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PC, Console Growth To Lag Pre-pandemic Levels as Gamers Clock in Fewer Hours (reuters.com) 74

Posted by msmash from the tough-life dept.
Personal computing and console gaming revenue growth is expected to remain below pre-pandemic levels through 2026 as gamers record fewer hours of playtime, according to research firm Newzoo. From a report: The market is expected to grow 2.7% from 2023-end to 2026, below the 7.2% growth rate from 2015 to 2021, according to the report. Gamers have been recording fewer hours of play, with the average quarterly playtime falling 26% from 2021 to 2023. The trend is expected to continue this year due to weaker gaming release schedules, with playtime falling around 10% in January. "Slower player growth rates will impact the industry's capacity to 'expand the pie' via net organic growth," Newzoo said.
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PC, Console Growth To Lag Pre-pandemic Levels as Gamers Clock in Fewer Hours More

PC, Console Growth To Lag Pre-pandemic Levels as Gamers Clock in Fewer Hours

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  • Golden sge of TV series (Score:4, Insightful)

    by eggstasy ( 458692 ) on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @03:39PM (#64364580) Journal

    I have found there's a lot more stuff I can cheaply watch than play. Very high quality material in great abundance. And I already played enough shooters in the 90s. Games are full of ads and grind. Why bother doing something repetitive to get a bit of storytelling when you can just watch a movie?

    • doing something repetitive to get a bit of storytelling

      If I want this, I would put on a movie.

    • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by cstacy ( 534252 )

      And I already played enough shooters in the 90s. Games are full of ads and grind. Why bother doing something repetitive to get a bit of storytelling when you can just watch a movie?

      I am a geezer with no kids, but I have friends whose 30-year-olds "boys" live in the basement and play video games all day. I have never played a video game (except like Galaga at the arcade, when that was a new thing) so I don't really understand video games. I mean, I have seen them played in movies and stuff. If I want to have tje joy of hand-eye destruction, I just go get some of my guns and go to an indoor range. Or if I feel like driving an hour, to an outdoor range where automatic weapons and thermit

      • Re:Golden sge of TV series (Score:4, Interesting)

        by AnOnyxMouseCoward ( 3693517 ) on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @04:37PM (#64364762)
        I'm glad you have your hobbies. Gaming is just one other hobby, maybe you just needed to get into it when you were younger, I don't know. I'd also say, many gamers also have other hobbies, it's not the only thing that matters, but given the generation gap, they don't always have the money to rent a plane or get a $200 burger (nice humblebrag there).

        The biggest difference age makes, I think, is that you know more about what you want, and you have less time. As a kid, I had the whole summer off, I could spend all day on the computer playing. If a game was hard, you'd practice; if it required grinding, you just put in the time. Now? I may have a couple hours an evening, a couple more on the weekend. I don't want to put in 30h of grinding to get through a 35h game. If I know what matters is the 5h of story, that's what I want.

        Also I haven't seen actual ads (Coke, cars etc.) in games, unless you're talking mobile games that are based on ads. A "normal" PC / console game may have some product placements, and definitely in-app purchases, but no pop-ups / interruption of the gaming for ads.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mjwx ( 966435 )

          I'm glad you have your hobbies. Gaming is just one other hobby, maybe you just needed to get into it when you were younger, I don't know. I'd also say, many gamers also have other hobbies, it's not the only thing that matters, but given the generation gap, they don't always have the money to rent a plane or get a $200 burger (nice humblebrag there).

          The biggest difference age makes, I think, is that you know more about what you want, and you have less time. As a kid, I had the whole summer off, I could spend all day on the computer playing. If a game was hard, you'd practice; if it required grinding, you just put in the time. Now? I may have a couple hours an evening, a couple more on the weekend. I don't want to put in 30h of grinding to get through a 35h game. If I know what matters is the 5h of story, that's what I want.

          Also I haven't seen actual ads (Coke, cars etc.) in games, unless you're talking mobile games that are based on ads. A "normal" PC / console game may have some product placements, and definitely in-app purchases, but no pop-ups / interruption of the gaming for ads.

          They've been doing ads in sporting games for ages as they can keep those updated. For most other games ads are largely product placement, where brands are clearly displayed (I.E. that 4x4 is very prominently displaying a Jeep logo, it's nice to see a Jeep that hasn't broken down though).

          The main reason that ads in games tend to fail is that marketing has a shelf life. Products change, markets change, so ads must also change. Few companies keep the same advertisement for years on end, so ads in games must

          • Interesting. I never play sports games so have never noticed, thanks for letting me know.

            I don't mind AAA games, there's something to be said for great graphics (and I don't mind the 6h campaigns either if it's well done), but agreed on indies. Plenty of good offerings there at minimal cost.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Firethorn ( 177587 )

        I'm getting up to geezerhood, but I do play video games, and also shoot.

        But it sounds like you've had more financial success than I have. Video games are, per hour, generally much cheaper than shooting as a hobby. Especially with bullets being $1 or more per shot. Even searching around, $0.20 a round is good these days.

        A gaming PC and a good firearm are basically neck and neck. You can get deals buying used, and the sky is the limit for either, though I think it's slightly higher for firearms at the top

        • Especially with bullets being $1 or more per shot. Even searching around, $0.20 a round is good these days.

          22LR is where it's at if you just want some pew pew pew without worrying about it draining your wallet.

          • Yeah, mentioned .22lr being cheaper in my footnote. Looking up, I'm seeing 500 rounds of .22lr for $40. Or about 8 cents per shot.

            • Wow! $40 for less than a minute of fun.
              I could get 3-5 games for that that will get me at least an hour.

              • It should take you more than a minute to work through 500 rounds. You're looking at closer to an hour, minimum, with 500.

                Still, the point stands - $5 should get you a game you can enjoy for at least several hours these days.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cstacy ( 534252 )

          I'm getting up to geezerhood, but I do play video games, and also shoot.

          Video games are, per hour, generally much cheaper than shooting as a hobby.

          A better comparison might be the cost of sailing vs. video games. Sailing is probably cheaper than video games. Of course there are lots of "real world" things that are essentially free, too.

          Personally, after spending huge amounts of time on a screen -- doing what I love and can hardly believe I get paid for -- I like seeing the sun and everything.

          • A better comparison might be the cost of sailing vs. video games.

            1. I don't sail, so can't quote that comparison as easily.
            2. Uh, how are you sailing for cheap? I've heard that boats are normally real money sinks. How do you count it as "essentially free"?

            I suppose you might have an arrangement where you can sail on a friend's boat for free, but that isn't something everybody can have.

            If you're renting, I'm seeing $72/hour and up [boatsetter.com].
            from nautal.com, I'm seeing pickings getting mighty slim under $300/day.
            If you're owning, I'm seeing $15-25k as a starting price, then you

            • $72 is not cheap and is the cost of 7 games. $300 is worse and is 30 games
              $15-25k is the cost of 10 replacement cars.

              All for the incredibility boring practice of going out on the water. There are four maybe five things to see. Water, sky, clouds, sun. Maybe the moon.
        • So what are you doing with all this practice
          Getting ready for a war or something?

          • I used to be active duty, so yeah, literally getting ready for war. It is also great fun. But you used to be able to get .223 ammo for under $0.10/round.

            I don't shoot much these days - too expensive.

      • That's a really long-winded way of saying that you don't "get" something which is wildly popular and is no longer considered a niche leisure activity. In fact, in 2005 Chamillionaire released a rather popular rap song [wikipedia.org] with the following lyrics:

        When you see me ride by, they can see the gleam
        And my shine on the deck and the TV screen
        And I'm ridin' with a new chick, she like, "Hold up"
        Next to the PlayStation controller
        Is a full clip and my pistola

        Gaming stopped being a nerdy activity the moment it reached the same level of coolness as owning a firearm.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by cstacy ( 534252 )

          That's a really long-winded way of saying that you don't "get" something which is wildly popular and is no longer considered a niche leisure activity.

          That is what I am saying, but more to the point of it dominating the lives of people to the exclusion of every other part of life.

          It is also normal and non-niche to eat McDonalds for every meal, statistically speaking. They have the highest quality food there, right? How could a trillion people be wrong about that? Unless you think that what is "normal" in society may sometimes be of questionable value.

          It's not really about personal wealth, either, because the population I'm talking about has access to the

      • I have never seen an ad in a PC game. I see advertisements galore in mobile games meant for phones or tablets. Ie, free to download but you get adds every few minutes. Candy Crush, etc. But real games for consoles or PCs I've never seen ads. But the game downloader/store/portal/whatever where you can buy games to download probably has lots of ads for games to buy, because that's the purpose of the store. I suspect that console portals and the Microsoft store are more ad heavy than the PC Steam portal.

      • First: Most modern video games are psychologically engineered to deprive and release dopamine, large developers often employ psychologists for game theory. Getting addicted to activities that release large hits of dopamine with little effort is not new.


        Second: These adult children are most definitely mentally ill. I noticed in one of your other comments you equate being mentally ill with "having no life" which tells me some things about your personality that you probably wouldn't want other people to thi

    • Re:Golden sge of TV series (Score:5, Insightful)

      by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @05:19PM (#64364862)
      Funnily enough I found myself noticing the complete opposite in the past several years. There's plenty of cheap quality games that will give you insane amount of entertainment for very little $$$ spent. Sure, MOST of games are junk (and so are TV programs, in fact), but between tens of thousands of shitty games, there's still dozens of jewels with lot of replay value.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        Funnily enough I found myself noticing the complete opposite in the past several years. There's plenty of cheap quality games that will give you insane amount of entertainment for very little $$$ spent. Sure, MOST of games are junk (and so are TV programs, in fact), but between tens of thousands of shitty games, there's still dozens of jewels with lot of replay value.

        This, my Steam library is full of small indie games and Early Access titles. I'm playing "Car For Sale Simulator 2023" a bit lately, it's a simple game built on a very addictive mechanic.I'll come back to games like this every few months as they get updated. I definitely think I've gotten my £15 of value out of it.

        There's a lot of crap on steam but it's pretty easy to filter out (I.E. using a web browser you're not logged into will filter a lot of it out), I've become pretty good at separating the

    • And I already played enough shooters in the 90s. Games are full of ads and grind.

      Tell us you only know of two games and are ignoring a massive industry producing hundreds of excellent non grindy non adverts non shooter titles each year without telling us ... (I'm not typing all that again).

      I've see the things you watch. Madam Web was released this year and therefore all TV and all movies released suck - by your own logic.

  • Seeing as how half the games out there (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @03:46PM (#64364606)
    Got canceled because the embracer group bought up the studio so they could flip it for a fast buck and then couldn't because interest rates went up I'm going to go out on a limb here and say they're just aren't as many games to play.

    I mean yeah there's 8,000 roguelikes and metroidvanias released since I started typing this message out but if you're talking double a let alone triple a they bought just about every studio out there except the mega Giants that are Ubisoft, electronic arts and Activision.

    Seriously it's going to be 10 years best case scenario before the game industry recovers from that damage. I saw the same thing with the anime industry but on a much smaller scale back when ADV thought they could buy up the licenses to every popular anime on the planet and then sell out for a fast buck. They went under too and took a ton of anime with them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      Nope. There are just as many games this year, as last year, and the year before - even more, really, because games don't expire and they keep making them.

      I suspect it has more to do with a worsening economy, and people strapped for time as they grind for the extra money to make rent.

      • Nope. There are just as many games this year, as last year, and the year before - even more, really, because games don't expire and they keep making them.

        The question you have to ask yourself is for all that quantity, do any of them have any play-value. Or, more importantly to the hardcore gamers, any replay value? If the answer to either is no or sorta, then why bother playing them?

        I suspect it has more to do with a worsening economy, and people strapped for time as they grind for the extra money to make rent.

        There's probably some of this too. But in an ever-expanding sea of same-same garbage games, it's hard to find one or two even to bother sinking your teeth into. Kinda like all other popular media right now. Once gaming became big business, big business took over gaming. Funny how

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Xenx ( 2211586 )

          The question you have to ask yourself is for all that quantity, do any of them have any play-value. Or, more importantly to the hardcore gamers, any replay value? If the answer to either is no or sorta, then why bother playing them?

          The answer is absolutely yes. There have been a number of prominent flops, but the quality games absolutely exist and not just one or two.

        • because I remember the Dreamcast/PS2 era where there were a dozen new titles worth playing every week.

          sigh... I just can't keep up with all these hip young /. readers who don't remember what it was like in the Good 'ole Days.

          • sigh... I just can't keep up with all these hip young /. readers who don't remember what it was like in the Good 'ole Days.

            I just remember Nintendo games being so freakishly expensive my parents rarely bought me them, and trying to earn them with the kind of money you could make as a kid in the late 80s was impossible. You'd need to be like the Elon Musk of lemonade stands.

            Also, you had to clean the games with q-tips and alcohol to get them to work. The blowing in them thing was just what idiots did.

      • and the usual run of the mill AAA garbage that gets shit out every year, but there's a huge drop in AA and even some AAA stuff. You can find lists of everything cancelled online. There's 30+ AA games, which is a *huge* number for that space.

        And what little does make it out is likely to be half finished and get savaged by reviews and fans.

    • Got canceled

      No. A couple of games get cancelled. Theres literally hundreds of excellent games released every year. You just have to broaden your horizon a bit beyond whatever garbage EA / Embracer are trying to shove down you throat in the hope you buy lootboxes.

  • Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by irreverentdiscourse ( 1922968 ) on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @03:58PM (#64364646)

    Actual humans shouldn't care about "growth". It's literally making everything worse.

  • Prices??? (Score:3)

    by GotNoRice ( 7207988 ) on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @04:23PM (#64364708)
    Prices on both gaming consoles as well as PC graphics cards skyrocketed from a combo of Crypto, Covid, and now AI. In many cases, even if you were actually willing to pay the inflated prices, the items were sold out anyway due to rampant scalping. Surely, this couldn't have anything to do with the decline, right???

    • Re:Prices??? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Voyager529 ( 1363959 ) <voyager529NO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @04:59PM (#64364814)

      Prices on both gaming consoles as well as PC graphics cards skyrocketed.... Surely, this couldn't have anything to do with the decline, right???

      It had something to do with it, sure, but I don't think it's the real issue. After all, most games within the past 5 years can be played at 45fps on 'medium' graphics settings, right? Sure, it's not the best experience, but it's a way to play the game with the aging GTX970 that's still in the machine until prices and availability come down. Moreover, eBay is flooded with GPUs now; even if they're coming out of a mining rig, it's easy to get a 2080 or 3060 for under $200 used, which is more than sufficient to play basically every game released on 'high', if not 'ultra'.

      No, there are two real issues here: time and money. As TFS said, gamers have fewer hours to game, which means they're going to be more selective of where they play it. In addition, the money factor is a big one. $70 for a one-time, perpetual license is a number I'd accept, even $80 if it's truly one-time...but it's not anymore, because everything is always-online, with season passes, battle passes, multiple in-game currencies, and lootboxes. $70 is the cover fee to get into the casino, which is going to either require an obnoxious amount of grinding, or another pile of money to get to the 'fun part' of the game.
      Even if a particular person finds themselves enjoying a game enough to be willing to spend some $250 on in-game items, that only lasts until the game is shut down because the game didn't make bazillions of dollars in the first quarter after release.

      After a couple of times of having that money flushed down the drain as a result of a game getting shut down, that person is going to be selective about the next game that is going to be on the receiving end of both time and money. Eventually, without either a game to play nostalgically as can be seen in the vibrant retro gaming community, or some tangible element of the experience (one can take selfies with friends in a casino, that's awkward to do in a living room by one's self), the 'growth' element can't be increased through gameplay or story-driven elements, but instead ever-more-predatory monetization that demands more time and more money from players who have neither.

      If a game isn't enjoyable to play at 'medium' graphics settings at 1080p, it's not enjoyable to play on 'ultra' in 8K or VR. Don't believe me, go back to the original Nintendo Wii - the least powerful console of its generation, and some of the most fun playing video games ever experienced.

      • The trick: Patient Gamer. Join the Reddit community, enjoy getting your games for 20% of the original asking price and still having a ton of fun even if you have an older graphics card. The best games are no longer AAA, and haven't been for the last couple of years. As you mentioned - the grind and casino mentality is real, and people are wising up to it.

    • The dumb thing is that after taking 2 years to get all the parts for a new computer I was building, it took so long that I found other things to do and it barely ever gets touched.

    • GPU have always been relatively cheap. There was a brief spike but only at the top end. The thing is, why would you buy a gaming PC these days. What games really require it? Half Life 2 still looks good today, you can now run it on max settings on a potato. I get bundles of games I missed over the years and the quality of the games has not improved much, when accounting for story they have markedly gone downhill. GTA5 was the last best game but even today they couldnâ(TM)t make that game anymore, hell,

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ChoGGi ( 522069 )

        I don't really care about shadows, but ray traced reflections and AO do add a nice touch (never was a fan of screen space crap).

        Control with filoppi's mod is real pretty looking.

    • Probably doesn't help that there's all these moronic "influencers" on YouTube that are of the mindset you're not really gaming unless you drop north of a grand on some card that does 4K at some ungodly high refresh rate. Yes, it looks nice, but you can still have fun with a rig that only manages 1080p60 and not break the bank in the process.

    • My gaming time went up during covid. I was at home, no commute times, stuck inside all week. Maybe new game sales were down, but new games tend to be bad. A very few new games are nice, but the old classics still worked great. Of course, people playing older games isn't good for the game maker economy.

      However the new games are churned out fast, there are far too many to try even 1% of them, and most are clones of each other, etc. The market for new games is extremely saturated.

  • It's as if when people aren't furrowed or unemployed and made to stay home for months on end, they don't have as much free time to play games. Weird.

  • If companies didn't force us back into the offices. My commute time is eating into my gaming time.
  • Unless you own a PC, there's no games. If you own a PS5 or Xbox, which could cost twice as much as a Gameboy did at launch accounting for inflation, you have like a third the actual amount of games to play as 15 years ago. Near every major game developer puts out a third the amount of games that cost three times as much to make, but they charge just as little as ever for each game, and half of them are "live service" games which are already oversaturated. Playstation, Xbox, and everyone that relies on them

    • which could cost twice as much as a Gameboy did at launch accounting for inflation

      Not surprising, as that was one of the cheapest systems ever. [inflationstation.net]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by necro81 ( 917438 )

      If you own a PS5 or Xbox, which could cost twice as much as a Gameboy did at launch accounting for inflation

      I'm not sure what your point is. The PS5 and XBox are tremendously more capable and provide a substantially richer gaming experience. Is that not worth more money in absolute terms? The only advantage the gameboy has over modern day consoles is portability. A Nintendo Switch retails for about the same as a Gameboy did back then, inflation adjusted.

  • You mean people have to go back out and work and can't spend as much time playing games? You mean Biden's inflation makes it hard to buy games? Well, just wait for Isreal to pull the U.S. into war, and all you kids playing games will be taking bullets for the nation of Isreal.
  • I for one am just picky. Have not played a lot of time recently, because I'm waiting for some next game release that actually tickles my interest. Cyberpunk 2077 (as of "patch 1.5") was the last new game I enjoyed playing through, and "Starfield" was a boring let down after all. Maybe GTA 6 or Witcher 4 will see me video-game again - once they have matured to a point where I am not a beta-tester. I am completely uninterested in anything "online" or "multiplayer". If I want to play with other humans, I prefe

  • I assume by "growth" this means "profits by EA, Sony, and Microsoft/Activision/Blizzard" then yeah, I'm not surprised at all. The games they are churning out have been terrible for the past 5 years. Just look at the train wreck that is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. PC gamers are turning to indie games or revisiting the vast catalog of superior older games. Why pay $90 for a locked-down, tired remake of a game that is visually indistinguishable from the last 3 sequels? These companies policies have been in

  • Activities ion games were at a Level if Playtime and interaction than an event that locks people in there homes giving them more freetime to play games causing those numbers to skyrocket now there surprised numbers go back to the artificially inflated ones after said event is over? Am i the only person who does not see this as proof of recovery and not a disaster?

  • I've been embroiled in the march of technical advancement since I opened the doors to the computer lab in my junior high school and discovered my future - 10 brand new Commodore PETs with black and white built in terminals and external cassette drives. I owned everything from a Coleco TelStar to the XBOX Series X.

    But we long since passed the point where the hardware was easily powerful enough to deliver the games. When the hardware is stressed into being insufficient, it's a failure of the development imagi

    • Hell, in the world of racing sims, Live For Speed remains more fun (now with user mod cars in-game too!) than anything new. And that game is still using something like a DirectX 8 renderer (and looks it)

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