Analyst: PC Has Surpassed Console in Terms of Revenue

[Kontar]

This doesn't surprise me at all. I have been a PC gamer for years, and 90% or so of my entire game library exists on Green man gaming, or Steam, I have obviously embraced the superiority of the PC as a gaming platform. Although I do have to argue for the console market, the only consoles I own are the PS2, and the Gamecube.

But I am sad the see gaming consoles go through this slow dieing we seem to be seeing. I have always felt the reason PC games are so great is because they have directly competed with the amazing games on the consoles, or been ports of the good console games (yes some have been terrible, but we mod them as PC owners, thus the advantage of the PC). PC games that were worth anything always had to prove they were a better. FPS had to prove they were better than anything consoles could furbish (TF2, ARMA). They had to show that the RTS genre wasn't dead when the console manufacturers claimed they were, such as the Total War franchise, Starcraft 2 etc. The PC market showed that the MMO was a viable and amazing market, for better or for worse, and they showed that the F2P model could be adopted by millions and make a shit ton of cash (LoL, DOTA2, Planetside 2, etc).

In short I think the PC has seen a revitalization of sorts in the past few years as well due to the indie gaming scene, there are a ton of indie games worth mentioning that are just amazing, but I don't want to spam you with a list of games. I feel the consoles are going through a crisis of conscious. They're fighting over whether they should be about gaming, or movie streaming, or facebooking, or sharing info, or whatever. I don't think consoles will ever leave, but I think they'll have to focus their energy back to gaming to make profits, I feel this generation will teach Sony and Microsoft, and probably Nintendo they can't rest on their laurels and they need to think about the "gamer" as their main audience, instead of thinking they can sell to "everyone" and make a buck.

*Disclaimer if this thread makes no sense it's because it's midnight on a Friday and I am drunk*

 

[RandV80]

When EVER has a console been a (gaming) necessity!?

Well there was a period there before Valve came out with Steam when PC was getting ignored the hell out of in favour of console gaming and was really on the ropes for awhile.

No it wasn't, the games were still being made and sold and there were still just as many players. The issue was advertising for the consoles and the console games was being heavily pushed. Not just the advertising from the publishers but from game reviewers.

PC gaming was never really in danger of 'dying' but I'd say there was a lot more to it than what you're saying, and I think it's worth pointing out that a lot of it was instigated by Microsoft. I grew up playing consoles, then after getting out of high school got my first gaming PC in '99. My local Gamespot had plenty of shelving space for PC, both new and used games, and typically console games were made by Japanese developers and PC games were made by North American/European developers.

That's how it was my first few years of PC gaming, but with the launch of the Xbox MS started a migration of Western developers to console gaming to the point where last gen Western developers were the dominant force on console. From that period of around 99-2005 a good number of PC game developers also either went under (Interplay comes to mind) or got bought up by increasingly console focused publishers like EA.

At the same time, retail space for PC games started shrinking. By around 2005-06 I could no longer buy used PC games at Gamestop, and by 2010 the shelving space was all but gone. Personal annecdote but what converted me to Steam was when Empire:Total War was released and I couldn't find it anywhere in retail.

PC gaming still had a few strong lifelines from 2000-2010, but it really was losing to console until Valve, indy developers, and kickstarter brought it back to the forefront.

Not really related here, but I find it kind of ironic now that I'm posting this from a browser in Linux which I just installed specifically because of gaming. My windows 7 version is 32 bit. Wanted to get back into Minecraft and join a Feed The Beast mod pack server but it won't run on a 32-bit OS.Looking further into the future Galactic Civ III and Star Citizen will require 64 bit OS's, but they're also getting released for Linux. Looks like I won't be needing to spend money on a new Windows any time soon!

 

[Something Amyss]

I would offer an analogy to the whole PC/console war...

PCs are Timelords and Consoles are Daleks. Everytime the Daleks come out with a newer, stronger model, the Timelords regenerate in to something newer, better and stronger.

Hopefully we can get a madman in a box to come along and wipe both sides out, because the war is absurd.

Although that's been messed with, but I can still hope!

 

[Something Amyss]

*looks at his Steam library of 228 games and countless disks around the desk*
*looks back at the PS3 with 5 games on disks and seven digital*

Why am I not surprised?

Because you're weighing yourself as normal and assuming the outcome will be in line?

Well, it happened to work here.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Hopefully we can get a madman in a box to come along and wipe both sides out, because the war is absurd.

You mean like Gabe and the Steambox?

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Yeah, and guess what? Pretty soon PC will be getting Haswell-E 8-core processors, DDR4 RAM and GDDR6 GPUs. PC is going to be hilariously overpowered when compared to the mighty next-gen consoles.

captcha: what for

For The Witcher 3 and Star Citizen of course!

 

[Rodolphe Kourkenko]

What a change ! For several consoles gens, the PC was dead (each time) but not for this one.
As a PC player since the 90's, at the very beginning i made this choice only from a financial point of view (the games prices on consoles vs pc). Now i'm cool with this choice, i can upgrade, do retro gaming, don't have to pay a sub for multiplayer and so on.
It's my choice of course but i will never go back to consoles, a more expensive system with too much restrictions for my taste.

 

[newwiseman]

Last console game I bought was Dragon's Dogma, it was good but would be so much better on PC...

 

[Vault101]

PC gaming has become relatively easy lately and more and more affordable whereas the consoles are doing everything they can to make life hard on people. .

PC vs Console aside I think this pretty much sums up the entire thing

the advantages a console had over a PC have been eroding away last gen and this gen

 

[Raziel]

i made a thread about the average money spent by players in some of the most popular F2P games

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.846989-Study-rounds-up-top-ten-of-average-revenue-per-user-in-F2P-games-WoT-first-LoL-last?

now i have no idea how may untold millions play LoL, but multiply that number by 1.32 and you can get an idea of how much money Riot has made, just last year

That doesn't seem right. Only $1.32 per player? Yeah lol has like 58.5 million players but thats not much money. Even if it were a 100 million players thats only $132 million? GTA5 made a BILLION BEFORE it came out on pc!

This is why I want to know how and what people are counting. Another sight says the gaming industry in 2012 was worth $68 billion a year and that the pc section was 18.6 billion in 2011. That sites info is exactly the opposite of this article.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_industry

Frankly I find all the reports hard to believe. I doubt anyone really knows.

*looks at his Steam library of 228 games and countless disks around the desk*
*looks back at the PS3 with 5 games on disks and seven digital*

Why am I not surprised?

I'm curious, how much have you spent on steam games? 228 is a lot of games. But if you bought most of them on steam sales it could be surprisingly little revenue.

Personally I have like 30 steam games or so but its all humble bundle and sales. It would surprise me if it totaled more than like $60. And about 5 of them have ever been played. I own 3 recent disk pc games for about $110 more.

Where as I own between 80-100 last gen console disks and several more digital I bought, plus all the ps+ ones I get with a subscription. 90% or more I've played and beat. Most were bought new at release so I paid a few thousand for them.

I know steam makes a lot of money. But I want to know is whether pc gamers actually PAY enough money to support AAA development? If pc truly does kill of the consoles I'm worried that might be the end of AAA games.



I wonder if the end of net neutrality and comcast merger will change the whole situation. When merged comcast/time warner will have like 78% of the US customer base. Charging higher prices for internet speed and capping usage could heavily impact digital sales. Especially as next gen games are already 37 gigs + patches that are gigs too. And they are just going to get bigger.

 

[veloper]

Silly analyst.

Consoles have always been a luxury, even if a console is cheap.
PCs, not game PCs (though the difference is only a $100+ graphics card), have been necessity for many people for over a decade.

The only thing that's changed is that PC gaming has become less of a hassle over time and consoles have become more of a hassle.

 

[Raziel]

Silly analyst.

Consoles have always been a luxury, even if a console is cheap.
PCs, not game PCs (though the difference is only a $100+ graphics card), have been necessity for many people for over a decade.

The only thing that's changed is that PC gaming has become less of a hassle over time and consoles have become more of a hassle.

Whats the hassle on the consoles thats not on pc?

 

[FalloutJack]

I would offer an analogy to the whole PC/console war...

PCs are Timelords and Consoles are Daleks. Everytime the Daleks come out with a newer, stronger model, the Timelords regenerate in to something newer, better and stronger.

Bad analogy, as precisely ONE Timelord is a match for the Daleks and nearly every other one would have died without his help.

OT: Given the nature of business and entertainment, I call 'Analyst missing the point entirely'.

 

[veloper]

Silly analyst.

Consoles have always been a luxury, even if a console is cheap.
PCs, not game PCs (though the difference is only a $100+ graphics card), have been necessity for many people for over a decade.

The only thing that's changed is that PC gaming has become less of a hassle over time and consoles have become more of a hassle.

Whats the hassle on the consoles thats not on pc?

Nothing, unless it's typing game activation codes is easier on a PC keyboard.
What I was saying is that there's inconveniences in current consoles that weren't there in older console generations. Meanwhile, all the different boot configurations, IRQ conflicts, etc. on the old PC are a thing of the past. The only little challenge still left is knowing what rig to buy where.

 

[Evonisia]

Oh how this will make the more err "vocal" PC gamers smile with glee. I'm just going to sit here and hope that more posts which are laden with liquid smug get produced, if only for a quick chuckle.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Well there was a period there before Valve came out with Steam when PC was getting ignored the hell out of in favour of console gaming and was really on the ropes for awhile.

That's an odd assertion to make, the years leading up to Steam and the couple after brought us the Battlefield series, Far Cry, STALKER, FEAR, Unreal2 (and the various UT games), Call of Duty, Enemy Territory, Planetside, World of Warcraft and a bunch of other stuff all released exclusively for PC.

The whole business of PC gaming getting ignored became egregious around 2007-8 when the console brigade were finally getting properly on board with online play and the major publishers were declaring PC releases surplus to requirements, even then other people filled the gap (or more specifically Valve drove a giant bulldozer through it with the Orange Box and Blizzard hit unprecedented sub numbers for WoW).

PC gaming has never been 'on the ropes' in my lifetime, the loud voices declaring it's death (or ill health) usually have an agenda that can be read as sell more games consoles by spreading FUD.

 

[Vault101]

I know steam makes a lot of money. But I want to know is whether pc gamers actually PAY enough money to support AAA development?

being the sucker I am I got Titanfall on launch...there were plenty of other players..others paying full a lunch day price

if people reeeeaally want a game theres a good chance they'll buy it on launch (hype aside games being good helps too) not EVERY gamer waits for a steam sale..in fact maybe steams sales help because they pay [i/]something[/i] for a game they might not have otherwise bought at all (but thats just pure speculation on my part)


[quote/] If pc truly does kill of the consoles I'm worried that might be the end of AAA games.[/quote]

1. that depends on what you define as AAA

2. would that really be such a bad thing? I mean don't get me wrong, games like Bioshock Infinie are the epitome of mainstream games....but thats the problem, games on the level of Bioshock infinite or [insert whatever big budget game you like here] are becoming less and less in place of ANOTHER Assasins creed game, Another COD, Another franchise like Dead Space going from a unique and cool Idea to [i/]needs more multiplayer! kids love multiplayer! no one plays single player....oh how do I know that? well I just decided it was a thing... [/i] and another Watch Dgos which looks cool but then I watch the trailer [i/] argle bargle angry white man MUH DAUGHTER! revenge![/i] and I just think...uuuggghhh


[quote/]I wonder if the end of net neutrality and comcast merger will change the whole situation. When merged comcast/time warner will have like 78% of the US customer base. Charging higher prices for internet speed and capping usage could heavily impact digital sales. Especially as next gen games are already 37 gigs + patches that are gigs too. And they are just going to get bigger.[/quote]

thats an interesting point..being in Australia I was plauged by bad internet which made PC gaming downright impossible, I can't even fathom what it was like before I was able to get unlimited (it sucked..like reeeeaaally sucked) if people all of a sudden had to deal with that I would nod and say "yeah....it sucks I know...welcome to crappy world"

 

[Something Amyss]

Hopefully we can get a madman in a box to come along and wipe both sides out, because the war is absurd.

You mean like Gabe and the Steambox?

That would be the equivalent of The Master winning the Time War.

But sure. Let's go with that, I guess.

 

[Nimzabaat]

Anybody else sad because this basically states that micro-transactions and monthly payments are keeping PC strong? Do we still hate micro-transactions and monthly payments if that's the only edge over consoles? I have mixed feelings about that.

One other thought... With the number of games on PC vs the number of games on consoles... Even if it's only a 10:1 ratio (and i'm sure it's much, much higher), this still kind of means that console gamers are the more desirable demographic.

 

[Steven Bogos]

Anybody else sad because this basically states that micro-transactions and monthly payments are keeping PC strong? Do we still hate micro-transactions and monthly payments if that's the only edge over consoles? I have mixed feelings about that.

One other thought... With the number of games on PC vs the number of games on consoles... Even if it's only a 10:1 ratio (and i'm sure it's much, much higher), this still kind of means that console gamers are the more desirable demographic.

Don't jump on the "hate bandwagon" herd mentality. Just because some games do micro-transactions and monthly payments badly, does not mean that they all do them badly. In fact, most of the games specifically mentioned in the article - DoTA 2, League of Legends, World of Warcraft - make very good, admirable use of these systems.