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NEWS

Study Claims PC Market is the Largest

Rob Crossley's picture

By Rob Crossley

November 19, 2008

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This year the PC gaming market is worth over $20 billion, that figure will rise to $34 billion before 2012, and since 2005 there has been more gaming PCs shipped than the Wii, PS3 and 360 combined.

This is the conclusion of a study from research group JPR. In the group’s latest report – called The PC Gaming Market – JPR calculates that there are three classes of PC gaming machines and together, from Q3 2005 until Q3 2008, 196 million of these units were shipped. The study also estimated by comparison that 74.7m PS3s, Wiis and 360s have been shipped worldwide.

The research, however, does not include sales of Nintendo DS units nor PSPs, which together have sold around 125m units worldwide. Nevertheless, due in part to the mushrooming Asian market, the study believes that “the PC gaming market is bigger, worth more money, growing faster, and has better technology than the console market.”

Part of the study can be found at www.jonpeddie.com. The full report can be purchased at this link.

Picture courtesy of Alienware.

Updated link--ed.

that badwofl's picture
On November 23rd that badwofl said:

personally i think the number is slightly off, i think alot of people by gaming pcs for the looks and others because they go with the most expensive is better theory, i would be curious what the pc game sale numbers are. also do they count freecell as a game? :) i know the sims is still popular though.

rkalla's picture
On November 20th rkalla said:

There is a war being waged over who controls the future of entertainment - that includes gaming, TV, movies, music, etc. That is why there have been such differing reports of "PC Gaming is dead" and "PC Gaming is huge!" over the years; it depends what aspects you are looking at.

PC gaming in the most general sense (including Bejewled, Grand Theft Auto, Frogger, Desktop Tower Defense, etc.) is collectively bigger than anything out there. The mobile gaming market is just starting to find it's feet, so for the time being PC gaming is huge. When you take a look at Triple-A titles, console gaming trumps it.

Now the important part... when you look at profit margins, profit potential and digital products for sale: consoles stomp all over PC gaming.

This is where the confusion comes from, console vendors control the sole channels of distribution for those platforms, they get paid for content to go in the channel and paid for content getting sold (going out) of the channel - not too shabby. They provide mechanisms to sell products that historically would have been boxed (full games or movies) as well as products that wouldn't otherwise exist (new clothing for your avatar). The profit potential for console-controlled publishing channels is huge, both for the vendors and the publishers. The PC entertainment market cannot offer this same story to these people which is one reason they want it to die and helps explain why some big publishers are trimming back their PC game publications... there is still money to be made, but at the same time they want to help the overall effort of trending people towards vendor locked-in console model of entertainment purchases.

SwiftRanger's picture
On November 20th SwiftRanger said:

Euh, any middle-man must be cut out and consoles still have that first party there preventing for normal publishers to reap the biggest benefits, the extra licensing cost also pumps up the retail price for no good reason as 'Quality Seals' aren't what they used to be. The channels you speak of are just as easy to reproduce on PC, hell, that's where they came from in the first place and any publisher is free to put a service on his own on that free platform, it's only in the implementation of it that things can go awfully wrong (see EA Store for example).

Seriously, with a right approach the PC is more or just as profitable than a console business where the biggest money always goes to just the same three companies who pump their cash in marketing the hell out of everything...

imding's picture
On November 20th imding said:

your average £400 - £600 PCs are not gaming PCs. just to give an example, gaming PCs need dedicated graphics accelerator, non-gaming PCs don't. those things cost more money...

I assume you must've never owned or seen a gaming PC to suggest that the difference bewteen gaming PCs and non-gaming PCs are vague.

NickgamertagO1's picture
On November 19th NickgamertagO1 said:

What constitutes a "gaming" PC? That's very vague, and the difference is these PCs may have the ability to play games, but at what level? Any PC can be considered a gaming PC. And also, a gaming PC also has all the features a PC has. Its not JUST for gaming. You can say that "gaming" cell phones outsold home consoles last year. PCs, even gaming ones, aren't JUST for gaming, just like cell phones with gaming abilities (note: all of them) aren't JUST for gaming either. You can throw out statistics and make them sound the way you want them to all day, doesn't really mean too much to me.

SwiftRanger's picture
On November 19th SwiftRanger said:

Read the original article on their site, where they give more numbers and descriptions of the average PC gamer. I've never heard of them but if even half of their numbers work out then that still makes the PC just as viable as a gaming platform (in the broadest sense possible) as any console or handheld, something that the console companies probably don't want you to hear. Their article does sound awfully defensive though but that's not such a bad thing if we're talking about PC.

But maybe the biggest mistake JonPeddie are making is putting up the PC against consoles(with or without handhelds), it shouldn't be like that. Keep platforms seperate because even when the PC hasn't got a real parent company, it shouldn't be regarded as a bastard son (it's a special child though ;) ), not by analysts, NPD or gamers.