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PC Gaming Has Been Outperforming Console For Years, Report Finds (insider-gaming.com) 53

Posted by BeauHD from the would-you-look-at-that dept.
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

PC Gaming Has Been Outperforming Console For Years, Report Finds More | Reply

PC Gaming Has Been Outperforming Console For Years, Report Finds

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  • Lower entry price point than consoles? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you want to play Solitaire.

    • 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)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Thursday January 16, 2025 @07:14PM (#65094787) Homepage Journal

        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)

          by Moryath ( 553296 ) on Thursday January 16, 2025 @07:29PM (#65094841)

          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").

        • 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

          • 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.

        • > 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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mjwx ( 966435 )

          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

      • The CPU, ram and processor isn't so bad you can get out of that for about 250, maybe 200 if you catch a really good bundle although those are usually limited quantities so I think they're just there to attract attention.

        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

      • 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)

    by PoopMelon ( 10494390 ) on Thursday January 16, 2025 @06:58PM (#65094751)
    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
    • I watched a few videos of people who play those gatcha games. Some of them do actually have gameplay with all sorts of systems involved but as soon as you start spending money the gameplay evaporates because it's all pay to win. Most of them aren't competitive multiplayer they're usually cooperative. I think the idea and where they get you is you want to spend money to keep up with the other people spending money that you're playing alongside. And of course the usual addictiveness.

      But there is some actu

    • 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: (Score:2)

      by jonwil ( 467024 )

      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)

    by Moryath ( 553296 ) on Thursday January 16, 2025 @07:08PM (#65094769)

    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.

    • 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: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      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

    • 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 we'll stop getting poorly done ports of console games to the PC?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Does this mean we'll stop getting poorly done ports of console games to the PC?

      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

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        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.

      • "The spurious reasons given is piracy, but really it's laziness and greed."
        FTFY my good man.

  • When they develop a console they pretty much have to start with whatever silicon is available at the start of development. By the time it's released to the masses you're on year + old silicon, while enthusiast PC gamers are running on silicon just released weeks / months ago.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Junta ( 36770 )

      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.

  • 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

  • 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.

    • 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.

    • While games initially cost about the same on PC as on consoles, the price eventually goes lower than the console version. After a while, you can get most PC games for 10-15 USD/EUR on sale, and many indie games even cheaper.
    • Almost all games on GoG.com keep working for decades on Windows, and so do many of the games on Steam.
    • If you buy a game on GoG.com or Steam, and it supports multiple platforms, you have to buy it only once.
    • At least some games are available DRM free.

  • 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

  • And zero surprise there. Seriously.

  • PC (Score:2)

    by ledow ( 319597 )

    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 spen

  • .. I say? No surprise there. C64, Amiga and then PC platforms. The fun and dread of building it myself.

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