)

Originally posted by papillon
Isn't part of the point of most of our business models to target the people who don't obsessively upgrade their machines to play the latest cutting-edge games? :) [/B]
I don't think so. Or, rather, I don't think it should be the POINT of the business models - just one aspect.

But the big, $5 million-and-3-years-in-development games ARE our competition. Make no mistake. Someone who plunks down $25 for the latest expansion for The Sims is spending money they could have spent on titles from budget developers like us. And I don't see the Unreal II player being someone who wouldn't like the games I write. Heck - Bejeweled yanked away a ton of players from their FPS and RTS games for a season.

As I said - we can't take on these titles head-to-head in a fair fight. They've got their strengths - we've got ours. Since we have a tough time competing graphically (not necessarily because our 3D engines aren't up to snuff, but because we don't have the budgets to create that kind of detail level on our content. However, that does give us the luxury of supporting lower-end machines that don't choke on our databases. Maybe it's only worth an extra 5-10% in sales, but with such tiny development budgets to begin with that extra 5-10% can add up.

*MY* business model is to become the provider of excellent gameplay experiences that customers just can't get anywhere else. Especially not at retail. That's something that the highly risk-averse Big Budget games have a very difficult time competing with.