You’d think that, with all the advances we’ve been making in the world of computing, with all the new manufacturing techniques and cost-cutting methods being employed by OEMs, people would be packing increasingly powerful hardware into their systems, right? After all, reduced costs means that those who plan to shell out for a gaming PC can, ultimately, get more for their money.

Apparently, that’s not the case. According to a recent Steam Hardware Survey, we’re seeing a downward trend in the power packed by participating systems. Integrated graphics cards are becoming more and more common(11% of computers polled now rely exclusively on them), up from around 3-4% earlier in the year. We’ve also seen less instances of dual-core processors, down to 48% from 50%, while the instances of systems using single-cores is up to 7%.  GPUS are experiencing incredibly slow growth, as well, with DirectX11 GPUs not even increasing a full percentage point and DirectX 10 and 9 up by 0.5% and 1.5%, respectively.

So, wait…does this mean that gaming PCs are actually getting slower? Are we actually seeing a downward trend in the processing power of the average gamer?

Well, yes and no….but not for the reasons you’d think. See, the ‘average’ gamer is becoming more and more average of late. What I mean is that gaming is, as we continue to move forward, becoming increasingly mainstream, to the point that it’s actually pretty tough to find someone in the younger generations that hasn’t at least tried a game or two of something. In other words, yeah, we might be seeing a decrease in the processing power of the average gamer…but that’s simply because the audience being polled has skyrocketed in size.

PC Gamer suggested a few alternative reasons for the data, including the rise of the independent developer (a very good point, given the popularity of indie games), the installation of steam onto lower-powered laptops, and Steam’s growth outside the Western world (which might not have access to hardware as powerful as in the developed world).

Either way, there’s really only one way to read this data, and it doesn’t really tell us anything we didn’t already know: Gaming’s big business now, and it’s no longer the sort of thing one would associate with dark basements and social pariahs.

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