I wonder myself.

I believe their definition was along the lines of 'been active within the last 30 days'

Nice to see pc gaming is finally booming. After the mid 2000's I would of expected it to die a cold death. Shame that some have to use this as yet ANOTHER "Steam is the Devil" thread.

We had a super nintendo (my younger brother had), while I bought my first x86 PC.
The lack of control and being tied to one manufacturer' will/price always bothered me.

Also, you cannot do anything else with it than playing games...

because that is such a bad thing...

Depends partly what is compared: the number of users, the number of games sold, the amount of profit/money from sold games... I think there is truth to it that console users in general pay much more money per game than PC users flocking to deep discounts and PWYW bundle sales, but that in turn just boosts the PC user numbers. People love to pay less for their gaming, no news there. Good luck Nintendo trying to keep up the premium price gaming culture.

Mobile gaming even more so: I think mobile gamer numbers easily trounce both console and PC gamer numbers these days... but most of them probably use very little, or no money, on their games. The free-to-play model. At the same time though, many mobile games do become huge successes and make their creators filthy rich (Clash of Clans, Candy Crush Saga games etc.).

It is a bit like comparing Android and iOS users, and Android vs iPhone/iPad sales. Android devices sell much more in numbers, yet Apple still makes most of the profit in the mobile device selling business.

Overall it is a bit hard to make definite comparisons. Many pro-console folks make the opposite mistake, and compare only individual titles, as in "GTA IV sold on consoles N times more than on PC, hence console gaming market is N times bigger than PC gaming market... right?". Wrong, you have to take into account that different games may be popular on different platforms, there may be much more PC games published compared to console games (which naturally makes the comparison with individual games less meaningful) etc.

I think the only good way to compare e.g. PC and console gaming markets would be to compare how much profit all game publishers (indies included) make from each platform. Not looking at only few publishers, but all of them, each and every one, sum up all their numbers into one pile. Kind of, comparing how much money the platform users are using on buying games, and retract the game development costs (for all games on that platform) from those. The overall profit from the whole market is all that matters in the comparison. I don't think anyone has that kind of numbers, covering everyone? Years ago there were some "total game sales" numbers, but I think they took into account only retail (physical copy) sales, and even those probably selectively on certain chains.

Impressive number anyway, no denying that. It also kinda boosts GOG.com's importance: even if the sales of a GOG version were, say, 5% of the total PC sales, it can still be quite an impressive number, as it can be 5% of quite a huge number. It doesn't seem to me GOG.com is doing financially poorly anyway, considering how active they've been lately. GamersGate, on the other hand... Dwindling down it seems. Just a hunch, haven't seen any numbers.

Yes, this infact was the crucial point of the PC, it was a open platform for users and HW and software develoeprs alike!

Personally, I credit the success of the PC in the 80s and 90s exactly to this point: a free and open acessible platform for everyone (unlike the locked apple PC). And I credit the success of Android to having the same qualities, a open software and HW platform with an open free accessible marketplace (the strong influence of google can be discussed but it is clearly better than the locked IPhone ecosystem).

Now to the "Steam is the Devil" point: indeed, while Steam focussed and revitalized the PC as gaming platform, it is infact conceptually backward as it pushes the open PC platform in a more locked form, away from the success model of an unrestricted non-centralized bazaar for everyone, consumers and producers alike.

I don't think this is really the case. While it's true almost everyone has a PC, I know numerous people who have an active Steam account and all they have on it are a couple of Counter-Strike games or Dota 2 and nothing else, and then the rest of their gaming continues on consoles. I don't think the people I know are the only ones doing this either.

...which you've just pulled out of your ass, because Valve have never explicitly said what they define as active. Unless you've got some reliable source (i.e. not some random fanboy quote on the RPS forums) quoting differently?

"Active" most likely refers to any account that has not been closed down, which you specifically have to write to Valve to do, and which very few people are unlikely to do. My sister has a Steam account that she hasn't logged into for five years. She's still on my friends list as not having logged in for "more than a year". I might see if we can log into it later for shits and giggles.

Also, judging by the number of spambot/scambot friend requests I get in Steam, it's a fair bet that a further substantial share of those accounts are bot, sockpuppet or shill accounts.

Indeed, I have an account that I literally haven't touched since 2010 & I have no clue whether it's still "active" or not but it sits there moldering on some server somewhere

Uhm, maybe you should read the OP again.

give over tinyP
we are talking about games here not the be all end all ultimate hardwarezorz

and for gaming and netflix consoles will do just fine

XD Fair enough but has it occurred to you that the 'be all end all' might be here already? Buckle your seat belt Buck Rogers, this is the future! :D

There are some stats on the bottom of this article: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/gog-celebrates-six-years-of-advancing-the-drm-free/1100-6422150/