14 DAY TRIAL // Another analyst has revealed his forecasts concerning PC gaming in 2012. M2 Research’s Billy Pidgeon says that the PC will trump consoles in terms of popularity due to a variety of factors, including its more flexible nature, the more powerful hardware, varied online experiences, and even through its support of new technologies like cloud gaming.
While game consoles like the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 or Nintendo Wii became extremely popular in the last few years, as they aged, more and more gamers started migrating to the PC platform, attracted by a variety of features consoles couldn’t deliver.
According to Billy Pidgeon, who talked with Industry Gamers, the varied nature of the PC platform, which is host to many gaming experiences, will continue to attract lots of people throughout 2012.
“In 2012, PC games will continue to show strong gains, both in revenue and in share of time spent gaming due to multiple factors in play,” Pidgeon said. “One major factor contributing to more PC gaming is the winding down of this console generation, which is now in the back half of its lifecycle. PC games look as good or better than console games, and provide the online multiplayer action most hardcore game fans crave and AAA PC games like Bethesda's Skyrim also satisfy single player gaming fans. Blizzard's Diablo III will scratch both itches.”
The analyst also highlights digital distribution services like Valve’s Steam, which offers great incentives to buy games legally instead of pirating them, thus helping stop the piracy issue that has always affected the PC platform.
Last but not least, Pidgeon also believes that, through the advent of new technologies, browser-based gaming, like Bastion in Google Chrome, will become much more popular and will help bring in new types of gamers, not just hardcore ones.
“PC also provides a leading platform for cloud-based gaming and for quality Web-based gaming. Flash has provided a rich albeit somewhat flawed medium for games, and HTML5 promises even higher quality and likely more secure browser-based gaming. Outside of cloud-based gaming, Chrome is currently the top performer as a Web browser platform, as evidenced by the recent launch of Bastion and other relatively high end games in the Chrome Web Store.”
PC gaming is also considered one of the key markets of 2012 by other analysts, as well as companies like Nvidia.