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.

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Grombobulous an hour ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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throwawaytea an hour ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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Grombobulous 37 minutes ago | parent [-]

https://www.statista.com/statistics/420621/number-of-pc-game...

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

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throwawaytea 31 minutes ago | parent [-]

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 12 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Anyone with a smartphone can be a gamer. I think my mom playing Wordle on her smartphone does indeed make her a gamer.

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hypfer an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

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-Softw...

	▲	Grombobulous an hour ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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Ferret7446 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

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

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Grombobulous an hour ago | parent [-]

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.

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hypfer an hour ago | parent [-]

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.

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Grombobulous 33 minutes ago | parent [-]

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.

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hypfer 26 minutes ago | parent [-]

I'm just greatly annoyed that a conversation that could've been about understanding and learning was (at least attempted to be) hijacked/derailed by some ego/identity stuff.

Letting people get away with that has led to the unpleasant state of the internet we have now and mild correction simply doesn't work.

Hence I've pointed at the exact holes/fault lines. Nothing personal. I wish you a lot of fun gaming on linux.

	▲	Grombobulous 8 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		At the risk of me sounding obtuse, I don’t see where ego or identity came into this conversation. I’m merely pointing out reasons why someone would choose Windows 11 over 10 and that I think the number of people who do that and play games on Windows is significant. It seems like you’ve been mostly focused on proving me wrong and that’s why the conversation didn’t go the way you wanted it to go. I actually even agreed with you about some stuff, like the fact that most gamers don’t have cutting edge hardware. I suggest that there are ways in which you contributed to the negative aspects of this interaction. Conversations are a two way street!