Nvidia: PC revenue will surpass console in 2014
Technology company forecasts rise of the PC in investor presentation
New statistics from technology company Nvidia predict that revenue from PC gaming will overtake revenue from consoles by 2014.
The predictions did not include tablets like the iPad, or mobile gaming.
The presentation, which accompanied the companies latest investment call, also pointed out that while PC's are constantly evolving in terms of processor power and performance, the latest generations of consoles were released in 2005 and 2006
It should be noted that Nvidia is heavily invested in PC gaming. Founded in 1993, the company produces processors, chipsets, digital media players and GeForce GPUs.
Also look how old the PS3 and 360 are now - Skyrim, Rage, and other upcoming PC releases are going to own them graphically.
It will be interesting to see given that the chart goes to 2015 if that growth keeps up if another round of consoles is released in that time period.
Certainly PC gaming is getting more attention as the "next-gen" consoles become 8 years old next year, but the fact is, with 90% of AAA PC titles being multiformat releases, like Deus Ex 3 or Skyrim, and having to work on those 8 year old consoles, PC games have stopped requiring regular upgrades for at least 5 years! Logically, why would a 3 year old PC not run an 8 year old console game?
The fact is, if your PC can run Oblivion, a game released 6 years ago, it can probably run every multiformat AAA title released since then!
We also see European developers making ever bigger inroads into the PC marketplace with $10 million rather than $30 million games that sell in their millions. Games like the STALKER series, or Witcher 1 and 2. Gamers seem perfectly happy with the level of graphics in this games because of the PC centric gameplay they bring back into PC gaming.
It will be interesting to see how well Skyrim does on the PC format versus sales The Witcher 2 did earlier in the year. The latter game has sold 3 million on PC, and has a 360 version out in November, along with a free major 2.0 update for current PC owners of the game. If it sells just a million copies on 360 and a further million with the 2.0 version on PC, which is entirely possible, it could very well match Skyrim sales. But with Skyrim costing $35 million and The Witcher 2 only $15 million, you can see which title is likely to make a decent profit
I'm not sure how they created these graphs or what they are including into the added revenue for PC games (social gaming?), but I am guessing they just used the jump from 09-10 in PC gaming and held that growth as constant for the following years.
"DFC Intelligence forecasts that the greatest growth area for the game industry is PC games and games for other mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets. The good news is that these areas by and large expand the audience and do not take away from the existing business. “Games on Facebook and products like the iPad help expand the audience and the way products are delivered. The console business is firmly established and suffers mainly from the reluctance of hardware manufacturers to commit to expensive new products,” claims Cole."
...so I'm guessing that their projections are based on massive growth in Facebook gaming which they are equating to PC gaming.
Of course it's probably all nonsense based on extrapolating 12 months of extraordinary Zynga growth forever (despite Zynga's latest numbers showing profits falling 90% and revenue growth stalling) but it suits nVidia's purpose to make the case.
http://www.bougafer.com - for people who want to invest in the video games industry.
In the past few years there have been several low-cost (compared to AAA multi-platform releases) high-revenue titles on the PC such as Minecraft and League of Legends. There are also older titles such as LOTR Online and Global Agenda which have increased their own revenues by adapting to the current market and going Freemium.
As already mentioned, STALKER and The Witcher are notable PC exclusives which should not be overlooked and there are always the mammoth revenues generated by WoW.
I think it would be wrong to discount the graph/prediction simply because the CoD or Assassin's Creed franchises have the bulk of their sales on consoles or assuming that it is based solely on the rapid growth of Zynga. Still, this claim comes from Nvidia who are hardly impartial.
Overpriced, burning hot bundles of crap. I want a nice quiet cheap computer that gives me peace in my ears, my mind, and my soul. :)
I love an immersive game as much as the next guy, and I'm gonna have to come up with some sort of power to play Thief 4, and to be honest, the idea scathes a bit. I just want to play the game. I'm over upgrading the beast to play games. I'll be tempted to try to borrow someone's console to play it, or something. Or just see if I can get it to run on my fanless silent 512mb graphics card.
Not totally sure what I'm saying here.... except that I think NVidia might be right... PC games may make a killing over the next decade, or at least, small low maintenance "home computer platforms" may make a killing with games...
But the majority of these will probably be lower powered games that run in a browser, or a low min-spec.
That'd be my guess. The mainstream (and the old!) are going to want to just jump straight in and play on their standard tablet, desktop, laptop, whatever machine, without buying some $800 graphics card.
Is all.
The PC is dying, and will pretty much be dead within 5 years. I (literally) just threw out 5 PCs the other day - and will never replace my home desktop with another PC - rather it will be replaced by a tablet and/or slimline laptop.
(PS - how you going there Murray!)
Often that 10-15% for on multiformat sales is retail I believe, it could be closer to a third or more if you had Steam's actual figures. Especially if the boxed product sales figure used in estimates we see are based on "shipped" rather than "sell through".
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Andrew Goodchild on 27th September 2011 4:29pm
The only issues that need to be addressed in any new console are memory, what sort of physical media will be available for those still not on the broadband tit and now that we're headed down the path of least resistance (and worse security), what sort of online storage will be available (and what happens when something goes wrong with it down the road). Everything else is pretty much the same old thing.
Gaming isn't going to suddenly LEAP far ahead with a new console cycle. We'll get more realistic visuals up the wazoo, an overuse of whatever effects stand out (bloom, depth of field, 3D, new shading/texture work, whatever) and pretty much the same old shooters, action, racing and sports titles. Stuff like "social" this and that, media center features, TV streaming and more are all useless in a game console and should be made OPTIONAL in order to keep the price of the next set of systems down. If a buyer wants all that superfluous crap, they should be made available as applications that can be purchased digitally and installed.removed at will.
Actually, the only real stats I want to see are the ACTUAL numbers of console users who still don't use PSN, XBL or WiiWare. That number is key to the next wave of systems, as all those people aren't ignoring those services because they don't want them...
To you, maybe. But I use my PS3 for streaming, HD iPlayer and watching blu-rays as much as I use it for playing games - it's really good at that, and it saves having two more boxes under the TV. And personally I'd welcome more social features - having your console spamming Facebook or Twitter every time you do anything is obviously annoying, but I wish there was an easy way to find and add PS3 owning Facebook friends to my PSN friends list, for example. And surely it's only a matter of time before there's a decent Facebook client (not an outdated feature light web browser) for one of the consoles which lets you play Facebook games on your TV, or support for dedicated console-based "social" games on PSN or Xbox Live.