14 DAY TRIAL // Large graphics card manufacturer Nvidia has highlighted its outlook on the state of the gaming industry, placing a heavy emphasis on the PC platform, as it believes that sales of games for the platform will overtake sales for consoles like the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 or Nintendo Wii by the year 2014.
Nvidia has backed up a variety of platforms over the years, including consoles like the PlayStation 3, which uses Nvidia graphics, not to mention the PC or Mac platforms that benefit on the most powerful advancements made by the company, and even tablets, using the Tegra 2 technology.
As part of a recent conference call, via Techage, Nvidia made a short presentation on where it thinks PC gaming is going, and how it's more than worth investing in it, especially since game sales and revenue are expected to overtake the ones generated by current generation consoles, in 2014, at the earliest.
As you can see in the graph above, while PC sales are currently lagging in front of console figures, things are rapidly changing, as the PC platform, fueled by digital distribution services, free-to-play games and its open nature, will start surpassing consoles around 2014.
Nvidia bases its estimation on the graph to the left, which highlights the components of its PC games revenue forecasts. Basically, while retail PC games will still sell, digital distribution is going to play a much more important role, getting the total revenue figures over the $20 billion (14.9 billion Euros) mark in 2013/2014.
As you can imagine, digital outlets like Steam, Direct2Drive, GamersGate, or GameStop's Impulse, are expected to play a huge role in convincing more and more PC gamers to buy games online, instead of just going to regular retail stores.
The last interesting chart of the presentation shows Nvidia once again highlighting the power of the PC as a gaming platform, which is now around 10 times more powerful, hardware-wise, than current generation consoles.
As you can see, Nvidia is quite confident in the future of the PC, although the release of next generation consoles, like the already confirmed Nintendo Wii U, or the speculated PlayStation 4 or Xbox 720, hasn't been taken into consideration.
