Cleverthinks research company Jon Peddie Research have put together a report on the state of the PC hardware market, and it’s looking good. Peddie says: “From Q3 2005 till Q3 2008, 196 million gaming PCs shipped, and 10 million of them were in the Mainstream Enthusiast class—and if we include mainstream desktop and High-end high-end notebook, we could add another 187 million units—now that really is a lot.”
The Techwatch article (currently on the front page of the Peddie site) seems astonished at the rude health of the PC gaming industry compared to the fledgling consoles. In fact it gets a little sarcastic about the HDTV fanfare from console types: “Thankfully HD TVs are sneaking into the living room bringing 720p and, in some cases, 1080i capability. Imagine, 720p almost as good as 1024 x 768—old XGA resolution introduced by IBM in 1988—wow.”
Peddie sums it up: “Fact is the PC Gaming Market is bigger, worth more money, growing faster, and has better technology than the console market. How come no one but us seems to know that?”
It does seem to be worldwide: take a look at Peddie’s press release schedule. They are tracking most of the major manufacturers.
because on pc we have serius games (sorta… still a game)like il2 sturmovik, arma, lomac etc we have real complex games and also we have acces to old games and more flexibility on upgrade our harware.
Counter-Strike came out Xbox.
…on Xbox, I mean.
Man… I love the titlebar thing for RPS now.
Can’t see anything of substance on their figures on the site, there’s not even a direct link from that page to the relevant research. But even assuming it’s true then surely there are some major issues if the PC gaming market has an installed base of 196m since 2005, when compared to numbers for even the best selling PC games?
According to the HL2 wiki “As of July 14, 2006, the Half-Life franchise has sold 16 million units.” Presumably cross-platform and including both games. As of May 2007 Steam had “over 13m accounts”. WoW has over 10 million subscriptions. WoW and Steam combined don’t account for even 12% of the supposed gaming hardware market.
HL2 is still selling just like sims, starcraft, wow, guild wars even today
One problem with PC gaming is Microsoft’s divided interest in this. It reminds me of Sony’s problems in recent years. As a hardware company, it was in their interest to produce audio equipment that people will buy. However, as a music publishing company, it was not in their interest to produce audio equipment that enabled the playing of freely downloaded MP3s. Hence they produces players using a proprietary format that no-one except the bosses of their music division, and which they eventually ditched in 2007.
It’s in Microsoft’s interest to sell loads of copies of Windows, and therefore in their interest that people buy lots of PCs. However, it’s is more in their interest that people buy lots of XBoxs. Hence their completely lukewarm attiude to Gaming for Windows and their complete and utter poochscrew when it came to Vista. Xbox is the favourite child, and PC will get the scraps from the table.
P.
PS: I would love to see a short bullet-pointed list of tangible things that Kevin Unangst has done since his appointment. I don’t mean this sarcastically, I’m honestly curious.
I am amused that his bio says “A technology lover and gamer at heart, Unangst’s first computer was a Timex Sinclair ZX-81, and he has owned nearly two dozen gaming consoles, beginning with the Atari 2600″, but doesn’t mention owning a gaming PC.
I installed Fallout 3 last night to find it does indeed connect up to Games for Windows and allows you to have achievements and all that jazz. Cool stuff, but we should have had this for Oblivion 2 years ago. Also, Microsoft really need to start talking properly to Valve; surely it can’t be beyond their capabilities to make certain elements of Steam and GfW cross-compatible; say, achievements and the like.
P.
@Paul: A Microsoft exec in Germany, I think, publicly said that the company intentionally releases games for the 360 first so that people are encouraged to buy the console. Said exec went on to say that simultaneous game releases favor the PC, especially in markets, such as continental Europe, where PC gaming is still very strong.
@RichPowers: You got a source article for that? I’d be interested in reading it if you have a link.
Whilst I’m not so certain that simultaneous releases favour the PC in general (although IIRC, out of the two million Bioshock sold, half was on the PC), It’s been pretty evident for a while now that companies have been delaying PC releases with the impression that it helps sales. Although that’s always been chalked up to the fear of piracy so far, so there’s been no actual quantifiable evidence on that front. The fear of it is enough to drive that policy.
It’s one of the reasons that Bionic Commando’s getting a delayed release on the PC. Which is a shame, since I’m really interested in that game.
I dimly remember that, but I think it might have been their reasoning not for delays, but for Halo Wars – making an RTS exclusively for the 360 to make us bastard, stubborn German PC gamers who dare to prefer PC versions finally give in. :p
The wording was rather annoying.
Unless I am mixing two stories into one here.
@subedii
Here ya go: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/microsoft-game-studios-europe-part-2
Where did you get an abacus? I want one.
found it now:
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=164253
Hot damn, cyrenic!
/shakes fist :)
Between 2005 and 2008, only 10 million “enthusiast” class games machines were sold. This figure is something that really needs to be kept in mind more often.
Well between 2005 and 2008, about 75 million consoles sold, looking at wikipedia pages for PS3, XBOX 360, and Wii. That’s a hell of alot more than 10 million enthusiast machines.
Yes there will always be alot more PCs so there will always be a bigger potential market, especially if you target lower end machines. But what’s with the console hate in here? I like my consoles. Good lord people!
Umm… you do of course know that most enthusiasts don’t actually buy their PCs but rather build them? And that such self-built machines do not fall into the “sold” statistic?
Moreover, I am willing to bet that enthusiast-class PCs that are built and sold by small shops and not by the likes of Dell, are not actually accounted for as well.
Sooo then, how many console players build their own Wiis?
The point wasn’t that people are building consoles, it’s that they know exactly the number of people that game on them. With PCs, you know alot of people have machines capable of playing games but do not know if they actually do game.
“lukewarm attitude to Gaming for Windows” – on the contrary, Microsoft’s stand has been to deliberately shrink wrap and standardize PC games into a format that makes them compatible for the 360. Lukewarm best describes what PC games are turning into as a result.
Look at it this way; if you’re well off enough to buy a $300 console then you’re well off enough to buy a computer. And you need a computer, everyone needs a computer today. So whats stopping you from spending an extra $300 on a computer with decent graphics card, processor and memory?
A console on the other hand is completely worthless to you by itself. And before you can put it to use for games or the interned you have to pay for everything. And thats their business model. Sell them the foundation then make them pay piecemeal for the rest. It comes to more $ spent and a lot of people don’t realize that. Because these corporate mofos are twats with their little money-grubbing hearts and their little money-grubbing thoughts.
@ ph0tik: I’m not sure if you’re misunderstanding me, but I need to be clear here: I was saying that developers need to keep this hardware base in mind, largely because it’s such a small figure compared to the large numbers of PC’s shipped. I said as much in the rest of my post beyond that snippet you quoted. There’s no point in building games purely for the ultra-high end and then complaining when the userbase doesn’t exist to even support the 5 million units you wanted your game to ship. There’s plenty of additional “enthusiast” level PC’s out there than what’s counted here, but there’s no real way to quantify the amount.
This however also has the effect that the PC market is not particularly well suited as the “lead” platform towards the mainstream high-budget blockbuster titles. At least in comparison to the consoles. This varies with the standard console cycle but until things get sorted out on a few fronts, it’s an intractable problem for the time being. I’d argue that PC hardware issues rest somewhere near the top of that list of issues.
I actually agree with you subedii, I didn’t mean to quote you, I meant to quot the 10 million from the summary. My bad and no edit feature =(
Blessed be the W the S the A and the D.
Ah-meh’n
That report was just dripping with blind fandom LOL.
I’d love to know how he calculated PC gamer systems being sold, I’m assuming he took whatever systems passed for gaming duties even if they were not sold as such and lumped them altogether to paint a rosy picture.
The fact of the matter is those systems wont be used for PC gaming & certainly a portion of those that do wont necessarily be for what old school PC gamers like to play (Sims, web based games etc).
The PC can no longer leverage a technical edge either like he tries to proclaim as the platform has dug itself into a hole with costs into the stratosphere so the base platform any developer with a brain is going to aim for are the 360/PS3. Also and this is a big one NOT EVERYONE CARES ABOUT THE LATEST EYE CANDY THEY JUST WANT TO ENJOY GAMES.
The last few remaining studios that appealed to the graphics whores threw in the towel Crytek, Epic, iD etc now focus on the consoles.
Even Nvidia owned up to the fact that PC gaming generally only shifts up to about 0.5 – 1.2m units in a report trying to sell hype on physics. I saw the sales data for the GTA series on the PC for North America (IGN of all places sorry can find the link) but none of the past PC GTA games has managed to break 500k individually in sales, the biggest game franchise out there cant even do that over the past few years when times were supposed to have been better for the PC.
I was and like to think still am a fan of PC gaming but my head is definitely not stuck in the sand pretending everythings just fine.
Costs for creating and marketing for games are too high (e.g. that so-so action game from Midway Stranglehold cost $40 million to make) and the old school PC games market is getting squeezed by consoles that have evolved into quasi PC’s with most of the features minus most of the drawbacks for consumers/developers and on the other side you have things like WoW or free to play titles.
The situation is only going to get worse when the next console generation has 3d/motion mouse like interfaces (similar to Wii Motion Plus) which means the few remaining genres on the PC that need a mouse will be doable on the consoles.
Is this all doom and gloom no call me crazy but I think there is a silver lining and I would like to see the graphics/tech nerd faction for which Jon Peddie peddles their reports excised from PC gaming and it stop being about the latest shader model and that even shock 2D games become acceptable again but the PC enthusiast scene has its claws deep into PC gaming and nothing less than the complete abandonment of the platform by major publishers will shake them loose. With the decline in PC game sales though that just might happen & give way to smaller publishers were it gets back to games not graphics like Stardock.
Nvidia PC game sales expectations link;
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20081028234106_Nvidia_Expects_Improved_Physics_Effects_to_Dramatically_Popularize_Video_Games_on_PC.html
We know it, Jim… We know it…
I saw the sales data for the GTA series on the PC for North America (IGN of all places sorry can find the link) but none of the past PC GTA games has managed to break 500k individually in sales
Surely not? I can’t honestly believe that.
“How come no-one but is is as elitist as we are?”
@MetalCircus: I’d respond but I’m really not sure what the question is.
@ Spiny
I worship ESDF, you insensitive clod!
(ok, I’m lying, but thought that that was funny; I use WASD, and I agree that I can’t see ever leaving the keyboard+mouse for a console. I do own a Wii though…)
I am a PC gamer since the early 1990s, and buying a gaming-capable PC has never been as cheap as it is today. Not to mention much the much cheaper games. Console gaming being cheaper is a fallacy, especially if you buy games regularly.
Have to say I agree with Okami wholeheartedly on this one. Great games will always be great games, console or PC, and prejudice shouldn’t prevent people from seeing that. (I just Ebay’d me MGS + Special Missions and Tenchu 1 & 2- these console games are more than 10 years old and could easily stand up against some of today’s releases)
Something that undoubtedly contributes to console gaming over PC gaming is convenience (as well as cost) to the non-tech savvy. Buy console. Buy game. Play game. Still have fun. On PC a whole range of (often irritating) stages is added, including finding a high end and costworthy computer, or customizing your own, dealing with installation of lots of software- OS’s, drivers, the like, then of course the installation of the game and the possibility that it won’t work anywhere near as well as you’d like. Console is just easier.
[Then of course there's the classic argument that certain games (or types of game, or features of games) work better on console than on PC, but I'll leave that for now]
On topic: I never doubted PC sales for a second…
I switched from 360 to PC gaming a year ago. Reasonable PC gaming is cheap. Intel Core 2, nvidia 8800GT and ati 4xxx series have made posible all this. Affordable machines with a performance way beyond the current consoles.
i’d like to point out that the current consoles only render at 720p and upscale to 1080i/p.
also you can pry my mouse and keyboard off of my cold dead..desk? nevermind i think everyone gets the idea.
@357SIG: Actually, it’s entirely up to the developer which resolution is used. There’s dozens of PS3 games that support rendering at 1080p.
That’s something that has always bothered me about console gamers. They all wax poetic about high definition graphics and online play… while PC gamers have been enjoying these features for years! Before you know it, console gamers are going to start using mouses and talking about how easy it is to aim with them…
Ah, but only the consoles were the first to make it easy.
Re: all this PC vs Consoles suff?
Shit, I’ve been enjoying both for decades, was I meant to pick sides?
State of PC games…..blah blah blah.
Anyone seen how cheap hardware is at the moment? Upgrade time.
:D
I’m helping my cousin build a gaming PC. If I got him a Dell gaming PC, it would have cost him at least $1900. There is absolutely no reason to go branded with today’s hardware prices.
There’s also used hardware. For $570 I can completely upgrade an ancient an existing machine to the point where it can run Devil May Cry 4 at a resolution of 1920×1200 with a silky smooth 70fps framerate.
Compare that to the crap 1280×720 resolution and fluctuating 20-30fps framerate of a PS3.
…
Consoles will always be cheap and cheerful, but if you can afford to spend $500 – $600 on a complete overhaul or $67 on a used 8800GT gfx card you would be mad not to go the PC route.
Here’s what I’m getting for my cousin for $570:
E8400 cpu
8800GTX
2GB 1.1Ghz OCZ ram (PC2-9200)
P45 mother board (Gigabyte)
Enermax 600w PSU
@Taxman, ignoring everything always helps. :)
Half a million to a million games shipped is nothing to sneer at, especially if that’s only one of several platforms you’re shipping on.
Historically, developers used to profit more per sale of a PC game than they would for a console one, because the console manufacturers business models involved making up losses on hardware with a cut of the software action. I wonder if that’s still the case with a growing discrepancy between the PC/Console game retail price-points.