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PC gamers fuel hardware sales in otherwise stagnant market

Barfo

Barfo

Lifer
http://www.techspot.com/news/53536-pc-gamers-fuel-hardware-sales-in-otherwise-stagnant-market.html


Overall -- save for a year-on-year drop from $18.3 to $17.8 billion in 2013 -- the global PC gaming hardware market is forecasted to grow every year throughout 2016, reaching a $20.8 billion valuation.
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The group concludes that while consoles have a place in the living room and mobile devices are indeed moving into gaming territory, they just can't compete with the PC's control precision and power.
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Something to feel good about 😎
 
I'm happy there's a strong community of PC builders who enjoy shopping for premium parts and assembling them into custom machines. The longer this goes on, the longer we can stave off tablets and other weak mobile devices taking over.
 
This makes a lot of sense. Who else (other than system integrators) would drive this type of growth. Gamers keep the PC dream alive ...
 
TakeNoPrisoners said:
As long as I have money I will buy PC hardware. The day I switch to consoles is the day I go broke.
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Except console games are way more expensive than PC games. I bought Bioshock 1 and 2 for $2.50 each on PC, I got Fallout 3 GOTY and New Vegas Ultimate for 7 bucks each. I got the Assassin's Creed games on PC for like 5 bucks each.

Those games are all like $19.99 each on console still. And then you have their subscription fees for online play.

Why do people still think console gaming is cheaper than PC gaming?
 
futurefields said:
Except console games are way more expensive than PC games. I bought Bioshock 1 and 2 for $2.50 each on PC, I got Fallout 3 GOTY and New Vegas Ultimate for 7 bucks each. I got the Assassin's Creed games on PC for like 5 bucks each.

Those games are all like $19.99 each on console still. And then you have their subscription fees for online play.

Why do people still think console gaming is cheaper than PC gaming?
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PC gaming is only cheaper if your time is worthless.
 
Veliko said:
PC gaming is only cheaper if your time is worthless.
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Huh? I'm pretty sure completing, say, Mass Effect 2 on PC takes the same amount of time as it does on console. If you can get ME2 on PC at a serious discount over its console pricing, then it's cheaper. Period.

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irishScott said:
Huh? I'm pretty sure completing, say, Mass Effect 2 on PC takes the same amount of time as it does on console. If you can get ME2 on PC at a serious discount over its console pricing, then it's cheaper. Period.
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I was being facetious, but as an example of what I meant I had more problems getting BF3 to work on my PC than I did with my entire Xbox 360 library.

Sure, the game might have been a few quid cheaper on the PC but when you're spending God knows how long trying to get it to work you have to start considering whether it's actually a saving at all.
 
Veliko said:
I was being facetious, but as an example of what I meant I had more problems getting BF3 to work on my PC than I did with my entire Xbox 360 library.

Sure, the game might have been a few quid cheaper on the PC but when you're spending God knows how long trying to get it to work you have to start considering whether it's actually a saving at all.
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Havent had an experience like that in well over a decade tbh. Things tend to "just work".
 
Veliko said:
Just take a look at the Steam forums and BF3 forums to see how untypical your example is.
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Meh, half the problems i see are usually PICNIC and go something like this:

"game wont start halp meh!"

Provides no details, no specs, no info of any error messages if any showed up, dosent say if the game used to start but now dosent. You're lucky if they even mention the specific game they're having problems with 🙄

IMO stability is at an all time high as far as games are concerned. Although i do appreciate that just because i have no problems it dosent mean others are in the same boat, i have likely had some luck on my side.
 
Veliko said:
Which proves my point.

One of the costs of gaming on the PC is that a certain level of technical knowledge is needed.
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That is true, but it's not much. All it takes is the ability to read and willingness to learn a little. It used to be much much much much much much harder.

FUUUUUUU IRQ CONFLICTS!
 
Nintendesert said:
That is true, but it's not much. All it takes is the ability to read and willingness to learn a little. It used to be much much much much much much harder.

FUUUUUUU IRQ CONFLICTS!
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In defense of the customer though, the retailer can at least make an effort to help a potential customer decipher the various CPU and GPU models.
 
Bateluer said:
But, according to Microsoft, people only want sealed, self contained boxes.
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Pretty sure that's according to everybody these days. We're entering the era of disposable computers. Take that nature!

I think rumours of the death of the desktop are greatly exaggerated. There will be a need for the flexibility they offer for the foreseeable future. Though they will gradually become niche products. People like laptops because they're self contained and portable. Tablets are getting better every year. They suit most peoples needs.

As for price. I will say that PC gaming does have a much higher up front cost. A decent gaming rig is still about $1000, while you can get a Playstation 4 fully equipped with several games for half that. Gaming PC rigs also tend to have a shorter turn around time, depending on your expectations.

On the other hand, games do tend to be cheaper. They usually retail for $50 on Steam vs $60 for console. They go on sale more often and price drops faster as they age. Compare this to Nintendo who's still charging full MSRP for games that came out 5 years ago. So you should be able to recoup the higher price over the life span buying games. So PC and console work out to be about the same cost in the long run.

PC gaming also requires a bit of technical knowledge. Even if you're buying a pre-built system, you need to know what the specs mean. Then there's farting around with drivers, settings, patches, DRM, and what not. Consoles require next to no maintenance except the occasional firmware update. Console games also are guaranteed to run flawlessly (assuming the QA team did their jobs) on their matching system. There's no questions about how well a game will run.

So both have their advantages and disadvantaged. PC is my multiplatform system. Playstation is my platform of choice for their exclusives.
 
Veliko said:
Which proves my point.

One of the costs of gaming on the PC is that a certain level of technical knowledge is needed.
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That's not really true these days, there are a lot of businesses out there who make decent money from providing the user with a simple to use service, you can buy a pre-made gaming PC which is already configured and ready to play games, no technical knowledge is needed at all.

Just turn it on, install steam and gaming is no harder than downloading songs from itunes, it's nothing like how PC gaming used to be.

The issues isn't that it requires technical skill, the issue is that some people THINK they have technical skill when they really don't, and build their own PC or mod it or whatever and break something.

Consoles "solve" this problem by being as unmod-able as possible and locking down all advanced features so stupid people can't break them. So they just trade away 1 issue for many others.
 
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