PC Gaming Aliance has revealed some interesting figures yesterday at GDC 2013. According to the reports provided by DFC Intelligence, the PC gaming industry showed strong overall growth of 8% in 2012, that there are over 1 billion PC gamers worldwide and that China is the fastest-growing and largest market for PC games.
DFC analyst David Cole said:
“The PC Gaming industry showed strong overall growth of 8% in 2012, partly as a result of the Chinese market gaining traction in the $20 billion global market with record revenues of $6.8 billion. In spite of media focus on mobile games and struggling social network games, there are now over 1 billion PC gamers worldwide and that number will continue to grow as more PCs connect online. The ‘PCGA Pinnacle Report for Software’ describes this in close detail.”
Erik Noreke, executive director of the PCGA added:
“We are experiencing a shift in the gaming industry.” Said , “The power of the latest portable PC hardware is allowing gamers for the first time to bring the full gaming experience with them on the road. They are no longer confined to their home for game play. The traditional desktop is no longer the gaming platform of choice as we are seeing more and more laptops with powerful GPUs and high end audio systems. PC gaming is going mobile.”
Among the best selling PC titles were Diablo III, Guild Wars 2 and Minecraft. DFC also expects that the PC gaming industry will grow to $25.7 billion by 2016.
Truth be told, the PC market is a bit weird and not as ‘easy-targeted’ as the console one, something that is evident on the sales of most multi-platform titles. It’s also evident that MMO and F2P games are still its driving force, despite the fact that the definite version of most – if not all – multi-platform titles is the PC version.
All in all, though, the PC gaming industry is growing despite all those silly rumors about its death.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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