14 DAY TRIAL // Apparently, the global PC gaming hardware is worth twice that of the entire console market, being appraised at around $21.5 / €16 billion, according to a recent report.
Analyst firm Jon Peddie Research says that personal computers, gadgets, peripherals and PC upgrades continue to stay a strong business, in spite of the overall downward trend of the PC market.
Ted Pollak, senior gaming analyst at Jon Peddie Research, says that while casual gamers are migrating toward mobile devices, the core PC gaming audience is actually investing even more in high-end rigs.
"We continue to see a shift in casual console customers moving to mobile. While this is also occurring in the lower-end PC gaming world, more money is being directed to mid- and high-range builds and upgrades by gamers," Pollak says in the company's PC Gaming Hardware Market Report.
He also provides a reason for the occurence of this dichotomy, while also positing that the continual increase in performance of gaming PCs is what will keep the market going, while consoles will begin struggling to keep up.
"Committed PC gamers are generally not interested in pure content consumption platforms. They are power users and pay thousands for the ability to play games at very high settings and then do business, video/photo editing, content creation and other tasks with maximum horsepower at their disposal in a desktop ergonomic environment," Pollak shares, as quoted by MCV.
The trend is bound to continue in the near future, as the company estimates that the PC gaming hardware market is going to reach a total value of $23.2 / €17 billion by 2017.
The overall PC market has been in decline for over two years, but things are starting to look a little better, as the business has seen a slight gain over the second quarter of the year, and is expected to keep the same slow but consistent growth rate in the future.
The global PC sales in emerging markets have been influenced by the appeal of low-cost tablets that offer a similar range of base functions, but it appears that consumers are now starting to return to the PC market. Analysts are still on the fence about the prospect of the industry completely recovering, citing Microsoft's phase-out of tech support for the old Windows XP as the main reason for the overall surge on the PC market.
However, the market of high-end PCs has been steadily growing, and JPR President Jon Peddie seems to have an idea as to why that is.
"Nvidia, Intel and AMD have enthusiast CPU and GPUs that are so powerful that, when combined with SSDs and fast memory, they absolutely trounce the computing power and gaming capabilities of the newest console generation," Peddie explains.
"Being able to drive 3840×2160 (4K) is already a reality for the highest end configurations and the mass market is now able to push 2560×1440. PC gamers with good displays are able to enjoy millions and millions of pixels more than console gamers get on HDTVs. This translates into being able to see more and an overall better gaming experience," Peddie adds.