facebook rss twitter

PC games software market to exceed $35bn by 2018, says OGA

by Mark Tyson on 3 March 2015, 12:50

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qacpmm

Add to My Vault: x

The Open Gaming Alliance (OGA) has forecasted in a preview of its upcoming annual research report (via MCV) that PC gaming will continue to grow. PC gaming software is an expanding market worldwide, expected to increase from $26 billion in 2014 to $35 billion by 2018.

The report on the games industry, complied for the OGA by market research firm DFC Intelligence, will be released at the end of March and covers trends and forecasts for the PC gaming industry worldwide from 2014 through to 2018. The preview states that whilst the PC gaming software market will continue to expand, console and handheld markets will suffer a projected decline in value.

"Much of the growth is driven by pure demographics. We continue to identify a core group of consumers for whom playing on the PC is a major pastime," DFC analyst David Cole said. "This is, in fact, a fairly new demographic that skews highly male and is only increasing in buying power."

DFC's Cole went on to explain; "In past years much of the growth in PC games has been due to adoption of the platform in Asia. Now we are estimating a potential 86m PC gamers outside Asia that we have targeted as market growth drivers." Of course the encouraging predictions for PC games software should have a welcome knock-on effect on PC hardware sales, "These are the consumers that are driving spending not just on software, but also on PC hardware, as they buy expensive equipment to play, view and record games," asserted Cole.

The chart indicates clearly the revenue performance from PC software, but suggests that the console software market will start to decline from 2017. A rise in smartphone and tablet gaming could see this sector grow from just under $15 billion in 2014 to around $34 billion in 5 years time, but handheld gaming software is again, expected to decline in the next few years to just $1.2 billion by 2019.

The OGA identified large multiplayer games, specifically freemium games such as League of Legends and World of Tanks, as core titles that will drive strong growth in the PC market for the long-term. In addition, with PC hardware's global ubiquity, it makes it easier for gamers to share, communicate and be more sociable with friends and family, according to OGA board member and Research Subcommittee chair, Matt Ployhar. The same influences could also explain the dramatic rise of the eSports market. Games streaming sites such as Twitch, which doubled its monthly users in 2014, demonstrates that the market is also growing in the numbers interested in the entertainment of watching others play games, which in turn results in gamers spending more money on gaming.



HEXUS Forums :: 8 Comments

Login with Forum Account

Don't have an account? Register today!
Maybe people are just starting to get tired of still playing games at a target framerate of 30fps with a horrible, sickening Fov. That's what I like to think anyway haha…
Meanwhile both console and handheld game software markets are expected to decline.
Not really surprising. I'd expect Nintendo to have a hard time due to the wide availability of smartphones and tablets, even some with gaming features like the Playstation branded ones or the NVidia Shield. The handheld market surely has been going downhill for some time?

The decline in consoles I'd put down to a variety of factors, key of which being the horrendous prices that both major consoles (PS4 and XBO) launched at, with no backward compatibility. I'm also seeing an upswing in the power of budget PC's, so it's probably an easy decision to make - buy a new console or a basic PC. Then again there's all these Steam, Origin, HumbleBundle, etc sales which means that the cost of a PC-based games library will be a fraction of the cost of a similar one for PS4/XBO. I'd also suggest that the miss-steps that Microsoft made in the XBO launch haven't helped, the always-on/not always on, the Kinect required/Kinect optional, etc.

I've got shelves of XBox360 games, yet I've not even toyed with the idea of a “next gen” console, instead preferring to spend my hard-earned on Steam sales. Likewise I had various DS models, yet haven't bought any of the “3D” models, and all that kind of gaming is now down on Asus or Samsung tablets.
High cost and VERY low relative performance is putting me off of consoles…and I suspect others.

Consoles always used to cost an amount I didn't need to think about and when they released they gave a reasonably high-end PC a run for it's money……now they cost twice as much and are low to mid range PC spec. This means the relative cost has actually sky-rocketed…..and that's before we talk about £65 games!

Both Sony and MS have limited their sales this time around, I do wonder if that's what they wanted tho, less sales but more profit per sale can mean lower overheads.

Sell the consoles for £200 and make the money from the £65 titles and we might be more interested………they set that model and it worked well for years, now they want their cake and eat it….and surprise surprise, people are starting to move to PC. I do believe that some of the shift has been due to more console gamers being wooed by TV adverts where they keep showing the PC version, they then buy their XB360/XB1 version and then head to the internet to find out why it doesn't look like the advert….

I know so many gamers who always bought the new consoles, yet I cannot think of any of them that have bought into the latest gen at all……it still surprises me how many they have sold so far. TBH, I think they have done pretty well considering.
I think the reason it appears that the PC market is growing is down to people buying digital/download games more than disc based games these days which from what i've seen is always almost more expensive, unless your getting a humble bundle or steam sale or off a dodgy site.
My view is that the current state of gaming in general is sh?t. Pc gaming is sh?t, current gen console games are sh?t, etc. Things peaked around the early 00s and since then all we have had is better graphics and more energy used.

So how does that relate to the above? Pc gaming is increasing as it's cheap, people like cheap. Cheap but also sh?t.