Although it is often perceived that gaming on PC is a pastime for a wealthy few, the truth is that PC gaming is way more popular than most people realize, with exclusive games like Civilization VI and the likes of DOTA 2 thriving on the platform.
Of course, most video game fans still opt for consoles, handhelds or mobiles for their gaming fix, but it’s clear that the PC has become increasingly popular over the years, and it can even be argued that the good old PC might even have a chance of ruling the video game market in the future.
Actually, a new report by Jon Peddie Research (JPR for short) shows that PC gaming is not only alive and well, but also that PC gaming hardware sales made a new record last year surpassing the $30 billion US dollars mark, as reported on PC Gamer. Most of this money was spent on high-end gaming equipment (which includes luxury items such as Acer’s recently announced Predator laptop), followed by the medium and low-end of the market spectrum.
Regarding this report, JPR’s Senior Game Industry Analyst Ted Pollak said that “the desktop ergonomic is popular because the display distance offers increased detail when using HD and UHD monitors” and that “there is superior control with mouse and keyboard control interfaces. This has been validated with eSports overwhelmingly being played on PCs”.
Pollak is definitely right about visual performance, as superior graphics fidelity has been touted by PC enthusiasts as one of the main advantages of the platform, but it is questionable whether mouse and keyboard controls truly offer a better gaming experience than gamepads do though.
Also discussing this report, JPR’s president Jon Peddie mentioned AMD’s upcoming batch of processors, saying that “we are also very excited about the prospects for the AMD Ryzen CPU platform and think it will be adopted at all three hardware tiers”. But Peddie also added that “Intel CPUs currently offer superior power and value for gamers of every budget level, and their integrated graphics now rival game consoles”. Although his last point about Intel’s integrated graphics being comparable to new-gen consoles is somewhat questionable, though…
But still, this report certainly proves that despite naysayers arguing on more than one occasion that PC gaming is dead and that consoles are the way of the future, it appears that the PC platform is actually going through some pretty exciting times, with initiatives such as Microsoft’s “Play Anywhere” having made gaming on PC a more attractive proposition these days, meaning the PC market is likely to keep growing well into the future.