hi Are there any statistics how many gamers have windows PC's , Mac's and how many have processors 500mhz(and under 500) ,1000mhz/ghz and above or how many have modern 3D accelerators.
I assume most such statistics are biased in one direction or another. Valve users will have better hardware, solitaire downloaders will have a lot of lower end machines. It's all a matter of audience.
don't know of any other than the valve ones mentioned. I'm currently targetting my own computers ones 400mhz pentium 2 with a geforce 2GTS 32mb and the other a 1.2ghz athlon with 64mb GF3 I try and have the slower one as my minimum and the athlon as the recommended.
Please have a look at the information on the IndieWiki. I think at least some of it you will find helpful. This topic comes up a lot. Also, check out this index to posts on the forum here related to hardware requirements. -Erik
Everyone has their own spin on this. Even using actual statistics isn’t very helpful if they are not specifically for your target audience. (The Valve stats are complexly useless to me) But it may interest you to know that I personally target my games at around 400 to 500 MHz for the low end. In other words, I play test them and performance tune them to work well on a 450 MHz commuter I have at home. I am considering moving up to a 733 MHz system as my low end testing system but I will probably wait until after my next game to make the jump. I can’t give you exact proof that this is correct for me and I have no idea if it is correct for you. But it is what I choose to do based on many factors including feedback from customers, sales of pervious games, and what computers my friends and family have.
I would love to collect actual data from my current customer base but I fear being labeled as Spyware even if it is a separate program with opt in access. Plus, making it opt in would give you a self selected sample which isn’t very scientific. Besides, the current customer base isn’t necessarily indicative of the potential customers.