Gamers trump normal folks for resolution

Following up on KitGuru's earlier story about the most common resolutions found in modern online society, we decided to run a separate analysis on the resolutions preferred by gamers. That gamers want (and pay for) more pixels is no surprise – but what is their favourite resolution? KitGuru gets all steamed up over the question.

Ask people about their car/job/partner and you could get a wad of different answers. Inaccuracies, lies, memory failings and statistics can all get in the way. With computers, the ‘no lies here mate' zone belongs to things like Microsoft's Plug-n-Play.

Major game delivery expert, Steam, has an automated online survey for its customers and it makes for very interesting reading. The maximum potential sample size for this survey is in the order of 10 million gamers (based on those who have signed up for the Community), but while the actual sample size is not so easy to gather – you can be sure it's several hundred thousand.

So, simply put, it's an accurate representation of the way gamers are specifying their rigs these days. Let's have a look at the most popular resolutions – alongside the amount of gamers that use them.

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Right now, if we compare the average gamer resolution (1920×1080 – according to Steam) and the average resolution for a normal person (1366 x 768 – according to Stat Counter), then the gamers are using almost 100% more pixels (97.66% to be more precise).

Now that the humble iPad has (almost exactly) a million more pixels than your average HD TV, the poor old regular use is being left well behind.

KitGuru says: The lack of movement in the resolution department has been killing many of the hardware companies. Gaming has become fixated on the consoles – none of which offer decent resolution. While the iPhone 5 will create a stir, no doubt, it's a next-gen console that the market is really calling out for. We needs them pixels.

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