PC Generated 442% More Revenue Than Consoles In 2016

Megalith

Megalith

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According to SuperData Research, PC gaming earned $35.8 billion this year in comparison to consoles, which “only” made $6.6 billion. The biggest winner is mobile, however, which generated nearly $40 billion in revenue.

We now know just how well the PC gaming did this year, generating a massive $35.8 billion in 2016 - which according to SuperData's analysis of the interactive entertainment world, was "driven largely by free-to-play online titles and downloadable games". SuperData noted that games like League of Legends and even my favorite, Overwatch, "drive enthusiasm". They also noted that PC gamers recognized a "big improvement with the release of a new generation of graphics cards, offering a 40% increase in graphics power and a 20% reduction of power consumption" - thanks to AMD's release of the Radeon RX 400 series, and NVIDIA's popular GeForce GTX 10 series of graphics cards.
 
There is money in the PC, but there is more competition for it. To make money, you have to make better titles if you are not sitting on some cash printing franchise.
 
Interesting. I think I recall a story in this forum sometime this year that had put mobile slightly ahead of PC gaming and consoles were not too distant in 3rd. These numbers have mobile well head of PC and consoles in the dust. Also some of these categories look like they overlap.
 
This is why nearly all games are coming to PC now, console companies can't pay the developers enough to offset the loss in sales for going console exclusive.
 
I don't think any gamer ever decided to buy games because of the power consumption of the GPUs. And 40% increase in performance compared to what? The R480 certainly didn't bring in that much. It's debatable if it even brought any kind of performance jump.

Progress in graphics performance is not a new thing. Seems very weird to cite that as a reason for an increase in game sales.
 
Gorankar said:
There is money in the PC, but there is more competition for it. To make money, you have to make better titles if you are not sitting on some cash printing franchise.
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From the report, over $20 billion of the $36 billion total comes from free to play titles, and that was mostly generated in Asia. The revenue generators are the things PC gamers hate: subscriptions, micro transactions and DLC. Outside of that, the rest of the PC gaming segment isn't much bigger than consoles.
 
pxc said:
From the report, over $20 billion of the $36 billion total comes from free to play titles, and that was mostly generated in Asia. The revenue generators are the things PC gamers hate: subscriptions, micro transactions and DLC. Outside of that, the rest of the PC gaming segment isn't much bigger than consoles.
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This is what scares me though. You have people who take statistics like this out of context, and then immediately complain about subscriptions and micro transactions as being the problem while AAA games @ $10 are the savior of the industry. The market is changing, and we're part of the problem.
 
Largely driven by free to play games, sadly. Meaning Facebook titles and the like. When it comes to big AAA games like Battlefield, Dishonored and the like consoles get more sales. Just take the Witcher 3, a series and developer primarily on PC before the release of that title. Only The Witcher 2 made a crappy and very late port to the 360 prior. And 70% of sales for that title were on consoles. PC does have some good niche games that sell decently, like RTS, flight and other racing sims. ArmA, if you can count that as a sim. But all these games don't pull in the sales that an FPS/TPS/RPG do.
 
It's a case of of do you want 35.8 miles per gallon vs 6.6 miles per gallon. The math is simple.
 
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>Gaming Exec Mode:

Looking at these numbers, we should definitely be building for the mobile platform and then porting to the PC/console.

This makes the most sense.

/End


I wouldn't put much stock in the mobile numbers, those are driven by addiction psychology (gaming elements designed to trigger a dopamine response) and greed. They do everything possible to disconnect the "real cost" of the next level from the actual cost, so people don't even realize the bill they're running up nor the true cost of the entire game.
 
One way or another it's good news for PC Gaming. It's alive and well.

I do remember 10 years ago. We were all sweating because Intel was talking like they were going to fully integrate CPUs onto motherboards for all desktops and overclocking was going to be gone.

Well, that didn't happen. Still could, but I think Intel has just rediscovered for the n'th time that their core desktop CPU market continues to be the thing that drives the next wave in the computer boom. If you don't have discreet part systems where you can see your core component shine you can't create buzz for it. You also can't optimize it as a stand alone product.

Anyway, hooray for the current PC renaissance.
 
Ehh
Gaming on PC was never even close to dead
Or hardware sales for gaming rigs

What was dead, or still is, is OEM computers for work
You're typical run of the mill Dell and HP

Simple really
No reason to upgrade for writing emails and letters
Core 2 duo still good enough for that
If anything one would need to plug in more ram into those and maybe the cheapest SSD one can find

Also a whole truck load of corporate software runs only on old windows versions
XP would be new for some of those

One can hardly go anywhere without running into shiny stuff for gamers


Edit:
Also by normal corporate standards
PC gaming made a 5 billion dollar loss
Since mobile gaming is the "benchmark" :rolleyes:
 
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STrAYeR said:
It's a case of of do you want 35.8 miles per gallon vs 6.6 miles per gallon. The math is simple.
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Not really, a vast majority of the pic gaming rev is from social f2p games, just like mobile.

You morons are eating this stuff up though. Lol.
 
Verge said:
Not really, a vast majority of the pic gaming rev is from social f2p games, just like mobile.

You morons are eating this stuff up though. Lol.
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Yeah, what exactly is the big deal here? Intel nearly sells as many consumer CPUs as PS1 and PS2 lifetime combined in a year. The installed base difference is so huge it would be a real mystery when PC doesn't beat consoles on an absolute basis in gaming revenue.
 
Semantics said:
Single player AAA games yes, Free to play hunting for whale players who spend 3 grand on the game games that are hosted on servers elsewhere are thriving.
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Then it's a good thing noone told that to AAA game developers who invest more and more money into each AAA title.

Just because a new market opened doesn't mean the old one gets completely abandoned. There are more end more vegans around the world too, that doesn't mean meat businesses die.
 
I think it's not that AAA game developers are paying attention to the PC market, but consoles are so close to PCs now that it doesn't require much cost to transition to the PC. I mean, who creates their own game from scratch anymore? Now, everyone seems to use one of a few engines. Sure, there are differences between an Xbox One and PC, but it's not nearly the same as a PS2 vs a PC.
 
"They also noted that PC gamers recognized a "big improvement with the release of a new generation of graphics cards, offering a 40% increase in graphics power and a 20% reduction of power consumption" - thanks to AMD's release of the Radeon RX 400 series, and NVIDIA's popular GeForce GTX 10 series of graphics cards."

My own testing showed only a 30% improvement between a GTX780 and a GTX1070. Back in the day I could expexct close to a 100% improvement when I made a vid card upgrade. Same with CPUs, but now you will see maybe a 5% improvement with a new CPU. Not good enough, IMO.
 
rezerekted said:
"They also noted that PC gamers recognized a "big improvement with the release of a new generation of graphics cards, offering a 40% increase in graphics power and a 20% reduction of power consumption" - thanks to AMD's release of the Radeon RX 400 series, and NVIDIA's popular GeForce GTX 10 series of graphics cards."

My own testing showed only a 30% improvement between a GTX780 and a GTX1070. Back in the day I could expexct close to a 100% improvement when I made a vid card upgrade. Same with CPUs, but now you will see maybe a 5% improvement with a new CPU. Not good enough, IMO.
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What games are you testing, exactly? I'm seeing a lot of 100%+ jumps between the cards you're describing, and that's not even comparing a 770 to 1070 or a 780 to a 1080, which would be the fairer comparison point.

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M76 said:
Then it's a good thing noone told that to AAA game developers who invest more and more money into each AAA title.

Just because a new market opened doesn't mean the old one gets completely abandoned. There are more end more vegans around the world too, that doesn't mean meat businesses die.
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It wont die but don't look forward to many timely releases of single player AAA games on PC, maybe 6months-2 years after release on consoles sloppy port for a quick money grab. But what used to be the rule is now the exception, single player games made for PC to start will pretty much be left to "indie" sub 30 dollar titles, not saying those games are bad just the resurgence of stylized pixel games making a come back because cost of visuals for smaller games. Most indie games are funded by large publishers now of days anyways.
 
All it takes though is for a few games to prove that freemium can be more profitable in the west, and not just mainly in China. A decade ago, there are threads, even in [H] where people were laughing at how DLC will never take off. Who wants to pay for maps? This will split the community! Etc. Some of them might have been right as far as what would happen, but the result is people have come to accept DLC as the norm, and mod friendly developer as worship worthy. I'm not sure how it will happen, but it will happen. Change is coming, and it's only a matter of time before AAA games are pay 2 win.
 
tetris42 said:
What games are you testing, exactly? I'm seeing a lot of 100%+ jumps between the cards you're describing, and that's not even comparing a 770 to 1070 or a 780 to a 1080, which would be the fairer comparison point.
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I tested with a built in benchmark in Far Cry Primal and also ran a FPS counter when playing BF3 and BF4. But I have now used DDU to clean out all Nvidia files and installed latest drivers and saw a good fame rate increase so that may be why.
 
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