It’s the time of year when the game industry turns its attention to big console releases and how games sell at retail. With next-generation systems coming this year, expect consoles to take the lion’s share of gamer mindshare over the next few months. In the midst of that storm, Newzoo sees another one — a “perfect storm,” as they call it — brewing to drive a resurgence in PC gaming.
In an extensive new report, Newzoo forecasts boxed and digital PC games will take a bigger share of the games market this year, carving out $27.6 billion of an estimated $70 billion global games market. That’s compared to the $25.4 billion the firm forecasts for console game sales. Newzoo also sees the worldwide PC game market growing by nearly 17 percent over the next three years, thanks to continuing adoption of digital, MMO and free to play games as well as the proliferation of PC screens through tablets and mobile devices.
Newzoo states in the report: “On a global scale, there are more ‘core’ PC/MMO gamers than ‘core’ console gamers, all looking for the next great gaming experience — whether that’s an indie hit or a blockbuster ‘AAA’ title. These PC gamers are spending more time not just playing games, but creating and sharing videos about their favorite games. And they’re watching live streams of professional video game players practicing and competing in big tournaments for millions of dollars. This has created a ‘perfect storm’ for PC gaming that ties in nicely with the importance of post-launch exposure for free-to-play games that are all run as a service.”
The report, titled “PC Gaming: Power to the People,” is a broad look at the PC gaming landscape and the consumer culture around it. It looks beyond market forecasts to make sense of the demographics of today’s PC gamers worldwide and their habits, such as their growing adoption of eSports, cross-screen gaming and consumption of game content through online videos. Newzoo sees these trends as both indicative of and feeding the growth in PC gaming. It estimates that nearly one in five PC game players can be classified as core gamers based on behaviors such as time and money spent on games and the genres they prefer.
The full report is a free download from Newzoo, available here.
