PC Gaming Has Been Outperforming Console For Years, Report Finds (insider-gaming.com) 59
A recent 200-page report published by Epyllion reveals that PC gaming has been outperforming consoles over the last decade, "breezing past console platforms and generating more content spending and revenue," reports Insider Gaming. From the report: One slide revealed that since 2011, PC's content spend has dominated 'living room' console revenue by more than 65%, and it has earned 225% more than 'combined console' spend. That's a total of $30 billion if you want to put a number on it. Those numbers exclude hardware and accessories.
The report also showed that mobile gaming is leagues ahead of both PC and console platforms, representing the number one money maker in the games industry. This stat has been recorded despite an $18 billion increase in spending on console platforms in 2024 compared to 2011. That 75% increase is still trumped by content spend on PC platforms. But why is PC becoming increasingly popular and much more profitable? Epyllion suggested it boils down to a few core reasons:
- PC platforms have a much larger library of games and 'near-full backwards compatibility'
- On a PC, you can multi-task (stream, communicate, alt+tab, multiple monitors)
- Lower entry price point than consoles
- Higher top-end performance
- Better for esports and competitive gaming
- Able to play more early-access games
- More annual game releases
- Console 'exclusives' are now finding their way to PC
The report also showed that mobile gaming is leagues ahead of both PC and console platforms, representing the number one money maker in the games industry. This stat has been recorded despite an $18 billion increase in spending on console platforms in 2024 compared to 2011. That 75% increase is still trumped by content spend on PC platforms. But why is PC becoming increasingly popular and much more profitable? Epyllion suggested it boils down to a few core reasons:
- PC platforms have a much larger library of games and 'near-full backwards compatibility'
- On a PC, you can multi-task (stream, communicate, alt+tab, multiple monitors)
- Lower entry price point than consoles
- Higher top-end performance
- Better for esports and competitive gaming
- Able to play more early-access games
- More annual game releases
- Console 'exclusives' are now finding their way to PC
Lower entry price point than consoles? (Score:1, Funny)
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This is absolutely untrue.
One can have a pretty solid middle of the road mini PC that will run most modern game releases with middle of the road settings and last gen releases at high to ultra for less then the price of a ps5 and disc drive.
A budget mini-PC can be had for half that, and still provide decades of games.
Re:Lower entry price point than consoles? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is absolutely untrue.
One can have a pretty solid middle of the road mini PC that will run most modern game releases with middle of the road settings and last gen releases at high to ultra for less then the price of a ps5 and disc drive.
A budget mini-PC can be had for half that, and still provide decades of games.
It's not the total cost that matters anyway. What maters is the *marginal* cost of adding gaming to what you already do.
The PS5 is a one-trick pony. Nobody buys that to do word processing. So if you want to add console gaming to your life, 100% of the cost of the PS5 counts towards that marginal cost.
Your computer does many things. Most people don't buy a computer specifically for gaming. They buy a computer and they use it for gaming. If you care a lot about gaming, you might add more RAM or a better GPU, though a lot of people will just get by with whatever it comes with. So the marginal cost of doing PC gaming is the difference between what you would have bought as a non-gaming machine and what you instead bought as a gaming machine, which may be as little as zero.
So yeah, PC gaming can be way cheaper hardware-wise — potentially infinitely so.
Re:Lower entry price point than consoles? (Score:5, Informative)
Opportunity cost extends further. Want to know why so many people were willing to buy a (512GB) Steam Deck, or Steam Deck OLED, for launch prices of $549 when the Nintendo Switch MSRP was $300 for the early version and $350 for the OLED version?
Hint Hint: it's because there wasn't even a fucking pack-in game. With the Switch first you spend THAT money, then the extra $200 gets you maybe 6 games if you're lucky or you're not too picky and buy shovelware.
Whereas with the Steam Deck? You could count on most of your EXISTING Steam library working at launch, more working if you were willing to just follow a few community-sourced tweaks, and the compatibility has only gotten better and better and better.
Compare that to the Switch, where ALL of your prior purchased Wii, WiiU, DS / 3DS store titles... Nintendo's answer was 'Fuck You' even when they released the damn thing into Virtual Console (oops sorry... "Switch Online Service").
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PS5 and XSX can both play UHD Blu-Ray discs, thus saving spending US$200 for a cheap player, or upto US$1100 for a high end Panasonic (for example).
In the age of streaming, this is a garbage argument. Always was a garbage argument. Mostly touted by the console marketing drivel.
Consoles damaged gaming irreperably. They slowed technological advances, boosted price points to ridculous levels and created walled-garden lockout to games that really shouldn't have existed,all because of console consumers being mouth-breathing dullards who celebrated all of this as if they were somehow winning.
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Consoles also changed the narrative from people owning/modding their own hardware and licensing their games to do what they felt like with, mod-wise, to effectively "renting" the hardware with no access to the games at all. Things which were normal, like cheat codes are now bannable offenses. With people so desperate for AAA titles, this nearly lost us the entire battle of computing, back to when it was going to be either the Internet or TV set-top boxes which were going to be what people used.
Originally,
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In the age of streaming, this is a garbage argument.
In the age of streaming, operators of streaming services can and routinely do delete works. A physical copy acts to preserve access to view a work even if no service carries it anymore.
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The PS5 is a one-trick pony. Nobody buys that to do word processing. So if you want to add console gaming to your life, 100% of the cost of the PS5 counts towards that marginal cost.
Your computer does many things...
PS5 and XSX can both play UHD Blu-Ray discs, thus saving spending US$200 for a cheap player, or upto US$1100 for a high end Panasonic (for example).
Does anyone actually own UHD Blu-Ray discs? 1080p is plenty good enough for me. Spending several times as much for 4K wouldn't make sense even before you factor in what a nightmare it would be to back up UHD discs (both because of the nastier copy protection and because of the ridiculous amount of storage required).
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How do you even find any difference between UHD and FullHD? Are you looking at your monitor/tv using a microscope? Or the monitor/tv is the size of average barn? Post FullHD differences are in practice not nearly as pronounced as those from transition from 320x200x256 and 640x480x16 to 1024x768.
In general, I can't tell the difference unless I'm sitting way too close to the screen. Of course, I like to *shoot* in 4k so that I can crop it in post if needed and still get better than 1080p on the output, but for consumption, 1080p really is good enough for most real-world use, IMO.
Heck, 720p is pretty much good enough. It is basically twice the resolution of the content portion of a letterboxed 16:9 DVD in both directions. 1080p is overkill 90% of the time. 4K is overkill ~100% of the time unless
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It really does depend on the content. The funny thing is the content where it really matters if you ask me is never the content that gets the high-bit rates and full 4k treatment, it is usually the content that gets crammed down to 720 or 480 that 4k would make pop.
I can tell the difference between 720 and 1080 in most content now that common television sizes have jumped from ~42in to ~55, over past decade. Like you though most of the time you have to be really looking for it, in content where there is any
Re: Lower entry price point than consoles? (Score:1)
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Having more pixels is useful for having headroom. If I want to take a screenshot of a part of the screen and just crop a section, having a high res image is a lot more usable than blurry pixels. Similar to how bitrates are a lot higher in audio programs than what CD quality is.
Household with more than one person (Score:2)
What maters is the *marginal* cost of adding gaming to what you already do. [...] if you want to add console gaming to your life, 100% of the cost of the PS5 counts towards that marginal cost.
Unless you want to do both at the same time. With a console, you go from one household member doing office things to one household member doing office things and a second household member playing a video game. Buy a game box, a second controller, and a year of the platform's game pass, and little Abigail and little Chester can play their games on the living room TV while you're paying the bills at the computer desk.
Most people don't buy a computer specifically for gaming. They buy a computer and they use it for gaming.
True of desktop users, not so true of laptop users. They end up having to replace their compu
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Unless you want to do both at the same time. With a console, you go from one household member doing office things to one household member doing office things and a second household member playing a video game. Buy a game box, a second controller, and a year of the platform's game pass, and little Abigail and little Chester can play their games on the living room TV while you're paying the bills at the computer desk.
Until the little Abigail and little Chester need to do their homework on a computer too.
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Unless you want to do both at the same time. With a console, you go from one household member doing office things to one household member doing office things and a second household member playing a video game. Buy a game box, a second controller, and a year of the platform's game pass, and little Abigail and little Chester can play their games on the living room TV while you're paying the bills at the computer desk.
Until the little Abigail and little Chester need to do their homework on a computer too.
School gives them iPads honestly
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> The PS5 is a one-trick pony.
I bought my PS5 as double-use : UHD bluray player + gaming.
Could I have bought a PC for it? yes, but playing back UHD blurays on a computer is a bigger PITA than gaming on Linux...
The trouble with double use of a PC is setting up two seats, and managing that.
But yes, you're correct for 90%+ of people.
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This is absolutely untrue.
One can have a pretty solid middle of the road mini PC that will run most modern game releases with middle of the road settings and last gen releases at high to ultra for less then the price of a ps5 and disc drive.
A budget mini-PC can be had for half that, and still provide decades of games.
It's not the total cost that matters anyway. What maters is the *marginal* cost of adding gaming to what you already do.
The PS5 is a one-trick pony. Nobody buys that to do word processing. So if you want to add console gaming to your life, 100% of the cost of the PS5 counts towards that marginal cost.
Your computer does many things. Most people don't buy a computer specifically for gaming. They buy a computer and they use it for gaming. If you care a lot about gaming, you might add more RAM or a better GPU, though a lot of people will just get by with whatever it comes with. So the marginal cost of doing PC gaming is the difference between what you would have bought as a non-gaming machine and what you instead bought as a gaming machine, which may be as little as zero.
So yeah, PC gaming can be way cheaper hardware-wise — potentially infinitely so.
Even when you get a PC expressly for gaming, as many of us do, even though your up front costs are higher, your total cost of ownership is much lower. It takes about 2 years of not paying for PSN/XBox Live and saving $10 a game to break even on a mid range ($1200) gaming rig over getting a console and that was back when consoles were only $500, now they're pushing $700.
The advantage of a console is that it was multiplayer, I.E. you could play it when your friends come over, the only console that still fi
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The PS5 is a one-trick pony. Nobody buys that to do word processing. So if you want to add console gaming to your life, 100% of the cost of the PS5 counts towards that marginal cost.
If you're looking at it that way, 100% of people that need a PC for word processing would be better off with a cheap laptop, and a gaming console later if they can afford it.
Car analogy time.
It's like we're making an argument for a AWD hatchback because we need to drop kids off at school and go off-roading. You know damn well a Corolla and a dirt bike make more practical sense and cost less. If you WANT a rally car, then go buy a nice rally car, but that is redundant because nobody making this silly argumen
With respect I don't see how (Score:2)
And then you're looking at at least another $150 for your graphics card. That's used and with a little bit of sniping on eBay. If you're going to buy new realistically you're going to have to spend $250 to $300 to match what a PS5 can do for the most part. I think you're still a little b
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>New game? Oopsie, old console won't be sufficient
You'll soon be dead from the fatal levels of copium it takes think old consoles will always 60@2160 "the latest game". If your fantasy is based on the console being current, that horsepower was "current" on PCs ages ago.
Re: Lower entry price point than consoles? (Score:1)
Hello, time traveller from 20+ years ago. How are things? I bet our relative dystopia makes you wish you'd never invented the time travel machine in the first place, right?
But on the plus side PC hardware doesn't need to be upgraded for games anymore. Pretty much ever.
So have fun with that, at least.
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great thing about consoles is that some people like to game at 4k 60fps on their couch
I think you mean output a dynamic scaled resolution and shading rate that is probably somewhere between 50% and 75% of the actual 4k output of the console, right? Coz I'd wager that 98% of console games do not render at native 4k, even on PS5 Pro.
Hey, guess what PCs can do. That's right! Exactly the same thing!
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This is absolutely untrue.
One can have a pretty solid middle of the road mini PC that will run most modern game releases with middle of the road settings and last gen releases at high to ultra for less then the price of a ps5 and disc drive.
A budget mini-PC can be had for half that, and still provide decades of games.
If you have need for any form of power in your main PC (Running Blender, running music or video production, or any number of programming tasks), gaming on the side is a free add-on, rather than needing to buy a console or build another PC to game on.
Mobile "gaming" is irrelevant (Score:4, Insightful)
If anything it's worse than that (Score:1)
But there is some actu
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It's hardly fair to compare platforms that offer actual games to an appstore/play store cancer that is 99% games made for microtransaction brainless clicking moneymilking titles abusing dopamine addiction. There are very few real games
Most of the "PC content spend" is irrelevant, like the $5 billion CS skin market. But if you start whittling it down to real games, it interferes with the narrative. The amount of people needing to be reassured PC gaming is gud tells me there are problems.
Re: Mobile "gaming" is irrelevant (Score:1)
What is that amount, specifically?
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What is that amount, specifically?
This thread is a little too focused on page 58/59 from the report. Look at page 62 and 63 please, those steam demographics. So when I take away freemium grindy microtrans bullshit and look at "real" games GP is referring to, what do YOU think will happen to the total content spend numbers?
It's funny, everyone is a Roblox fan all of a sudden and the "real games" talk softens.
You have a deep list of cheap and unplayed games and I'm told the hardware is cheaper, depending on if you play "real games" or not? It
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If you think that crap is limited to mobile, you clearly haven't seen all the ads I keep getting on Windows 10 Solitaire for similar crap with names like Jewels of Rome, Slots Era, Bermuda Adventures, Forge of Empires etc.
Not being tied to one device is key. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the key: "PC platforms have a much larger library of games and 'near-full backwards compatibility'"
In other words - once you bought a game via a service like Steam, you can be reasonably confident it will work on your next desktop or laptop years later. You can even, now, spread the wealth by synchronizing your saves between your laptop, desktop, Steam Deck.
Gamers have gotten tired of having games tied to consoles without backwards compatibility, and worse yet, to Nintendo's "fuck you, give us $30 for a reskinned version of Super Mario Bros every 4 years. Oh, you want to re-download a thing you bought 2 years ago, played, deleted to make room on your 3DS...? Well fuck you double we took the store down, we got your money now we ran away. Go buy a Switch and then pay us another $1000 for the 'new' versions of all the content you already bought."
And yes, I know that some snark will claim that Steam "could" disappear one day but... Steam has existed since 2003. If you bought a game from them 21 years ago, you still can access the download (barring some incredibly rare circumstances). And unlike Shit-Tendo, Steam is run by a guy who sees keeping the service good as the key to keeping business healthy. Gabe Newell is literally the "Piracy is a Service Problem" guy, whereas Shuntaro Furukawa is the "sue everyone in sight, fuck you for enjoying old games" guy.
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I know that some snark will claim that Steam "could" disappear one day but...
It's dangerous to tie policy to a person. If Gabe croaks (really hope not!) and somebody else takes over, I'd be a bit twitchy about Steam's policies' future. Also, "past performance does not guarantee future results". The only certainty is if you actually, really own the games, without DRM, and currently the best legal way for a huge variety of old and new games is via GOG.
Re: Not being tied to one device is key. (Score:1)
It's also dangerous to assume that someone saying something 20 years ago means they still believe it now.
Especially when 20 years ago they were trying to establish themselves and now they are essentially a monopoly.
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This is the key: "PC platforms have a much larger library of games and 'near-full backwards compatibility'"
I have over 30 years of collected games... including some which originated on floppy disk. I can count on one hand the number of them that cannot be played on a modern system... Sure some of the really old DOS games require emulators, but even then some don't. Only a few Win 9x games are literally unplayable and they're pretty obscure.
I had a few Nintendo consoles in my youth, oldest surviving one is a N64 sitting in my sister's garage and if I wanted to play that it'd be easier to set up an emulator on
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Steam has existed since 2003. If you bought a game from them 21 years ago, you still can access the download (barring some incredibly rare circumstances).
Not exactly incredibly rare, but that term is a judgement opinion.
Here is hard list:
https://delistedgames.com/all-... [delistedgames.com]
Does this mean...? (Score:2)
Does this mean we'll stop getting poorly done ports of console games to the PC?
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Sadly, no. The reason is piracy - PC piracy is huge, and PC ports of console games don't make as much money as console games do. So devs will develop for console first, make all their money back, then make a profit. Then they'll do a cheap PC port in the hopes of the PC port paying for itself.
If it's a big game, you'll get a nice port. If it's a game that did so-so, it'll be a cheap port.
The ports did get better when things like
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If it's a big game, you'll get a nice port. If it's a game that did so-so, it'll be a cheap port.
Or if it's an indie game, the port will end up being in the other direction: PC first, consoles later.
Re: Does this mean...? (Score:1)
"The spurious reasons given is piracy, but really it's laziness and greed."
FTFY my good man.
No shit (Score:2)
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On the very high end enthusiast end sure, and also the PC enthusiast can go wild with money is no object and sure they'll take a gigantic box with multiple 240mm radiators and burning 800W, while the console even at their 'crazy expensize' is cheaper than a top-end GPU.
However that audience is probably pretty small, but on the other end you have the "I need to do stuff" laptop with a "good enough" iGPU that can play mid range games fine.
consoles are for kids and casuals (Score:2)
at some point, real gamers move up to real hardware, not to mention how expensive the consoles really are relatively speaking, it's like buying a tricycle
In other news, water is wet (Score:2)
Of course it costs more money for PC gaming than consoles, which generally cost $500-$700, because that's what a decent video card will cost for a gaming pc. not sure why this surprises anyone.
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What makes a video card "decent"? Why do you even need one in order to play great games? If everyone was saying a game was great 20 years ago, does it mysteriously become crap just because 20 years have now passed?
What sort of computer you need depends on what games you want to play, it's not something you can make universal statements about. If you love photorealism, then sure, you want a meaty graphics card. If you think Civ 2 is still the best Civ, then you probably don't.
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I've experienced plenty of crashes on consoles like PlayStation.
It's not Console vs. PC. It's the software development quality.
If PC games require you to mess with UEFI or the kernel, it's an indication that the developers took shortcuts rather than building the code to proper standards. To anyone who understands the process of performance tuning, it's clearly visible that a LOT of game developers skip this step, forcing gamers to buy excessively powerful PCs to play their games.
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Ah, I miss the eighties. Could just be that I was a kid with no responsibilities.
That's the last time console gaming was even kind of in the "just works" department.
Remember the corrosion problems on cart slots? Even before the NES became infamous for it, we were having that problem with the VCS and the INTV and the Coleco. So even then we had problems.
Now people are having to buy bigger SSDs for their consoles and whatnot.
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No weird driver thing, no mucking around with UEFI or kernel stuff. .
What fresh nonsense is this? This hasn't been a thing for 20+ years. What sort of "PC" do you have, exactly?
Or are we just spreading FUD... as usual?
Re: PCs are complex and crashy... (Score:1)
Ah another time traveller from decades ago.
I wonder why this topic specifically has drawn so many of you forward into our future?
Re:PCs are complex and crashy... (Score:4, Insightful)
Once upon a time, console gaming made a ton of sense, as PC game development meant contending with all sorts of messy changing APIs and having to do a lot of work to be adaptive to what the user *might* have, enabling a 3dfx user required dramatically different measures than an S3 Virge user. Load times were subject to floppy or cdrom or hard drive while game consoles for a time were always pretty much instant loading and instant boot. Getting a PC to output to a TV was an adventure, and no one was doing UI work to make that viable even if you had that. Game controllers were neglected accessories with very selective support on the PC side, so keyboard and mouse were frequently the only supported controls.
But now, PC is more straightforward, with generally mature APIs that are common with the modern game consoles to various degrees. Microsoft pushed hard to have more consistency between Xbox and PC gaming, resulting in ubiquitous support for the popular game controller design that Sony pretty much sorted out in the late 90s that persists to this day. TVs and monitors now have the same interfaces, and third party launchers including hobbyist and Steam cater to 'couch view'. The PC now has the plug stuff in and it just works pretty much down. If you muck with UEFI or kernel stuff, you are doing something very very unusual that almost no one wants to do. The typical enduser PC is under 150W. Yes you can have 1000 Watt PCs (though they tend to be pretty quiet still, owing to more capable cooling), but those are the minority.
On the flipside, Consoles demand updates for their OS and for their games. You come back to game after a couple of weeks of being too busy and the console says "nope, you have to wait 30 minutes or so before you can play". Loading times are now the same between PC and Console now. They still have most of their downsides, you can't just plop your PS3 disk in a PS5 and get to play it. This is changing, as PS4 to PS5 and Switch 1 to Switch 2 are PC like in backwards compatibility, and there's a lot to suggest this will continue from now on.
More reasons to prefer PC games (Score:3)
What if it plays multiple places? (Score:2)
Didn't Xbox have a Windows PC version also for some titles? Meaning if you bought either, you'd have the chance to log in and play on the other platform too.
Might help to realize AI being hot, pushed GPU purchases for a lot of people who wouldn't have before. If you already have a screaming fast machine, why not see what all the fuss is about for these AAA titles on a 'real, premium PC'.
Also they manipulate prices so much that it's likely hard to see anything except vague relationships. "Oh, people spent
Obviously (Score:2)
And zero surprise there. Seriously.
PC (Score:3)
I owned a console since the late 90's (SNES was the last one I technically owned).
I started on PC back in the DOS days.
I still have the disks to games from that time and I can still get them all working (used to be a faff, nowadays it's quite simple).
When Steam came out, I was hesitant but realised that it's the best distribution platform in existence. I have an account from day two of Steam being available (21 years old!). All my games are still there. They all can still be downloaded. Not a penny spent on the account has been wasted. Sure, a few really ancient ones I need to jiggle with them (though those ALL work first time on my Steam Deck, which seems to have better compatibility with old Windows than old Windows itself!).
I don't have to abandon my games every few years and hope there's an official compatibility layer on the next platform. I don't have to keep thousands of discs. I can use accessories from 20 years ago or brand new ones (e.g. old gamepads, XBox 360 controllers, or VR headsets). I don't have to "rebuy" games on a new platform or retro shop store.
But most importantly, I can have all my games, emulators, videos, movies, books, work, browsing, programming, virtual machines etc. all on one device, just a click away. I can take that with me (it's a gaming laptop). I can play them on a handheld (Steam Deck). I can use them on a plane.
When I get a new PC, there might be some initial faffing, but they all come over. Whether that's a new version of Windows or moving a VM or installing an emulator or whatever. I can move them all from one PC to another (and there is only one of me, so I don't care about library sharing, etc.).
My family ALL have Steam accounts. My friends all have Steam accounts. We do games nights, we buy each other gifts on it at Christmas, and so on. Hell, we can get 4 Steam Decks in the same room, no problem at all.
I've never seen the attraction in consoles or console games. I find console controllers horrendous for many tasks (the beauty of a PC is I can use a keyboard, mouse, gamepad, steering wheel, flight controller, Wiimote, VR headset, etc. as I like, and any one I like, as appropriate for the game), and consoles ONLY play games despite trying to do browsing and movies, etc.
And in 21 years, I've probably spent far less on gaming than even a handful of modern consoles and a few games would cost. No subscriptions. Still have everything I bought.
PC gaming was always the way, but Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, etc. wanted to sell their consoles to lock you in.
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"I *haven't* owned..." in the first line, obviously.
Well, wheat can ... (Score:1)
.. I say? No surprise there. C64, Amiga and then PC platforms. The fun and dread of building it myself.