PC gaming blows console gaming away

PC gaming hardware is worth more than double the value of the console gaming market – currently sitting at $21.5 billion (±R231 billion).

According to Jon Peddie Research’s (JPR) PC Gaming Hardware Market report, “personal computers, upgrades, and peripherals used for gaming were continuing to remain strong and healthy” despite a decline in the general PC market.

Ted Pollak, senior gaming analyst at JPR, said while casual users were moving across to mobile devices, PC gamers were actually investing more in high-end machines.

“We continue to see a shift in casual console customers moving to mobile,” said Pollak. “While this is also occurring in the lower-end PC gaming world, more money is being directed to mid and high-range builds and upgrades by gamers,” said Pollak.

“Committed PC gamers are generally not interested in pure content consumption platforms. They are power users and pay thousands for the ability to play games at very high settings.”

According to JPR, the current $21.5 billion PC gaming hardware market is set to reach a total value of $23.2 billion by 2017.

Jon Peddie, president of JPR, said improvements in gaming PC components would keep the market alive, while consoles struggled to keep up.

“Nvidia, Intel, and AMD have enthusiast CPUs and GPUs that are so powerful that, when combined with SSDs and fast memory, they absolutely trounce the computing power and gaming capabilities of the newest console generation,” he said.

“Being able to drive 3840×2160 (4K) is already a reality for the highest end configurations and the mass market is now able to push 2560×1440. PC gamers with good displays are able to enjoy millions and millions of pixels more than console gamers get on HDTVs. This translates into being able to see more and an overall better gaming experience.”