Gaming industry hits a wall, but PC gaming continues to thrive outpacing consoles

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Skye Jacobs

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Why it matters: After a decade of robust growth from 2011 to 2021, the gaming industry has hit a plateau, creating a climate of caution and reduced investment. However, amidst this stagnation, PC gaming has emerged as a bright spot, continuing its upward trajectory and now representing the majority of non-mobile content revenue.

Both PC and console gaming sectors have expanded substantially since the early 2010s, with consumer spending on these platforms increasing by nearly $50 billion in 2024 compared to 2011 levels, according to a presentation by Epyllion CEO Matthew Ball ("The State of Video Gaming in 2025").

Yet, a divergence in growth patterns has become apparent since 2021. The console gaming market has experienced a noticeable slowdown, particularly reflected in sales figures for the Xbox Series and PlayStation 5. After 49 months on the market, Microsoft and Sony's current generation of consoles has sold almost 7 million fewer units than their predecessors.

In contrast, PC gaming has sustained its upward momentum. While console gaming has plateaued since 2021, PC gaming revenue has surged by 20 percent. Ball attributes this growth to several factors, including a more extensive and backward-compatible game library, instant access to web browsers, social platforms, and livestreaming software, as well as superior high-end performance capabilities.

Ball's analysis suggests that PC gaming's momentum is likely to continue, driven by trends such as the cross-release of console exclusives, advancements in portable PC gaming devices like SteamOS, and the influence of platforms like Roblox. The latter, in particular, may dissuade younger gamers from investing in expensive consoles, as hundreds of millions of children growing up on Roblox are unlikely to request a $500 console to play AAA games.

Other analyses of market share distribution between consoles and PCs, however, have arrived at different conclusions. For example, Newzoo reported in August 2023 that console games generated $56.1 billion in consumer spending, compared to approximately $40 billion for PC games.

When PC Gamer inquired about this discrepancy, Ball explained that he primarily relied on IDG data, which is widely regarded as the industry standard for sales tracking. He also noted that other sources, such as Pelham Smithers, estimate PC gaming to be 50 percent larger than console gaming.

Ball theorizes that variations in market research data may stem from differences in tracking game sales in China, where PC gaming dominates the AA/AAA market. For his analysis, Ball consulted publishers and cross-referenced multiple sources, including IDC and Bloomberg.

The same five franchises on PC (which are 6 – 22 years old) have averaged 30% of playtime for 4 years straight

Despite discrepancies in market share estimates, Ball remains confident in PC gaming's growth potential. He emphasized the potential for Steam to expand into the living room and handheld markets, which could further solidify PC gaming's dominance.

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Gaming industry hits a wall, but PC gaming continues to thrive outpacing consoles

 
Love the charts, it removes a lot of misconceptions around this topic.

One thing I am optimistic about is that mobile content spend has stagnated as well since 2021. That $83 billion would be better spent on other purchases and services, or even PC and console games, instead of crappy grindy exploitative mobile "games". The sooner this segment dies, the better we all will be.
 
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I would look at those numbers with a grain of salt. Thanks to the COVID inflation and corporate greed, most of those gains are fake - generated like frames from nVidia.
 
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Why can't people and gamers just be happy that there's platform choices. Everyone has their preferences. Everyone knows the advantage of PCs.

I own a high end PC setup, alongside my PS5, Switch and previous consoles. I get to enjoy the best of both world's.
 
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Even if in my eyes PC gaming remains my primary pleasure, seeing how much the hardware is inflating in price makes me doubt its sustainability. Won't the PC figures concentrate fewer and fewer people but more and more wealthy people to the point that only a certain elite will benefit from it? Seeing how high-end GPUs increase with each generation, if we take 200-300€ each time, the mid-range will only be so in name and the high-end, luxury... or madness.
 
pencea said:
Why can't people and gamers just be happy that there's platform choices. Everyone has their preferences. Everyone knows the advantage of PCs.

I own a high end PC setup, alongside my PS5, Switch and previous consoles. I get to enjoy the best of both world's.
Click to expand...

Well obviously not everyone can afford to own multiple kinds of gaming systems; if one does only own one kind of gaming machine, inevitably games that person might otherwise be interested in will show up as exclusives on other platforms and that person doesn't get to play them. If everyone was sensible and bought the same kind of gaming machine as that person did , well that wouldn't happen then.
 
Chris Rchr said:
Even if in my eyes PC gaming remains my primary pleasure, seeing how much the hardware is inflating in price makes me doubt its sustainability. Won't the PC figures concentrate fewer and fewer people but more and more wealthy people to the point that only a certain elite will benefit from it? Seeing how high-end GPUs increase with each generation, if we take 200-300€ each time, the mid-range will only be so in name and the high-end, luxury... or madness.
Click to expand...

A lot of the most popular games will run on fairly low end machines; a quick look at Steam Top-Ten list and everything on it will run quite nicely (at least at 1080p) on Zen 3 /Alder Lake + Geforce 3060/Radeon 6600 machines. Same with Fortnite, which is probably the most popular non-Steam game. Plus we are seeing a rise in the popularity of hand held PCs; obviously anything that works fine on a hand held will fly on even a modest desktop.

Any game dev who is not incompetent will make sure their games are playable on lower end hardware in order to have an audience to sell their game too. I don't see that lower end PC market going away time soon; still lots of people buying video cards in the $200 to $300 range even if the higher end cards keep trying to push up on the price points. Plus rumors are AMD is going to be pushing hard on the mid-range ~$500 GPU market this gen around, though they are being super tight lipped about their 9070/9070xt cards.

Edit: also with the PC market an increasing amount of the revenue (for good or ill) is from free-to-play titles that typically pull in a large hunk of their money from Whales who just have to buy everything, and small steady cuts from the rest, with a good hunk never paying anything. Fortnite & 5 of the top ten games on Steam right now fall into that model. Now, the thing is in order to get Whales to be willing to pay a lot, usually said whales need lots of other players to compete against and show off the skins, or even out right pay to win items. So game devs need the game to work fine on the lower end machines often used by the players who never pay anything, in order to provide a more appealing gaming environment to the rich Whales who do pay.
 
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Great article and extremely helpful charts. The two points that stand out the most to me personally:

1. Handheld mobile PC gaming, once considered a pipe dream many of us old school gamers and computer users probably never though we'd live to see, is IMHO the single most transformative development to occur in PC gaming during our lifetimes after the invention of the PC itself. I knew it had hit the mainstream when my "normie" niece bought herself a Steam Deck this past Xmas as a gift to herself instead of a console so she could play her fave indie games as well as Baldur's Gate 3.

2. That a mere 5 franchises that are decades old, the youngest one being Fortnite created and released in 2017, dominate both PC and console gaming with two of those repeating on both is IMHO NOT a healthy aspect of the gaming industry and proves that despite gamers claiming they are sick and tired of corps using the same old franchises to suck money out of them and not giving us anything new in public, behind anonymous callsigns and closed doors in private they always vote for the same old same old with their wallets. The industry needs gamers to have much more diverse tastes than that in order to survive.
 
It makes sense that they sell more PC games because there were more PCs than consoles in fact PC's outsold televisions and there's probably more PCs than there are TVs.
Just in our house there are four televisions and six PCs. We still have consoles from when the kids were little but they haven't been used in a long time.
 
For me the fact that I I’m not stuck in a walled ecosystem is big. I just bought a Quest 3 VR headset, and my VR gaming purchases are all still Steam / PC based because it’s portable across HMD’s.

Being able to play games from 40 years ago via DOSBox or emulation even from non-PC platforms is great. There are usually better deals on older PC games for budget gaming as well.

Lastly, true keyboard and mouse support FTW. I don’t need aim assist, thank you very much. 😉
 
No fee to play online, near limitless compatibility and modding, nearly infinite performance and budget scaling. There is nothing not to love other than the setup time.
 
fazy shah said:
Yes, we want more money but you still don't own the games we can remove them anytime.
Click to expand...
Unless you buy them from GoG - where everything is DRM free.
But the fact remains as people mentioned - the gaming market is stagnating, also on PC.
The big publishers are no longer taking risks by innovating, they’re instead giving us remakes and sequels.
The ones that ARE innovating are cashing in Big - like Larian with BG3..Hopefully we’ll see something new again soon, something that involves a risk from a developer - but is made with so much passion that it blows us away
 
Revolution 11 said:
Love the charts, it removes a lot of misconceptions around this topic.

One thing I am optimistic about is that mobile content spend has stagnated as well since 2021. That $83 billion would be better spent on other purchases and services, or even PC and console games, instead of crappy grindy exploitative mobile "games". The sooner this segment dies, the better we all will be.
Click to expand...

Mobile gaming is like crack cocaine, it's a bussiness model, it will never die, it can adapt but it will never die. Too much money for Apple/Google ignore.
 
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