Outside of Steam Windows still has a big PC gamer market, Windows is still the biggest PC market.

Windows XP on Steam with Windows XP 64-bit combined has 4%, outside of Steam Windows XP is 24%.

Bank ATM's, a lot of businesses, government agencies, and schools still use Windows XP. NASA still uses Windows XP PC's for their flight test controls when they launches rockets with satellites and other space craft into space along with having some Linux PC's as well.

So I'm willing to bet outside of Steam Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 8 64-bit, and Windows 8.1 64-bit combined has a total of 40%. Probably in the next few months to pass Windows 7.

Windows 10 Microsoft may end up selling 600 million copies of it's licenses according to Alienware, Dell, Hewlett Packard (HP), and Intel.

So far 2 million or 3 million people have tried Windows 10's previews and a lot of them are loving Windows 10 very much.

The only way Windows 10 might not end up being very successful is if Microsoft messes Windows 10 up way more than Windows 8. I'm ok with Windows 8 I do hate the Metro tile interface, but Windows 8.1 is so much better than Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 both boot up much faster than Windows 7. I however still use Windows 7 64-bit on my main PC, which I also play all PC versions of video games on. I still have a Windows XP PC too next to my main Windows 7 64-bit PC to play all PC versions of video games that support Windows XP and Windows XP 64-bit on it.

That's pretty irrelevant, because gamers are only a minority amongst all computer users. So it's pointless to estimate global market share of Linux vs Windows when talking about gaming, since distribution can be different.

What percentage do you think are gamers amongst all computer users?

I have no idea, possibly 30% of the PC gamer market?

If you combine businesses, enterprises, and PC gamer markets together I have no idea what the % is.

Microsoft's enterprise market is way more bigger than the PC gaming market that's for sure.

That's exactly the point. So for estimating gaming scene global one isn't really that useful. That's why distributors like GOG, Humble Bundle and Steam can have way more useful statistics. But only HB published such numbers for actual percentages of sales per OS for cross platform games, and even those weren't total numbers but sales during the bundle period.

Guys this is only my opinion, but I think Microsoft should sell Direct X and the Windows engine to other companies that want to make their own OS.

You know how Unreal Engine 3 is used in games but isn't really a game itse;f. What if there were other operating systems that were powered by Windows or Direct X. As long as the OS used the Windows Engine and Direct X then anything that worked for Windows would should also work on these other orating systems. I think this will be the future and I hope it will be too.

I think this would offer people more choice and M$ would see this to not only sustain profits but also market domination.

Makes no sense financially, since DirectX is a selling point of Windows. Regardless, I also doubt it will benefit the field.

The benefit of Microsoft owning Direct3D is that it works with the IHV's (NVIDIA, AMD and Intel) to create a level playfield in term of features, and advance the field of 3D. Microsoft sees what both have, sees what developers tell it they want, come up with a base feature set, then tells them "you must implement all this to be compliant with the next version of Direct3D".

Sure with OpenGL they all site together and come up with a middle ground, but it happens more easily when there's a gorilla in the room to force their arms to cooperate.

I don't trust the Humble stats much. You can have a purely Windows bundle and still get quite high Mac and Linux percentages.

True. I say we ask gog.com employees to work on adding a Windows, Linux, and Mac sales purchases total for each Operating System (OS) dynamically like Humble Bundle does.

I also want to see a ticker for each video game sold on gog.com that has Windows only, Windows and Linux only, Windows and Mac only, and Windows, Linux, and Mac total sales.

At the front page of gog.com gog.com employees can make a small box you click and it takes you to a gog.com state page for sales of each Operating System's (OS') and video games sales. Like Humble Bundle.

Agree? We need to see gog.com's sales for every single video games sold on gog get tracked in real time for the public to see.

While that can be useful, it also depends if developers are willing to publish such stats. May be GOG can offer them such feature as opt-in.

I would actually like gog.com to offer a feature like this to video game publishing companies, video game development companies, and indie video game developers.

Stats like these would also be nice to show the AAA video game publishing companies like 2K, Activision, Bethesda Softworks, Blizzard Entertainment (Although I have no faith in Blizzard Entertainment since their Diablo, StarCraft, and WarCraft video games are still not sold on Steam), Capcom, Deep Silver (Deep Silver is already some what on board with gog.com), Eidos Interactive, Electronic Arts (EA), SQUARE-ENIX, Take-Two, Ubisoft, and ZeniMax Media Inc. to stop ignoring gog.com and release all of their video games on gog.com for sale 100% Digital Rights Management (DRM) free as well not just exclusively to Origin, Steam, and uPlay.

I will not be making a Electronic Arts (EA) Origin account ever, I will not be making a Ubisoft uPlay account ever, and I am no longer purchasing video games from Steam since 2012. I stopped in 2012 purchasing video games from Steam and will be purchasing all video games from gog.com only.

When else are we going to get such low prices on DRM-free Windows builds which still have some small chance of gaining Linux downloads in the future if the publisher prefers to use a single Humble catalog entry for all sales of the game.

It's not a perfect example, since there were Linux things in the Steam-only stuff I ignored, but buying "Windows-only Humble stuff" is how I got my pack of DOSBox-wrapped original X-Com games.

Well, it's not only D3D vs OpenGL, the rest of the linux ecosystem also has to catch up to be attractive for "conventional" developers and users. (more , even [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Mg5_gxNXTo&t=8m59s]Linus) some more: Carmack: "Supporting Linux isn't worth the hassle at the moment ", "Linux is not the right platform for video games", " the Steam Machine’s biggest problem is Linux"

I wouldn't cite that. The general reader consensus based on his complaints is that the guy's incompetent and probably would have even more trouble developing for Windows or OSX if the OSes weren't pre-installed on the hardware he bought.

Even if that's not true, you'll spend more time fighting bad first impressions of the validity of your concerns than having your point bolstered by that citation.

Carmack is out of the picture already, so I'm not really interested in his opinion on this. He doesn't work on OpenGL anymore so his views are about the past, not about the future. If he'll ever get back into the field, I'll be interested in his views on this.
Exactly. This recent outrage from C4 developer is just ridiculous. Come on, problems with apt-get means Linux isn't good for him?

That, however, won't necessarily give you a clear indication of Linux use, either. I exclusively use Linux for years now, but still buy Windows only games on here, given how good emulation though Wine on Linux has gotten by now (at least for quite a number of games) . PlayOnLinux alone has, right now, around 270* automated install scripts specifically for GOG games - a decent amount of the catalog. It's likely that if you tinker around you can get quite a few more working. Add dosbox and ScummVM, which run fine on Linux, and there's even more out there.

[* I might have miscounted - came up with 271 - it should be there abouts :) ].