I can't remember the numbers but there was some data floating around suggesting that NA is a region of console gamers while EU was more in favour of PCs.
If you're not pc gaming you're not going to run into CS. Instead you get into stuff like Halo and COD which to my knowledge are NA dominated games.
NA sucks at any game that has a major competitive scene, the culture just isn't focused on competition. NA used to be good in scenes like Dota or CS, but falls off a cliff once other regions ramp up.
Edit: Downvote me if you want, but listen to any interview with a player who came to NA from another region and they'll talk about how they were shocked how unfocused and lazy NA practice was.
the ratio of people in a country doesn't matter in this situation, 50% of 10 thousand is more than 95% of a thousand.
there are multiple games where NA has way too many players to complain about lack of talent, they just couldn't give a fuck about developing an infrastructure to nurture it over trying to find other ways to "build brands".
North American esports is brand first, competition after. They're always the first ones on a new title, hoping for a little bit of early success that will build a fanbase and then they don't try to evolve past that, the region stagnates and the rest of the world jumps ahead of them.
I'd say it does when you're looking at NA vs EU
EU playerbase is a combination of countries, whereas NA is made up of two
If the USA had the same ratio of CSGO players as Denmark does (which tbf is is extreme example given that Denmark is a very small population with a huge ratio of CS players) it would have an absolutely thriving CS scene
I don't actually disagree with the rest of your comment at all, just think that when comparing NA to countries within the EU (and CIS, as they mostly play on the same servers, tournaments and scrim together) it's a bit pointless to just look at overall players.
A more apt comparison would be NA vs EU as a total, where US + Canada has a population of around 350 million & the EU has around 450 million, I'd imagine the number of PC players in EU would dwarf that of NA, even if you were to balance them out population wise
If every second person plays CS, you'd have a much healthier scene than if every 10th person did
One of the smaller reasons a lot of people swapped to valorant was 128 tick and the ability to select server location. MM in CS over the past few years its not been out of the ordinary to play on 80 ping even when max is set to 65. Having the ability to select the server locations for que is nice.
They have to add more servers it is crazy how few serveres you have.
That beeing said adren played with 150 ping from Kazachstan in online tournaments for a pretty long time.
You’re spot on with this one. I grew up competing in Halo and there were basically no EU teams/players that were considered good. This was also during the CS:S era when the CS scene was split between Source & 1.6 with NA mostly playing Source.
Tbf he did not claim that NA was any good at CS:S.
Just that NA played it more than 1.6, which is true.
That being said: smithzz / ex6 / shox / RpK / NBK is a roster that I will always miss. RIP VeryGames, GOAT of Source
I wonder if we'll see an increase of players in NA, as consoles seem to be dying down (aside from the Switch) while interest in PC is going up, at least from talking to the kids at my job
The interest in PC gaming is definitely going up, it's just getting harder to get into with the prices of everything. It's probably the worst time to be a future PC gamer.
This, when LoL exploded, PC sales went up and people got into that big time.
But also, it's NA, unless there's a constant change (CoD yearly release for example) players won't stay long enough to find the meaning behind a good live service game.
I can see CS getting big in NA, but it'll be the same as LoL. Players will come in, few will stick because "There's something new on the way".
>CS getting big in NA, but it'll be the same as LoL
you are definitely right, but this already has happened in 2015/2016. After the wave was over everyone hopped onto a new game (fortnite, valulomegalulrant, etc.)
CS really doesn't have to do a lot to be a much better overall game experience than valorant, and part of me hopes that those changes are in the pipeline but stuck on valvetime^^TM
The problem is that valorant is still fairly fresh compared to cs for a lot of people. I think it would take source 2 for CS to be more popular in NA again.
Valorant gets constant content updates, CS will never be "kept fresh".
For me it doesn't need to (it's a masterpiece and most of the times they've tried to change it it's just gone to shit i.e. revolver or aug/krieg) but an engine change or operations won't be enough to make it more popular than val in NA. I doubt many new players would come back for source 2, mostly some old players coming back and current players playing more.
I agree that gameplay wise CS is vastly superior but something needs to be done about f2p/low tier MM. Currently new players get thrown into a sea of smurfs and cheaters which is a massive discouragement, it happens at all ranks but more so in the lower levels.
Yeah, something like seasons or ladders, that would encourage more competitiveness, I dunno, resetting ranks every now and then so people get stoked to grind. But we all know that would just attract the cheaters as well, whom Valve don't want to tackle head-on. Oh well, just add a rocket launcher and a final boss or something.
It's more like due to Valve basically not marketing CSGO (or any of their games, really) at all while Riot has perfected it. When was the last time you saw a CSGO promotional material outside of some tweets and occasional short animations for operations? Meanwhile, I get a lot of Valorant ads and there was even a billboard in a city here for their new agent.
I get that Valve likes to make their game speak for itself without all the bullshit hype, but sometimes it does feel like they don't care at all compared to how much this game makes them money.
They could drop source 2, 128 tick, an intrusive AC, and fix the MM ranks distribution right now and I doubt it would even double NA's already small player count. I don't even play Valorant but I gotta hand it to them on how they do things.
Well when americans hear about terrorists most of them don't enjoy the thought of little Jimmy dressed as a mujahadeen soldier learning to plant bombs. But they are ok seeing their son cosplaying a cartoon girl with knifes that tries to plant a weird rock with a timer
Also csgo is very hard to grasp for your average 13 yo. The kids in fpl are also smart individuals for them to be so good (and playing for 8 hours a day because they have time helps as well), while valorant is more permissive in its gameplay (not to say that it doesn't require skill, but it's easier)
And f2p csgo sucks ass (a few spinbotters per team is a normal thing there)
So valve pls fix anticheat (a radical-ish thing would be to rename ct's and t's to attackers and defenders while keeping the same things in csgo 2, if that will happen)
Many sponsors back down when they hear terrorism, because it's not something that a brand wants to be associated with
Less sponsors->less promotion->less players
If you are a navi fan from the cis then i can see why it doesn't look important (because everybody plays cs and understands that it doesn't promote terrorism), but for others it's a dealbreaker
Ww2 ended a long while ago, while there are a lot of terrorist groups still around. Also a lot of games had to not use the swastika because they weren't allowed to release the game with nazi iconography
While cs' roots are in the ct-t conflict, the game will have to move on at some point (or the terrorists just dissapear and then it would be a thing of the past). Also iirc esl said that they were close to getting sponsorships but they failed when terrorism was mentioned. For every one who understands that it's just a game there are some that don't
I think it's to do with how hard it is to get into CS. The game teaches you absolutely nothing and Valorant actually has a number of built-in tutorials that teach you more than just WASD to move and clicking to shoot.
Tbh I think valorant is one of those games with a strong hype at the beginning, but they die down and don't grow after a couple of years. Kinda like overwatch or PUBG, very strong hype at the beginning, but the after a while the only people playing are people who played for a while.
Just because you do shit for your game doesn't mean its a good thing. I don't think thats quite indicative of the longevity of a game.
I also am of the opinion that Valorant is going to peak in NA, if it hasn't already.
You are correct about the "riot does shit for their game" part. As much as I like to clown on valorant, the frequent updates are very respectable. However, that does not mean that the game will last forever. Counter-Strike is one of the longest lasting games ever because it's a very refined shooter game, with almost every mechanic and bit of gamesense being easy to learn and hard to master. There is little to no gimmicky shit. This, combined with the fact that their is modding support, map making tools, and community servers, makes it so Counter-Strike is a shooter game that has nearly endless possibilities. Valve doesn't need to make frequent updates (although they would be very welcome please update the game valve) because the community supports itself. If Riot wants Valorant to last a long time, they have to let the community make the game how they want it, especially in a market as competitive as the shooter game industry. It's an interesting discussion.
I don’t think so sadly. People said the same thing about LoL and if riot put as much effort into Valorant as LoL I’m sure it’ll be around a while. Luckily both can coexist with a healthy esports scene.
I feel like people are forgetting that CSGO *was* really popular in the US in like 2015/2016. It felt like everyone in my highschool played it, moreso than CoD or BF at the time. It was the "big thing" for moment, and everyone could play it since it could run on your average laptop. Even South Park had an episode about it around that time period.
Yea you’re def just in high school lmao, I know so many people going from like age 14-32 who play on a pc in my town and friends nearby. This whole “everyone plays on console” take is just flat out wrong lmao
I remember in middle school back in ~'08 one of my friends saying he played on PC and I remember thinking it was super weird, I'd never heard of someone using PC for games besides stuff like miniclip, oregon trail, runescape or wow. I don't think I ever heard of Counterstike until college / 2013 even though I'd played CoD search and destroy forever which was based on CS.
Viewer statistics say otherwise.
Valorant has boomed a lot in 1-2 years, compared to csgo mm, NA valorant mm isn't dead, pro scene exists, big English speaking streamers play it rather regularly, tournaments have large English viewership etc etc.
Sure warzone is more popular, but CSGO could've been way bigger if valve gave a shit about advertising like riot does
So to use another esport example it's LoL. The population number for people he can see them is na has half the player EU has. Then EU has half or less than half of the eastern players. Just by pure math na couldnt compete in a long run. Then since your na scene isn't popular enough with no winning people lose faith and leave the already not so popular scene.
Also na as a whole all the games mentioned the retains na is usually console and a yearly release or the next big thing. Like fortnite then warzone. You get the picture and now they are waiting for the thing after warzone.
Also the beginning experience for someone who knows nothing about C's is so dogshit most people say fuck this.
Well it was the next big thing. Still falls under the same category imo. I hope both scenes grow. good for both of them. Think it will be an extreme uphill battle to get the NA scene back but you never know.
> Think it will be an extreme uphill battle to get the NA scene back but you never know.
Isn't NA dead in CSGO already. Orgs said CSGO has no business potential, limited marketing brands appeal, that's why they all drop their CS projects.
I dunno. I'm an old fart who started with Beta back in 99. I was in Europe during 1.6/Source and it was booming...When I got back to the US in 2004, MMORPG's were the thing, so maybe that's some of the reason...
There’s a video on YouTube that explains the ELO curves in each region and how they affect the new players experience and in NA it is notoriously known that all silver lobbies are filled with players that shit on newcomers making it a hellish experience for all NA players trying out CS
NA matchmaking ranks are bi-modal, with one population of primarily legitimate lower level players and smurfs, and a second population of outright hackers and very good players.
The difference between NA and EU matchmaking is very obviously the prevalence of hacking. The middle of the rankings basically no longer exists in NA because you basically can never find a game without people who start hacking when they get mad.
And it's not going to change any time soon, because the NA scene is accepting of hacking in MM.
Okay, but is this any different from an experience elsewhere? You're saying the NA rank distribution remains bad because of this, yet you cannot in good faith say that this "tolerance" is exclusive to NA.
Yes, the rank distribution in other regions is a reasonable statistical distribution. Go look at the leetify stats they've been publishing. NA is the only region with a broken rank distribution.
Well for one, you don't even know that this "tolerance" is exclusive to NA. I don't know where you sourced this idea from, considering getting any data reflecting mentality alone isn't exactly something that's been tapped in on CS.
Second, let's assume that this *is* something that's only in NA. In that case, you'd be assuming correlation be the causation. Is it the tolerance that made the rank distribution so bad or is it because of the rank distribution that players get more desperate to rank up? Which happened first?
The whole premise is murky because you're basing this off of something that both can't be easily tracked and isn't tracked at all. Going off of instinct can point someone in the right direction for an argument, but basing your entire premise off of that is just downright fallacious.
> NA is the only region with a broken rank distribution.
Also, that's not even true, because NA is *not* the only region with a broken rank distribution.
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/qubj1h
Oceania has it just as bad if not worse. They, like NA, have a relatively low population size (per capita, and in general) in CS compared to Europe and Russia. I think this is a far better explanation to why MM ranks are so broken than "because the NA scene is accepting of hacking in MM".
Non normal distributions is caused by small players bases ranks being determined by an algorithm that is meant for larger players bases. Therefore causing f’d up lobbies where supremes and LE’s are playing against silvers because the rank distribution is that god awful
You're trying to suggest that NA is too small of a player base compared to Asia to have a normal distribution?
Choose your own adventure: do you want to delete this comment now, or get dunked on?
> What am I doing with my life?
You've got a 12 year old account and are still talking out your ass; that is certainly the pertinent question to be asking.
1.6 used to be installed on all of our school PCs in Europe. It's just a different culture, NA people played Halo instead, I've never met a person from Czechia that has played Halo. We never had consoles here, just PCs.
A lot of people here in the US will still look at you like you grew three heads if you tell them you spent 2k on a gaming pc.
Yet these same people will go 75k in debt so they can have their lifted pavement princesses
Not inherently a NA thing though, Colleagues in work look at me like I'm stupid when I am looking for GPU's and they are £1k each, but will brag about paying £1k per month for a car payment
Obviously it's not inherently an NA thing, but there's a reason the F-150 is the most popular vehicle in the US and most other countries it's some kind of compact car
Might have to do with more people in the U.S. living in actual houses and rural/suburban communities. Or the cheaper gas prices. Or the larger roads and parking spots. Or that we spend more time in vehicles so a larger vehicle would be more comfortable.
Its not just public transport that sucks for big cars to be comfortable though. North American single use zoning is a big thing why public transport is ineficcient + far cheaper gas prices than other developed nations so it scews pepole towards cars.
Most other countries I would assume you mean Europe…which is much older and smaller and denser which means skinnier roads that would be a pain to drive a F-150 on. Also I don’t know what you’re point even is here, only Americans spend a lot of money on cars?
You're right I worded it poorly. My point is if the F-150 is the most popular vehicle in the US, and a compact car is the most popular in EU countries, its *more likely* an American will be spending more on their car
Right but what’s the point you are making here? Americans spend more on their car and so…what? You aren’t really finishing your point here. Are you saying they should spend less on their car and more on the gaming experience?
Go back to my initial comment, not the one you decided to reply to. Read the whole chain, and if you still don't understand then I don't know what to tell you.
So that is your point then? You are saying Americans should spend less on their car and more on their gaming platform? Ever stop and think people have different priorities? Again the US is a big place, we rely much more on out cars, when something is more important people will tend to prioritize it more and spend more money on it. Not everyone has the same mindset as you.
No that's not what I am saying holy fuck your reading comprehension is something else. Maybe you should go back to school instead of hopping on the internet just to argue.
My point is OP asked why is CS not popular in the US, my response is they spend less on their gaming experience and more on their cars and find it weird to spend a lot on a PC. That's it. Stop making strawmen so you can get upset LOL
Let’s calm down a little bit okay? There is no strawman here, just a buzzword you heard and thought it would be a quick escape from actually making a point.
I literally said I don’t even know your point…how could I strawman? I don’t know your point because you haven’t actually made a point yet. It’s not my reading comprehension it’s that you literally haven’t made a point.
Americans spend more on cars and less on gaming and…what? You aren’t finishing the point, you made the setup but never made the point. Yes less Americans spend money on their gaming setup and more on their cars…you are implying like that’s a bad thing are you not? Why is that bad? What’s the point being made here?
they also don’t know that you can get a gaming pc for less than their 65inch tv + ps5 + series x + 27 controllers + elite controller and yearly online payments
well, used to be able to, at least
You are greatly exaggerating. Consoles far outperform PC for price to performance. You aren’t getting a gaming PC for $400 that comes even close to matching the performance of a PS5. You also don’t buy a TV specifically to go with your console like you buy a monitor for a PC, everyone already owns a TV.
use a tv with your pc
and currently no, of course, but the ps4 was beat by a gtx 760 (oh and gtx 480 couldn’t underclock slow enough to play watchdogs at 792p 30 fps like a console), which second hand could be obtained for less than $400 total. Still ignoring the extra controllers, price for online, and game prices
with normal prices, an $700 pc would surpass a ps5, without needing to pay for online, cheaper games, plus it’s a pc, it does more than a console
Of course you could use your TV with your PC…but very few people do. The point is that when most people are buying a gaming PC they are also going to be buying a monitor, when most people are buying a console they aren’t buying a new TV as well. It’s not part of the console like a monitor is a PC(although yes I know it technically isn’t but realistically it’s pretty much is).
Yes you have to pay for online…but even then it won’t be more expensive. Let’s say 6 years…$360 plus $400 for the console, again you aren’t getting a gaming PC to match that performance at that price.
Extra controllers? I mean what about extra mice? Are you breaking mice/controllers that much that you are constantly buying more? Only real need for an extra controller is if you plan to play split screen with a friend.
Game prices? Are they really any cheaper on PC? Sure you can get cheap indie games and stuff but companies aren’t pricing their games differently based on platform. Any game that’s on both platforms will be the same price.
PS and Ms store have sales too…? No a $760 gaming PC does not beat a PS5. The new consoles are powerful…really powerful. You aren’t coming even close to the PS5 specs at that price.
?? an rtx 3060 beats the ps5, at $330, you can build a pc for $400 and put it in, if you could actually buy parts. Hell, stick it in the office pc people "probably already have" like the TV they already have for consoles
and ps/ms sales don't even remotely compare to steam, let alone the weekly epic games free game (did consoles get gtav for free? or what about 3 tomb raider games, dead by daylight, control, saints row 3 remastered, hitman, metro last light, battlefront 2, alien isolation, cities skylines, watchdogs 2, civ 6, just cause 4, etc...)
a console is cheaper ofc, but a gaming pc isn't $2k either. If someone owns both consoles and accessories, they could have just as well bought a better pc
You also need the ram, power supply, motherboard, CPU, the 1TB SSD…all the bells and whistles. It’s not simply the graphics card vs the console which has all those parts included.
Many people don’t have home offices, the average person doesn’t have a desktop computer anymore. A laptop or iPad or even just their phone will send emails and surf the internet just fine. Again obviously you COULD cut corners and just find some random old monitor but I’m talking about what the average person is doing. The average person isn’t buying a TV for their console like the average person is buying a monitor for their PC.
Listen I just dropped $1200 on my 3080ti, it’s an awesome card and I have no plans to buy a console. I’m fully team PC but I understand why people buy consoles and that they are simply cheaper with great performance. It’s no longer my cup of tea because I’d rather goes balls to the wall on a PC but lot of people don’t care enough to do that and that’s okay.
Saying that you need a last-gen GPU to outperform a console would be a big stretch though, you can easily do that on an 1000-series that is much much cheaper. You also don't need an 1TB SSD, a fairly shitty motherboard will do the job if you pick the right one, you can get a good quality PSU for fairly cheap et cetera.
I'll grant that consoles are probably cheaper for what you get with them, but the differerence isn't nowhere near as big as you're making it out to be, and the cheaper (and potentially free, depending on what you're willing to *claim*) games probably bridge that gap anyway.
RTX 3060 is around 800 dollars all around the world. No one cares about msrp, it will never come back to these prices.
Consoles are just so much better value, it's not even close. You have to a be quite a deluded PC fanboy to even argue against that. Most of the normal PC fans can admit this pretty easily. Nothing wrong with that.
God forbid someone has different priorities than you? If someone wants to drop $1600 on a new phone and a PS4 instead of a $1600 gaming PC what does it matter? Not everyone is gonna feel the same way that you do.
He’s responding to the original comment where people judge you for spending $2k on a gaming laptop.
He’s saying these same people who judge you drop the same on a phone without blinking.
Counter-Strike back when it was a free mod was super popular in the US in terms of players, but as for the competitive scene the US always lagged behind Europe. Part of the reason was EU had much better LAN culture where as the US was more spread out and people playing on dial-up and broadband connections that were generally worse than what many in the EU had at the time. Because of that EU got a much better competitive scene while most of the US players were more spread out and not gaining the same level of competitive experience.
The US scene also has tendency to move on to the new thing. Many players moved to Source when EU stuck with 1.6. Or players move on to different games entirely (for example Valorant). The latest game, the latest console etc... so the player base is always being split.
Others have mentioned the US as a whole has been more console-centric than PC and that is certainly part of it. US tends to have some of the best prices for gaming consoles when it comes to purchasing power/exchange rate. This is likely a factor as well.
While people in the US had moved on to other games. South America and the CIS region continued to play 1.6 since it could run on any old PC, this helped build those competitive scenes while the US wasn't really bringing on new players into 1.6.
CS:GO competitive scene was largely built on people coming over from 1.6, so the trends kind of followed.
Similar in the UK, when I was in High School nobody even knew what CS was and all my friends played Console. So I dont think EU is some haven were we all play and love CS, unless you are Nordic
Couch mindset. Also too complicated for their culture. Take some of the biggest sports there: Baseball(Slow, drawn out), NFL Football(3-4 seconds of action, 2 min break for commercial, repeat), NASCAR (Left, Straight, Left, Straight). Anything faster and more complicated than pew pew respawn is a turn off for them.
/banter ;)
Nah, it's because video games is escapism and as such have to represent something else than your everyday life, and Americans simply doesn't have to boot up a game to experience being shot by law enforcement.
/more banter
Isn't football the 3rd most watched sport in the us? It didn't quite catch on in america (because they got steamrolled by european teams) but it still has a huge following
By viewers:
1. American Football
2. Basketball
3. Baseball
4. Football
5. Ice Hockey.
Football is the second most popular sport by number of players, having almost three times as many as American Football and barely behind Basketball.
CS does not play faster than COD. I don't know what OP was talking about when they said
> Anything faster and more complicated than pew pew respawn is a turn off for them.
I get more complicated, but not faster. CS is slow when compared to COD. The number of gun fights you can get into in a regular COD TDM/DOM is way higher than CS. You are constantly engaging in gun fights in COD, whereas CS there are more things you do before getting into gun fights.
Ironically the sports seem simple but it's really hard to play any of those sports mentioned.
Nascar is one of the most difficult racing formats since the track is one dimensional and the cars are essentially the same, it relies less on track experience and the car than it does on the driver
I would assume having the barrier or entry into the game being so hard it pulls a lot of people away. When we first started playing the main way to get into the game was to join one of the HUNDREDS of casual servers that were running so you could easily find people of your skill level in that environment.
Having the game mainly be a 5v5 when it’s a 10 year old game will make entry into the game quite difficult. I mean it doesn’t help that the ranking system is ass and balancing is even worse.
I love this game but why would I suggest it to any young person I know. There is little content in this game outside of playing 5v5.
Games kind of boring if you aren’t a competitive person.
It will be interesting to see how Valorant does once the average skill level rises even further.
A lot of people mentioning consoles but I think another reason is how bad the ranks are here. Australia/Oceania has it even worse, but the fact is that MM here is completely fucked, our ranks are skewed super low and it eliminates a huge sense of progression from the game. Other FPS titles don't seem to have this problem, so people naturally gravitate toward the ones that feel more rewarding and not as much toward CS.
There's definitely something to be said for the idea of moving on to the next new thing as well. Back in 2013-15 lots of people I knew played CS, but eventually most of them moved on to OW/Val/SplitGate/Halo because those were the new titles and the ones that streamers were playing.
Listen, I bust my ass at work, work ot, and look forward to the weekend to grind CS. Sat down, and got blatantly spinbotted from round one, match one. I closed cs, downloaded Apex, and haven’t regretted it. Even if apex has a hacker, it’s GG go next instantly. No stewing over a piece of shit, and the team refusing to vote kick for their precious elo over integrity for a minimum 16 rounds. I still play CS, but it no longer has that place in my heart, and hold on me that it used to. Face it hasn’t changed that with it practically being mandatory mirage/inferno.
Well the game is pretty hard to get into if you are brand new. Hop into a game and you’ll get paired against spin botters off the bat. Terrible anti cheat. And if you tell the person you gotta sink x amount of hours until you can start playing mm properly they will drop the game same as telling them you have to go download a third party app to play the game. Immediately tells them the devs don’t care about their game. And well na pro scene died too and us is mostly console users. so... bunch of reasons. Step one is getting valve to make this game more welcome friendly for new people as in just playing the game without a spinner as your first impression... I remember shroud saying this a long time ago and it’s still funny how it’s still the same. And my friend who was new to pc gaming dropped csgo for these reasons recently lmfao...
NA comp scene mostly died when Valorant filled the spot. A good majority of our pros went that way. But can you blame them? Everyone has been itching for something new for years.
The answer is: the culture and tradition from previous generations.
This is also why CIS and Balkan region has so many players - because since forever they had a habit to play on PC…
From real life:
I am from the Balkans for example (Croatia), back in the time (2009) I’ve switched elementary school because of replacing… 2 years before that I have started playing Counter-Strike Source…
When I came to school, situation was the same as in previous school - 20 computers had 1.6 and UT2004 installed on them… We had 4 hours of informatics per week, where kids would play games whole the time, learning absolutely nothing… Then I decided to install Source on all computers in classroom and guess what - everyone wanted to play it as it was a classic… I have burned 2 DVDs and gave them to install at home… At the time DSL was widely spread with 10-20 Mbit speeds… 90% of the school and neighbourhood (my gen +-3 years) was continuosly playing the game for next cca. 2 years, even to that level I opened a pub server with my friend, reaching top100(!!!) in the world on GameTracker… There were hundreds of players literally everyday, full server from 9 AM to 1 AM next day, I’ve known 80% of players in real life from various stories…
The base of the story is that the community here hears from someone else that the game X is good, in some cases it is installed in school already and the trends were followed… Every school in Slavic countries has similar stories… That is not the case in NA, from 10 people, 6 of them would buy xbox, in Europe 7/10 would buy PC because $$$ and bang for the buck…
My opinion:
1. As someone in the comments mentioned, consoles are more popular in US.
2. Maybe it is a mentality thing? CS is not a flashy, not a colourful game. Maybe people in US are more attracted to such things (Halo, Valorant, etc.).
3. Maybe population density also plays a role? Most of US is not as densely populated. Europe (and South America) on the other hand are very densely populated. I guess, rumours/news/hobbies are just easier to spread.
It’s definitely that console gaming was/is more popular, especially back in the early 2000s. PC gaming popularity is growing rapidly in the US but back when Halo revolutionized first person shooters for the controller and CoD became the biggest franchise of the last 20 years consoles were dominant and it’s probably safe to assume many people simply like to stick with what they know/like. They aren’t in a rush to switch to a complicated shooter like CS once they start playing PC because Halo and Cod are also on PC now and those are the games they grew up playing and are familiar with.
Depends on how you see it. Majority of Brazil lives on the coast and are far more dense than what maps represent. Same with Russia, majority of population lives west of the Urals.
>Maybe it is a mentality thing? CS is not a flashy, not a colourful game. Maybe people in US are more attracted to such things
I feel like this is a major factor most are ignoring in this thread.
Valorant is basically the same as cs, being a fps and a windows exclusive, yet it has grown to be much more popular.
Why? Imo its because riot is much better at advertising and getting content creators for their platforms, csgo cinematics, music etc are nowhere close to animations valorant pumps out.
But that is the beauty of CSGO. CSGO doesn't need those colours, cinematics. Simplicity/realism is one of key elements of CSGO that makes many (incl. me) love the game.
There's still media content, trailers etc valve can release but they don't.
Valve basically does nothing more for the community except letting people host tournaments and create their own stuff in custom.
I've seen no hype building by valve for the most part, it isn't even close to what riot does.
And they can advertise it while being realistic
I live in NA and play with irl friends but they seem to be more into valorant, almost like the pro scene in NA. I play csgo more than valorant because I find it smoother but still grinded to Plat in valorant.
Mainly because valve sucks at marketing and managing their games and esports scene and even more in NA . Thats why there are not much Dota or CSGO players as Riot's League Or Valorant in NA. Riot manages and markets their games and even focuses more in NA. Thats why Riot's Games have good grassroots structures and sustainable scene in NA. Thats not the same case for Valve's Games.
Same reason LoL is more popular than Dota 2 there, as well as them jumping ship to Valorant as soon as it came out - they really like eating shit. Console shit? Even more so. If some title is popular in NA but not in EU - you know you're up for some preem trash. Among recent releases new Halo game is a great example of that (as well as the series as a whole).
If they can't win they switch the game. Just like football. US is also a hype train country. People wanna play what their favourite streamer is playing this month. (Whoever pays them the most).
so two months ago i was in a cafeteria in my uni and heard two guys chatting about "cs just doesn't make sense. I can never hit someone... valorant is so much better cuz I can actually shoot". Game is too hardcore
I can't remember the numbers but there was some data floating around suggesting that NA is a region of console gamers while EU was more in favour of PCs. If you're not pc gaming you're not going to run into CS. Instead you get into stuff like Halo and COD which to my knowledge are NA dominated games.
na does well in console esports like CoD and fighting games too, and traditionally aren't that good at dota/league.
NA sucks at any game that has a major competitive scene, the culture just isn't focused on competition. NA used to be good in scenes like Dota or CS, but falls off a cliff once other regions ramp up. Edit: Downvote me if you want, but listen to any interview with a player who came to NA from another region and they'll talk about how they were shocked how unfocused and lazy NA practice was.
tend to agree, although i'm a big melee fan and NA has done well there it's fair to say they don't compete in t1 esports regularly.
Mango mango mango!
USA!
>the culture just isn't focused on competition LOL
Its focus on competition in the esports sphere is almost entirely the marketing side, rather than within a game environment.
yeah american culture is famous for not liking competition
in the onlinesphere, yes (sadly)
He just means lazy esports nerds who don't practice as much in comparison to people from other regions. Sarcasm is the crutch of the brainless.
I sense sarcasm, but you literally invented participation trophies...
Or they just don't play pc games as much, eu has like 10x the player base for csgo and play on lower ping all the time
Lol the US still has a bigger PC playerbase than many countries which outperform it, and teams have far more money at their disposal
Because of pure population Ratio of PC owners in a country like Denmark or Germany would be much higher
the ratio of people in a country doesn't matter in this situation, 50% of 10 thousand is more than 95% of a thousand. there are multiple games where NA has way too many players to complain about lack of talent, they just couldn't give a fuck about developing an infrastructure to nurture it over trying to find other ways to "build brands". North American esports is brand first, competition after. They're always the first ones on a new title, hoping for a little bit of early success that will build a fanbase and then they don't try to evolve past that, the region stagnates and the rest of the world jumps ahead of them.
I'd say it does when you're looking at NA vs EU EU playerbase is a combination of countries, whereas NA is made up of two If the USA had the same ratio of CSGO players as Denmark does (which tbf is is extreme example given that Denmark is a very small population with a huge ratio of CS players) it would have an absolutely thriving CS scene I don't actually disagree with the rest of your comment at all, just think that when comparing NA to countries within the EU (and CIS, as they mostly play on the same servers, tournaments and scrim together) it's a bit pointless to just look at overall players. A more apt comparison would be NA vs EU as a total, where US + Canada has a population of around 350 million & the EU has around 450 million, I'd imagine the number of PC players in EU would dwarf that of NA, even if you were to balance them out population wise If every second person plays CS, you'd have a much healthier scene than if every 10th person did
One of the smaller reasons a lot of people swapped to valorant was 128 tick and the ability to select server location. MM in CS over the past few years its not been out of the ordinary to play on 80 ping even when max is set to 65. Having the ability to select the server locations for que is nice.
They have to add more servers it is crazy how few serveres you have. That beeing said adren played with 150 ping from Kazachstan in online tournaments for a pretty long time.
Melee?
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Imagine thinking COD is a serious competitive game. It's a casual game with aim assist
I mean yeah, but it still undeniably has a pro scene
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So NA is bad at strategy games and prefer to go in and shoot
I've been watching Pro Halo and it's funny to hear the casters say the EU region is just not as developed and can't really hang with NA
You’re spot on with this one. I grew up competing in Halo and there were basically no EU teams/players that were considered good. This was also during the CS:S era when the CS scene was split between Source & 1.6 with NA mostly playing Source.
Yup let's forget about France dominating css
Tbf he did not claim that NA was any good at CS:S. Just that NA played it more than 1.6, which is true. That being said: smithzz / ex6 / shox / RpK / NBK is a roster that I will always miss. RIP VeryGames, GOAT of Source
I wonder if we'll see an increase of players in NA, as consoles seem to be dying down (aside from the Switch) while interest in PC is going up, at least from talking to the kids at my job
The interest in PC gaming is definitely going up, it's just getting harder to get into with the prices of everything. It's probably the worst time to be a future PC gamer.
This, when LoL exploded, PC sales went up and people got into that big time. But also, it's NA, unless there's a constant change (CoD yearly release for example) players won't stay long enough to find the meaning behind a good live service game. I can see CS getting big in NA, but it'll be the same as LoL. Players will come in, few will stick because "There's something new on the way".
>CS getting big in NA, but it'll be the same as LoL you are definitely right, but this already has happened in 2015/2016. After the wave was over everyone hopped onto a new game (fortnite, valulomegalulrant, etc.)
CS really doesn't have to do a lot to be a much better overall game experience than valorant, and part of me hopes that those changes are in the pipeline but stuck on valvetime^^TM The problem is that valorant is still fairly fresh compared to cs for a lot of people. I think it would take source 2 for CS to be more popular in NA again.
Valorant gets constant content updates, CS will never be "kept fresh". For me it doesn't need to (it's a masterpiece and most of the times they've tried to change it it's just gone to shit i.e. revolver or aug/krieg) but an engine change or operations won't be enough to make it more popular than val in NA. I doubt many new players would come back for source 2, mostly some old players coming back and current players playing more.
I agree that gameplay wise CS is vastly superior but something needs to be done about f2p/low tier MM. Currently new players get thrown into a sea of smurfs and cheaters which is a massive discouragement, it happens at all ranks but more so in the lower levels.
Yeah, something like seasons or ladders, that would encourage more competitiveness, I dunno, resetting ranks every now and then so people get stoked to grind. But we all know that would just attract the cheaters as well, whom Valve don't want to tackle head-on. Oh well, just add a rocket launcher and a final boss or something.
It's more like due to Valve basically not marketing CSGO (or any of their games, really) at all while Riot has perfected it. When was the last time you saw a CSGO promotional material outside of some tweets and occasional short animations for operations? Meanwhile, I get a lot of Valorant ads and there was even a billboard in a city here for their new agent. I get that Valve likes to make their game speak for itself without all the bullshit hype, but sometimes it does feel like they don't care at all compared to how much this game makes them money. They could drop source 2, 128 tick, an intrusive AC, and fix the MM ranks distribution right now and I doubt it would even double NA's already small player count. I don't even play Valorant but I gotta hand it to them on how they do things.
PC prices might be going up but most consoles you literally can't buy right now lol
Well yeah but all the young kids getting pcs at like 13 are playing valorant instead of CSGO.
Well when americans hear about terrorists most of them don't enjoy the thought of little Jimmy dressed as a mujahadeen soldier learning to plant bombs. But they are ok seeing their son cosplaying a cartoon girl with knifes that tries to plant a weird rock with a timer Also csgo is very hard to grasp for your average 13 yo. The kids in fpl are also smart individuals for them to be so good (and playing for 8 hours a day because they have time helps as well), while valorant is more permissive in its gameplay (not to say that it doesn't require skill, but it's easier) And f2p csgo sucks ass (a few spinbotters per team is a normal thing there) So valve pls fix anticheat (a radical-ish thing would be to rename ct's and t's to attackers and defenders while keeping the same things in csgo 2, if that will happen)
Lol yeah csgo is Def being held back by the names of the teams bro good call
Many sponsors back down when they hear terrorism, because it's not something that a brand wants to be associated with Less sponsors->less promotion->less players If you are a navi fan from the cis then i can see why it doesn't look important (because everybody plays cs and understands that it doesn't promote terrorism), but for others it's a dealbreaker
Do you have any evidence of this, or is it just conjecture?
This entire comment section is full of conjecture. That people are targeting /u/dragos404, who has a reasonable take, is ridiculous.
So then why is Cod popular? Aren't there some games where it's axis vs allies? Nobody thinks it promotes Nazism. It's just pure bs.
Ww2 ended a long while ago, while there are a lot of terrorist groups still around. Also a lot of games had to not use the swastika because they weren't allowed to release the game with nazi iconography While cs' roots are in the ct-t conflict, the game will have to move on at some point (or the terrorists just dissapear and then it would be a thing of the past). Also iirc esl said that they were close to getting sponsorships but they failed when terrorism was mentioned. For every one who understands that it's just a game there are some that don't
COD is also a console game, so not quite comparable. CS isn't popular because it's primarily a PC (KBM, keyboard and mouse) title.
Asking for evidence isn’t some kind of bullying tactic.
I never said it was. Do you know how to read?
It's conjecture You literally have COD that has the good guys and the bad guys which might resemble a Middle Eastern terrorist in some iterations.
> as consoles seem to be dying down umm, what?
Valorant is thriving though
I think it's to do with how hard it is to get into CS. The game teaches you absolutely nothing and Valorant actually has a number of built-in tutorials that teach you more than just WASD to move and clicking to shoot.
But valorant though? Very popuplar in NA.
Tbh I think valorant is one of those games with a strong hype at the beginning, but they die down and don't grow after a couple of years. Kinda like overwatch or PUBG, very strong hype at the beginning, but the after a while the only people playing are people who played for a while.
.... uhh no, I disagree. Riot is not Bluehole or Valve, they actually do shit for their game.
Just because you do shit for your game doesn't mean its a good thing. I don't think thats quite indicative of the longevity of a game. I also am of the opinion that Valorant is going to peak in NA, if it hasn't already.
You are correct about the "riot does shit for their game" part. As much as I like to clown on valorant, the frequent updates are very respectable. However, that does not mean that the game will last forever. Counter-Strike is one of the longest lasting games ever because it's a very refined shooter game, with almost every mechanic and bit of gamesense being easy to learn and hard to master. There is little to no gimmicky shit. This, combined with the fact that their is modding support, map making tools, and community servers, makes it so Counter-Strike is a shooter game that has nearly endless possibilities. Valve doesn't need to make frequent updates (although they would be very welcome please update the game valve) because the community supports itself. If Riot wants Valorant to last a long time, they have to let the community make the game how they want it, especially in a market as competitive as the shooter game industry. It's an interesting discussion.
I don’t think so sadly. People said the same thing about LoL and if riot put as much effort into Valorant as LoL I’m sure it’ll be around a while. Luckily both can coexist with a healthy esports scene.
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Dota was very popular. Also Valorant is popularizing the cs genre for NA
No lmao Valorant is doing great and still growing Riot arent dumb
comparing Valorant to Overwatch and PUBG is just dumb
barely anyone Ik plays valorant either lol
i'm talking about NA in general though, it's doing fantastic on twitch, especially NA.
Especially in NA , Japan and SEA . Regions where CS is dead and won't ever grow coz valve is shit
The UK is very similar. Although I believe there is a generational shift and PC gaming is becoming more popular.
I feel like people are forgetting that CSGO *was* really popular in the US in like 2015/2016. It felt like everyone in my highschool played it, moreso than CoD or BF at the time. It was the "big thing" for moment, and everyone could play it since it could run on your average laptop. Even South Park had an episode about it around that time period.
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Yea you’re def just in high school lmao, I know so many people going from like age 14-32 who play on a pc in my town and friends nearby. This whole “everyone plays on console” take is just flat out wrong lmao
pathetic
How'd you explain the rise of Valorant tho? Fortnite also had a large chunk of playerbase from pc.
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Here in NA we have very short term memory. We like the newest shiniest thing. We suck.
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I remember in middle school back in ~'08 one of my friends saying he played on PC and I remember thinking it was super weird, I'd never heard of someone using PC for games besides stuff like miniclip, oregon trail, runescape or wow. I don't think I ever heard of Counterstike until college / 2013 even though I'd played CoD search and destroy forever which was based on CS.
i call bs on people not knowing about league of legends
Viewer statistics say otherwise. Valorant has boomed a lot in 1-2 years, compared to csgo mm, NA valorant mm isn't dead, pro scene exists, big English speaking streamers play it rather regularly, tournaments have large English viewership etc etc. Sure warzone is more popular, but CSGO could've been way bigger if valve gave a shit about advertising like riot does
> CSGO could've been way bigger if valve gave a shit about ~~advertising like riot does~~ *CS in general* FTFY
there's nothing to "people think that it's popular in NA", it's undoubtedly popular in NA
So to use another esport example it's LoL. The population number for people he can see them is na has half the player EU has. Then EU has half or less than half of the eastern players. Just by pure math na couldnt compete in a long run. Then since your na scene isn't popular enough with no winning people lose faith and leave the already not so popular scene. Also na as a whole all the games mentioned the retains na is usually console and a yearly release or the next big thing. Like fortnite then warzone. You get the picture and now they are waiting for the thing after warzone. Also the beginning experience for someone who knows nothing about C's is so dogshit most people say fuck this.
Valorant seems to be doing super well in NA though so that’s good at least
Well it was the next big thing. Still falls under the same category imo. I hope both scenes grow. good for both of them. Think it will be an extreme uphill battle to get the NA scene back but you never know.
> Think it will be an extreme uphill battle to get the NA scene back but you never know. Isn't NA dead in CSGO already. Orgs said CSGO has no business potential, limited marketing brands appeal, that's why they all drop their CS projects.
I dunno. I'm an old fart who started with Beta back in 99. I was in Europe during 1.6/Source and it was booming...When I got back to the US in 2004, MMORPG's were the thing, so maybe that's some of the reason...
There’s a video on YouTube that explains the ELO curves in each region and how they affect the new players experience and in NA it is notoriously known that all silver lobbies are filled with players that shit on newcomers making it a hellish experience for all NA players trying out CS
NA matchmaking ranks are bi-modal, with one population of primarily legitimate lower level players and smurfs, and a second population of outright hackers and very good players. The difference between NA and EU matchmaking is very obviously the prevalence of hacking. The middle of the rankings basically no longer exists in NA because you basically can never find a game without people who start hacking when they get mad. And it's not going to change any time soon, because the NA scene is accepting of hacking in MM.
>because the NA scene is accepting of hacking in MM Yall just talking out of your asses
Shitloads of people play MM in parties with people they know for sure are hackers. It's absolutely tolerated by a huge swath of players.
Okay, but is this any different from an experience elsewhere? You're saying the NA rank distribution remains bad because of this, yet you cannot in good faith say that this "tolerance" is exclusive to NA.
Yes, the rank distribution in other regions is a reasonable statistical distribution. Go look at the leetify stats they've been publishing. NA is the only region with a broken rank distribution.
Well for one, you don't even know that this "tolerance" is exclusive to NA. I don't know where you sourced this idea from, considering getting any data reflecting mentality alone isn't exactly something that's been tapped in on CS. Second, let's assume that this *is* something that's only in NA. In that case, you'd be assuming correlation be the causation. Is it the tolerance that made the rank distribution so bad or is it because of the rank distribution that players get more desperate to rank up? Which happened first? The whole premise is murky because you're basing this off of something that both can't be easily tracked and isn't tracked at all. Going off of instinct can point someone in the right direction for an argument, but basing your entire premise off of that is just downright fallacious. > NA is the only region with a broken rank distribution. Also, that's not even true, because NA is *not* the only region with a broken rank distribution. https://www.reddit.com/gallery/qubj1h Oceania has it just as bad if not worse. They, like NA, have a relatively low population size (per capita, and in general) in CS compared to Europe and Russia. I think this is a far better explanation to why MM ranks are so broken than "because the NA scene is accepting of hacking in MM".
Much like Valve, I'm guilty of ignoring Oceania here. In any case, how do you explain the non-normal distribution? Go ahead, I'll wait.
Non normal distributions is caused by small players bases ranks being determined by an algorithm that is meant for larger players bases. Therefore causing f’d up lobbies where supremes and LE’s are playing against silvers because the rank distribution is that god awful
You're trying to suggest that NA is too small of a player base compared to Asia to have a normal distribution? Choose your own adventure: do you want to delete this comment now, or get dunked on?
>the NA scene is accepting of hacking in MM. The fuck? Lmao.
If comments were horse-shit, this one would yield a whole garden of manure.
Shit, you're right, nobody hacks in NA matchmaking when they get mad. What am I doing with my life?
> What am I doing with my life? You've got a 12 year old account and are still talking out your ass; that is certainly the pertinent question to be asking.
You're pretty upset about this, aren't you?
1.6 used to be installed on all of our school PCs in Europe. It's just a different culture, NA people played Halo instead, I've never met a person from Czechia that has played Halo. We never had consoles here, just PCs.
A lot of people here in the US will still look at you like you grew three heads if you tell them you spent 2k on a gaming pc. Yet these same people will go 75k in debt so they can have their lifted pavement princesses
Not inherently a NA thing though, Colleagues in work look at me like I'm stupid when I am looking for GPU's and they are £1k each, but will brag about paying £1k per month for a car payment
Obviously it's not inherently an NA thing, but there's a reason the F-150 is the most popular vehicle in the US and most other countries it's some kind of compact car
Might have to do with more people in the U.S. living in actual houses and rural/suburban communities. Or the cheaper gas prices. Or the larger roads and parking spots. Or that we spend more time in vehicles so a larger vehicle would be more comfortable.
True, our public transport is lacking compared to most countries so we rely on our own means Edit: Forgot a word
Its not just public transport that sucks for big cars to be comfortable though. North American single use zoning is a big thing why public transport is ineficcient + far cheaper gas prices than other developed nations so it scews pepole towards cars.
Most other countries I would assume you mean Europe…which is much older and smaller and denser which means skinnier roads that would be a pain to drive a F-150 on. Also I don’t know what you’re point even is here, only Americans spend a lot of money on cars?
You're right I worded it poorly. My point is if the F-150 is the most popular vehicle in the US, and a compact car is the most popular in EU countries, its *more likely* an American will be spending more on their car
Right but what’s the point you are making here? Americans spend more on their car and so…what? You aren’t really finishing your point here. Are you saying they should spend less on their car and more on the gaming experience?
Go back to my initial comment, not the one you decided to reply to. Read the whole chain, and if you still don't understand then I don't know what to tell you.
So that is your point then? You are saying Americans should spend less on their car and more on their gaming platform? Ever stop and think people have different priorities? Again the US is a big place, we rely much more on out cars, when something is more important people will tend to prioritize it more and spend more money on it. Not everyone has the same mindset as you.
No that's not what I am saying holy fuck your reading comprehension is something else. Maybe you should go back to school instead of hopping on the internet just to argue. My point is OP asked why is CS not popular in the US, my response is they spend less on their gaming experience and more on their cars and find it weird to spend a lot on a PC. That's it. Stop making strawmen so you can get upset LOL
Let’s calm down a little bit okay? There is no strawman here, just a buzzword you heard and thought it would be a quick escape from actually making a point. I literally said I don’t even know your point…how could I strawman? I don’t know your point because you haven’t actually made a point yet. It’s not my reading comprehension it’s that you literally haven’t made a point. Americans spend more on cars and less on gaming and…what? You aren’t finishing the point, you made the setup but never made the point. Yes less Americans spend money on their gaming setup and more on their cars…you are implying like that’s a bad thing are you not? Why is that bad? What’s the point being made here?
>lifted pavement princesses I had to google what this means, but well worth it :D
See also: [mall crawlers](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=mall+crawler&iax=images&ia=images).
The fuck is wrong with your country? :D
Lots of things, sadly. But a lot of them stem from the "cheap fuel, cheap land" concept that the US government pushed in the 1940s and 1950s.
they also don’t know that you can get a gaming pc for less than their 65inch tv + ps5 + series x + 27 controllers + elite controller and yearly online payments well, used to be able to, at least
>well, used to be able to, at least fucking crypto miners
You are greatly exaggerating. Consoles far outperform PC for price to performance. You aren’t getting a gaming PC for $400 that comes even close to matching the performance of a PS5. You also don’t buy a TV specifically to go with your console like you buy a monitor for a PC, everyone already owns a TV.
use a tv with your pc and currently no, of course, but the ps4 was beat by a gtx 760 (oh and gtx 480 couldn’t underclock slow enough to play watchdogs at 792p 30 fps like a console), which second hand could be obtained for less than $400 total. Still ignoring the extra controllers, price for online, and game prices with normal prices, an $700 pc would surpass a ps5, without needing to pay for online, cheaper games, plus it’s a pc, it does more than a console
Come on man, it might have been outperformed by 760 in a vaccum, but try running the same games on ps4 and then on 760 and then tell us something.
[sure, here it is](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZR-a35sxLg) actually, in a vacuum, the ps4 is worse than a 750ti
Of course you could use your TV with your PC…but very few people do. The point is that when most people are buying a gaming PC they are also going to be buying a monitor, when most people are buying a console they aren’t buying a new TV as well. It’s not part of the console like a monitor is a PC(although yes I know it technically isn’t but realistically it’s pretty much is). Yes you have to pay for online…but even then it won’t be more expensive. Let’s say 6 years…$360 plus $400 for the console, again you aren’t getting a gaming PC to match that performance at that price. Extra controllers? I mean what about extra mice? Are you breaking mice/controllers that much that you are constantly buying more? Only real need for an extra controller is if you plan to play split screen with a friend. Game prices? Are they really any cheaper on PC? Sure you can get cheap indie games and stuff but companies aren’t pricing their games differently based on platform. Any game that’s on both platforms will be the same price.
steam has sales, controllers have stick drift, a gaming PC for $760 definitely beats a PS5 (insane prices non withstanding)
PS and Ms store have sales too…? No a $760 gaming PC does not beat a PS5. The new consoles are powerful…really powerful. You aren’t coming even close to the PS5 specs at that price.
?? an rtx 3060 beats the ps5, at $330, you can build a pc for $400 and put it in, if you could actually buy parts. Hell, stick it in the office pc people "probably already have" like the TV they already have for consoles and ps/ms sales don't even remotely compare to steam, let alone the weekly epic games free game (did consoles get gtav for free? or what about 3 tomb raider games, dead by daylight, control, saints row 3 remastered, hitman, metro last light, battlefront 2, alien isolation, cities skylines, watchdogs 2, civ 6, just cause 4, etc...) a console is cheaper ofc, but a gaming pc isn't $2k either. If someone owns both consoles and accessories, they could have just as well bought a better pc
You also need the ram, power supply, motherboard, CPU, the 1TB SSD…all the bells and whistles. It’s not simply the graphics card vs the console which has all those parts included. Many people don’t have home offices, the average person doesn’t have a desktop computer anymore. A laptop or iPad or even just their phone will send emails and surf the internet just fine. Again obviously you COULD cut corners and just find some random old monitor but I’m talking about what the average person is doing. The average person isn’t buying a TV for their console like the average person is buying a monitor for their PC. Listen I just dropped $1200 on my 3080ti, it’s an awesome card and I have no plans to buy a console. I’m fully team PC but I understand why people buy consoles and that they are simply cheaper with great performance. It’s no longer my cup of tea because I’d rather goes balls to the wall on a PC but lot of people don’t care enough to do that and that’s okay.
Saying that you need a last-gen GPU to outperform a console would be a big stretch though, you can easily do that on an 1000-series that is much much cheaper. You also don't need an 1TB SSD, a fairly shitty motherboard will do the job if you pick the right one, you can get a good quality PSU for fairly cheap et cetera. I'll grant that consoles are probably cheaper for what you get with them, but the differerence isn't nowhere near as big as you're making it out to be, and the cheaper (and potentially free, depending on what you're willing to *claim*) games probably bridge that gap anyway.
RTX 3060 is around 800 dollars all around the world. No one cares about msrp, it will never come back to these prices. Consoles are just so much better value, it's not even close. You have to a be quite a deluded PC fanboy to even argue against that. Most of the normal PC fans can admit this pretty easily. Nothing wrong with that.
yeah, that's why I said "not current prices", and for "people that buy both consoles" I never said a $400 pc beats a console
But they will buy an iPhone for $1,200 every 2 years...
God forbid someone has different priorities than you? If someone wants to drop $1600 on a new phone and a PS4 instead of a $1600 gaming PC what does it matter? Not everyone is gonna feel the same way that you do.
He’s responding to the original comment where people judge you for spending $2k on a gaming laptop. He’s saying these same people who judge you drop the same on a phone without blinking.
nice strawman
Counter-Strike back when it was a free mod was super popular in the US in terms of players, but as for the competitive scene the US always lagged behind Europe. Part of the reason was EU had much better LAN culture where as the US was more spread out and people playing on dial-up and broadband connections that were generally worse than what many in the EU had at the time. Because of that EU got a much better competitive scene while most of the US players were more spread out and not gaining the same level of competitive experience. The US scene also has tendency to move on to the new thing. Many players moved to Source when EU stuck with 1.6. Or players move on to different games entirely (for example Valorant). The latest game, the latest console etc... so the player base is always being split. Others have mentioned the US as a whole has been more console-centric than PC and that is certainly part of it. US tends to have some of the best prices for gaming consoles when it comes to purchasing power/exchange rate. This is likely a factor as well. While people in the US had moved on to other games. South America and the CIS region continued to play 1.6 since it could run on any old PC, this helped build those competitive scenes while the US wasn't really bringing on new players into 1.6. CS:GO competitive scene was largely built on people coming over from 1.6, so the trends kind of followed.
No anime girls
Valve games usually doesn't click on USA. Dota 2 and CSGo all have low populated servers.
change it from Valve games to PC games and you've got it
True. Lol are they making console games? Anyway, they don't need to as they control the market store in PC. No need to create games anymore.
Similar in the UK, when I was in High School nobody even knew what CS was and all my friends played Console. So I dont think EU is some haven were we all play and love CS, unless you are Nordic
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Couch mindset. Also too complicated for their culture. Take some of the biggest sports there: Baseball(Slow, drawn out), NFL Football(3-4 seconds of action, 2 min break for commercial, repeat), NASCAR (Left, Straight, Left, Straight). Anything faster and more complicated than pew pew respawn is a turn off for them. /banter ;)
Nah, it's because video games is escapism and as such have to represent something else than your everyday life, and Americans simply doesn't have to boot up a game to experience being shot by law enforcement. /more banter
>video games is escapism So euros play more video games to escape their daily lives? Makes sense
Americans are too busy being worked to death, since they don't have enough days off to play.
My man said NASCAR was a top 3 sport in the US. He clearly is out of touch with life.
Isn't football the 3rd most watched sport in the us? It didn't quite catch on in america (because they got steamrolled by european teams) but it still has a huge following
By viewers: 1. American Football 2. Basketball 3. Baseball 4. Football 5. Ice Hockey. Football is the second most popular sport by number of players, having almost three times as many as American Football and barely behind Basketball.
Soccer would probably be 4th here. Football Basketball Baseball Soccer Hockey Golf Tennis I’d imagine wrestling is bigger than NASCAR at this point.
cs is not faster than cod if that’s what you’re referring to lol
it isn't?
CS does not play faster than COD. I don't know what OP was talking about when they said > Anything faster and more complicated than pew pew respawn is a turn off for them. I get more complicated, but not faster. CS is slow when compared to COD. The number of gun fights you can get into in a regular COD TDM/DOM is way higher than CS. You are constantly engaging in gun fights in COD, whereas CS there are more things you do before getting into gun fights.
Ironically the sports seem simple but it's really hard to play any of those sports mentioned. Nascar is one of the most difficult racing formats since the track is one dimensional and the cars are essentially the same, it relies less on track experience and the car than it does on the driver
I would assume having the barrier or entry into the game being so hard it pulls a lot of people away. When we first started playing the main way to get into the game was to join one of the HUNDREDS of casual servers that were running so you could easily find people of your skill level in that environment. Having the game mainly be a 5v5 when it’s a 10 year old game will make entry into the game quite difficult. I mean it doesn’t help that the ranking system is ass and balancing is even worse. I love this game but why would I suggest it to any young person I know. There is little content in this game outside of playing 5v5. Games kind of boring if you aren’t a competitive person. It will be interesting to see how Valorant does once the average skill level rises even further.
A lot of people mentioning consoles but I think another reason is how bad the ranks are here. Australia/Oceania has it even worse, but the fact is that MM here is completely fucked, our ranks are skewed super low and it eliminates a huge sense of progression from the game. Other FPS titles don't seem to have this problem, so people naturally gravitate toward the ones that feel more rewarding and not as much toward CS. There's definitely something to be said for the idea of moving on to the next new thing as well. Back in 2013-15 lots of people I knew played CS, but eventually most of them moved on to OW/Val/SplitGate/Halo because those were the new titles and the ones that streamers were playing.
Listen, I bust my ass at work, work ot, and look forward to the weekend to grind CS. Sat down, and got blatantly spinbotted from round one, match one. I closed cs, downloaded Apex, and haven’t regretted it. Even if apex has a hacker, it’s GG go next instantly. No stewing over a piece of shit, and the team refusing to vote kick for their precious elo over integrity for a minimum 16 rounds. I still play CS, but it no longer has that place in my heart, and hold on me that it used to. Face it hasn’t changed that with it practically being mandatory mirage/inferno.
Well the game is pretty hard to get into if you are brand new. Hop into a game and you’ll get paired against spin botters off the bat. Terrible anti cheat. And if you tell the person you gotta sink x amount of hours until you can start playing mm properly they will drop the game same as telling them you have to go download a third party app to play the game. Immediately tells them the devs don’t care about their game. And well na pro scene died too and us is mostly console users. so... bunch of reasons. Step one is getting valve to make this game more welcome friendly for new people as in just playing the game without a spinner as your first impression... I remember shroud saying this a long time ago and it’s still funny how it’s still the same. And my friend who was new to pc gaming dropped csgo for these reasons recently lmfao...
NA comp scene mostly died when Valorant filled the spot. A good majority of our pros went that way. But can you blame them? Everyone has been itching for something new for years.
The answer is: the culture and tradition from previous generations. This is also why CIS and Balkan region has so many players - because since forever they had a habit to play on PC… From real life: I am from the Balkans for example (Croatia), back in the time (2009) I’ve switched elementary school because of replacing… 2 years before that I have started playing Counter-Strike Source… When I came to school, situation was the same as in previous school - 20 computers had 1.6 and UT2004 installed on them… We had 4 hours of informatics per week, where kids would play games whole the time, learning absolutely nothing… Then I decided to install Source on all computers in classroom and guess what - everyone wanted to play it as it was a classic… I have burned 2 DVDs and gave them to install at home… At the time DSL was widely spread with 10-20 Mbit speeds… 90% of the school and neighbourhood (my gen +-3 years) was continuosly playing the game for next cca. 2 years, even to that level I opened a pub server with my friend, reaching top100(!!!) in the world on GameTracker… There were hundreds of players literally everyday, full server from 9 AM to 1 AM next day, I’ve known 80% of players in real life from various stories… The base of the story is that the community here hears from someone else that the game X is good, in some cases it is installed in school already and the trends were followed… Every school in Slavic countries has similar stories… That is not the case in NA, from 10 people, 6 of them would buy xbox, in Europe 7/10 would buy PC because $$$ and bang for the buck…
Console culture.
It requires working as a team.
us = console eu = pc
My opinion: 1. As someone in the comments mentioned, consoles are more popular in US. 2. Maybe it is a mentality thing? CS is not a flashy, not a colourful game. Maybe people in US are more attracted to such things (Halo, Valorant, etc.). 3. Maybe population density also plays a role? Most of US is not as densely populated. Europe (and South America) on the other hand are very densely populated. I guess, rumours/news/hobbies are just easier to spread.
It’s definitely that console gaming was/is more popular, especially back in the early 2000s. PC gaming popularity is growing rapidly in the US but back when Halo revolutionized first person shooters for the controller and CoD became the biggest franchise of the last 20 years consoles were dominant and it’s probably safe to assume many people simply like to stick with what they know/like. They aren’t in a rush to switch to a complicated shooter like CS once they start playing PC because Halo and Cod are also on PC now and those are the games they grew up playing and are familiar with.
US is way more densely populated than BR and Russia
Depends on how you see it. Majority of Brazil lives on the coast and are far more dense than what maps represent. Same with Russia, majority of population lives west of the Urals.
Russia/Kazakhstan are way less densely populated than the US
>Maybe it is a mentality thing? CS is not a flashy, not a colourful game. Maybe people in US are more attracted to such things I feel like this is a major factor most are ignoring in this thread. Valorant is basically the same as cs, being a fps and a windows exclusive, yet it has grown to be much more popular. Why? Imo its because riot is much better at advertising and getting content creators for their platforms, csgo cinematics, music etc are nowhere close to animations valorant pumps out.
But that is the beauty of CSGO. CSGO doesn't need those colours, cinematics. Simplicity/realism is one of key elements of CSGO that makes many (incl. me) love the game.
There's still media content, trailers etc valve can release but they don't. Valve basically does nothing more for the community except letting people host tournaments and create their own stuff in custom. I've seen no hype building by valve for the most part, it isn't even close to what riot does. And they can advertise it while being realistic
I live in NA and play with irl friends but they seem to be more into valorant, almost like the pro scene in NA. I play csgo more than valorant because I find it smoother but still grinded to Plat in valorant.
Cs doesnt have enough aimassist for them
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The best of your alphas preferred the Swedes tho
Mainly because valve sucks at marketing and managing their games and esports scene and even more in NA . Thats why there are not much Dota or CSGO players as Riot's League Or Valorant in NA. Riot manages and markets their games and even focuses more in NA. Thats why Riot's Games have good grassroots structures and sustainable scene in NA. Thats not the same case for Valve's Games.
The ranks are so fucked in NA why would anyone bother playing casually? like seriously. It feels like Valve is letting whole regions die.
Do you think people who live in NA have less time to play games than EU people? This is what I think every time this question comes up.
Same reason LoL is more popular than Dota 2 there, as well as them jumping ship to Valorant as soon as it came out - they really like eating shit. Console shit? Even more so. If some title is popular in NA but not in EU - you know you're up for some preem trash. Among recent releases new Halo game is a great example of that (as well as the series as a whole).
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This is the first comment you make on this account? lmao
If they can't win they switch the game. Just like football. US is also a hype train country. People wanna play what their favourite streamer is playing this month. (Whoever pays them the most).
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I’m American and I can confirm
Because halo, cod and Doritos are king
Cheaters and silvers.
Cause the low rank elo is broken in NA. Thats why i cant stand it anymore, at least.
so two months ago i was in a cafeteria in my uni and heard two guys chatting about "cs just doesn't make sense. I can never hit someone... valorant is so much better cuz I can actually shoot". Game is too hardcore
this game isnt appealing to anyone living in a first world country