According to new data presented by Jon Peddie Research during GDC this week, the global gaming hardware market reached $67 billion in 2014, reports Games Industry. PC gaming hardware sales made up the largest slice of the games hardware industry revenue pie.
The data breakdown claims to show that PCs accounted for 33 per cent of the market, followed by smartphones with 23 per cent, consoles and handhelds accounted for 16 per cent, and tablets came in at 11 per cent. Combined with recent data provided by the Open Gaming Alliance (OGA) which indicates the global gaming software was worth $26 billion in 2014, results in a total gaming market nearing $100 billion, with JPR expecting "robust growth" throughout the years ahead.
Looking at individual market segments, JPR is seeing big upside for Android in the gaming hardware market. The Android games console sector will represent a "paradigm shift" for the market, thinks the research firm, due to the possible leveraging of the billion Android device users. That should be good news to the likes of Nvidia which recently announced the SHIELD Android TV console. A significant rise in dedicated portable Android gaming devices is also projected by JPR, as it anticipates the sector will grow from $33 million in 2014 to around $75 million in 2018, far outpacing traditional handheld consoles.
Even though JPR states that the traditional gaming handhelds market has "taken a big beating in the last three or four years," it is still worth around $2 billion and grew two per cent.
Researchers at JPR dismissed the idea that smartphones will somehow catch or pass consoles in terms of raw graphics and processing power, adding that the idea that phones offer "console quality" graphics tends to refer to older console generations. "There is no such thing as catching up. Moore's law serves all platforms," the firm asserted.
