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Forums - Gaming Discussion - I honestly believe gaming PCs are becoming niche market

RolStoppable said:
Middle to high end PC gaming should actually be on the rise due to more and more PS and Xbox gamers growing up, having their own income and graduating to a more sophisticated platform.

This assumption being based on the notion that console gamers are generally young lack their own income and are gaming on what you may call an unsophisticated platform?

Ok.



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From my point of view PC gaming is growing. PC gaming is still very small here compared to console, but it's growing. I've had around 5 close friends buy gaming PC's in the last 2 years.



Ok lets clear a couple things up

From this

We can deduce that Nvidia sold ~100 million desktop GPUs alone last year. Nvidia don't actually sell full cards they sell GPU dies to board partners who then manufacture a card which includes a PCP board, RAM, Power supply, ports and connectors etc then they box up the card and sell to retailers. For the $1000 Titan for example the part that Nvidia sells for US $115.79 / piece so given Intrinsic's lowball $1b estemate (GPU sales accounted for $3.2b of Nvidia's sales last year and most of that is consumer GPUs) that would be 8.6 million Titans. According to the Steam hardware survey the GTX 770 is their most popular high end card at the moment one of those is just $65 and keep in mind these prices are via a reseller so Nvida probably charge less.



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RolStoppable said:
Intrinsic said:
RolStoppable said:
Middle to high end PC gaming should actually be on the rise due to more and more PS and Xbox gamers growing up, having their own income and graduating to a more sophisticated platform.

This assumption being based on the notion that console gamers are generally young lack their own income and are gaming on what you may call an unsophisticated platform?

Ok.

Aren't those things true? Do you want to tell me that all those people who constantly argue about PS and Xbox graphics (and the PC master race) all this time are adults who have a job?

Fixed that for you and inserted the bolded part.

But to answer your question.... you really think 10-16yr olds are what makes up the majority of any kinda gaming forum? Do you realize that ones level of fanboyism is directly proportional to how much money they spend/spent on their platform of choice? In an argument of which is better, who do you thik will be more bitter? The person that spent $400 for a system or the person that spent $2000 for a system?

An adult with a job and prorities tends to just want simpler things. Unless said adult is heavily into PC gaming most others just want a small discrete box they can plug into their TV and hammer out an hr or two of use everyday after work or during or around dinner. Shit gets more complicated when their is a gf or kid in the mix. Consoles actually work better for those people. Easier to justify spending $400 to the wife than spending $700-$2000 for a rig that as far as she is concerned makes you antisocial.

Long story short. Don't generalize. It usually never ends well.



Intrinsic said:

Errr.... 2M discrete GPUs in 3 months? You must have not read what I posted. Which is kinda what happens a lot in threads like these, peeople just come and give their perspective and ignore what everyone else says.

Those estimates weren't for ONE quater.... it was for an entire year. So you are looking at 2M per year not in 3 months. And I arrived at this from nvidias very own earning report.

Now I know I over estimated things but I was just trying to paint a picture. But fine, since a lot here want to be specific lets go into specifics.

Nvidia posted overall revenue of $1.14 billion for one quater. And announced that it was up 3% YOY in the same quater. Now lets be generous and assume that it had similar results for all its previous quaters. That puts its yearly total revenue at approx $4.5B. Now that total revenue isn't just profits, its "total revenue" for that year.

And we all know nvidia doesn't only make discrete GPUs. They make mobile GPUs, tegra SOC and even the nvidia shield console. They also provide GPUs for server based applications and services.

So lets be realistic, how much of that $4.5 billion do you guys think realistically is attributed to just its discrete GPU market all considering? $1B? $2B??? 

And now even if we want to assume that everyone that buys a GPU only buys one in the $350 range... at $1B of revenue for that its around 3M GPUs per year. (2.8+ but I am rounding up). And this is really low balling it cause we are assuming that every GPU sold is in the $350 price average bracket. I don't see how 3M GPUs sold in a year doesn't make PC gaming in general a niche market. And if we were to be honest here, and really factored in all its type of GPUss including those that retail for over $500. This number could drop a lot faster.

I am not saying 3M in sales is bad... but its definately niche for an entire year. Even more so when you start to look at how much of that number are actually new buyers and not just people upgrading their PCs.

I will end by saying again. If Nvidia sells like 5-10M GPUs a year, be rest assured they will not just be talking about revenue and percentages in their financial reports. They will hammer those sales numbers into everyones skulls and say things like we sold more GPUs than the WiiU or as much as the PS4...etc. Its just busines. In financial reports, the real telling things aren't what is said... its usually whats not said.

This is from 2011, sales have increased a lot since then, but still.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/graphics/display/20110809190609_AMD_and_Nvidia_Lose_Market_Share_as_Shipments_of_Graphics_Adapters_Rises.html

Shipments during the second quarter of 2011 did not behave according to past years with regard to seasonality, and was higher on a year-to-year comparison for the quarter. Normally, the second quarter of the year is a slower business quarter in the graphics industry (and in the PC industry as a whole). This year, Q2 2011 did not conform to the normal seasonal cycle. Instead, shipments increased to 140 million units, up 22 million units from this quarter last year.

Let's consolidate those numbers for Q2 2011.

Nvidia : 23,828,000
ATI/AMD : 28,865,920

So what we have, from ATI and Nvidia alone is 52,693,920 cards shipped in JUST Q2 of 2011.

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/amd-loses-gpu-market-share-as-market-expands-jpr/

In total, around 446 million of graphics adapters for PCs (discrete and integrated) were shipped in 2013. As low-end standalone GPUs extinguish, sales of GPUs will decline to 422 million in 2017.

The general concensus is that on average 70% are onboard/integrated, of those 70%, 85% of them are Intel embedded graphics, leaving 15% for onboard amd/nvidia, the other 30% are low to high end gpus, or of the sold units in 2013, 133.8million were low to high end gpu cards, even if we go with the assumption that only 10% of those cards were mid to high end (in reality its closer to 28%), then thats still 13.4 million per year, if we go with the examples of mid to high end cards sold in previous years being around 28%, then it's closer to 36 million.



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Intrinsic said:
RolStoppable said:

Aren't those things true? Do you want to tell me that all those people who constantly argue about PS and Xbox graphics (and the PC master race) all this time are adults who have a job?

Fixed that for you and inserted the bolded part.

But to answer your question.... you really think 10-16yr olds are what makes up the majority of any kinda gaming forum? Do you realize that ones level of fanboyism is directly proportional to how much money they spend/spent on their platform of choice? In an argument of which is better, who do you thik will be more bitter? The person that spent $400 for a system or the person that spent $2000 for a system?

An adult with a job and prorities tends to just want simpler things. Unless said adult is heavily into PC gaming most others just want a small discrete box they can plug into their TV and hammer out an hr or two of use everyday after work or during or around dinner. Shit gets more complicated when their is a gf or kid in the mix. Consoles actually work better for those people. Easier to justify spending $400 to the wife than spending $700-$2000 for a rig that as far as she is concerned makes you antisocial.

Long story short. Don't generalize. It usually never ends well.


Some people dont wat to hear the truth.

Average video game fan is 35 years old

The typical video game player is 35, has one child and earns more than £23,000 a year, contrary to stereotypes of teenage game addicts.

The average UK video game fan doesn't actually look like this. Photo: Alamy

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10159917/Average-video-game-fan-is-35-years-old.html



zarx said:

Ok lets clear a couple things up

From this

We can deduce that Nvidia sold ~100 million desktop GPUs alone last year. Nvidia don't actually sell full cards they sell GPU dies to board partners who then manufacture a card which includes a PCP board, RAM, Power supply, ports and connectors etc then they box up the card and sell to retailers. For the $1000 Titan for example the part that Nvidia sells for US $115.79 / piece so given Intrinsic's lowball $1b estemate (GPU sales accounted for $3.2b of Nvidia's sales last year and most of that is consumer GPUs) that would be 8.6 million Titans. According to the Steam hardware survey the GTX 770 is their most popular high end card at the moment one of those is just $65 and keep in mind these prices are via a reseller so Nvida probably charge less.


Indeed, its amazing what googling for facts can do over pulling numbers out of your backside eh?.

I think we're fighting a lost cause though, to be honest.



Nettles said:

PC games have longer lifespans than console games so it is hard to compare.
Take WoW for example, now 10 years old and still 7 million active subscriptions.Impossible to replicate on a console because console lifespan is 6-7 years.
PC gaming market is far healthier than 10 years ago.
Digital distribution saved PC gaming, console gaming will struggle with that transition.Will a 6-7 year old kid be able to work it out? Next generation we will see the last of the physical console games IMO.


Reality is different mate.

Average video game fan is 35 years old

The typical video game player is 35, has one child and earns more than £23,000 a year, contrary to stereotypes of teenage game addicts.

 

The average UK video game fan doesn't actually look like this.

Gamers show dedication to their console, with more than three quarters saying that they will never stop loving video games. They will also typically spend around four hours queueing for a new game at a midnight store opening once a year.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10159917/Average-video-game-fan-is-35-years-old.html



Intrinsic said:

Long story short. Don't generalize. It usually never ends well.

Dont generalize

Intrinsic said:

An adult with a job and prorities tends to just want simpler things. Unless said adult is heavily into PC gaming most others just want a small discrete box they can plug into their TV and hammer out an hr or two of use everyday after work or during or around dinner.

Generalizes.



zarx said:

Ok lets clear a couple things up

From this

We can deduce that Nvidia sold ~100 million desktop GPUs alone last year. Nvidia don't actually sell full cards they sell GPU dies to board partners who then manufacture a card which includes a PCP board, RAM, Power supply, ports and connectors etc then they box up the card and sell to retailers. For the $1000 Titan for example the part that Nvidia sells for US $115.79 / piece so given Intrinsic's lowball $1b estemate (GPU sales accounted for $3.2b of Nvidia's sales last year and most of that is consumer GPUs) that would be 8.6 million Titans. According to the Steam hardware survey the GTX 770 is their most popular high end card at the moment one of those is just $65 and keep in mind these prices are via a reseller so Nvida probably charge less.

Wow.... for someone that seems to be obviously so smart, why do you insist on just ignoring the facts that you have right in front of you. I will only talk based on what you have presented here.

If nvidia made an earning report and announced that it had 4Q total revenue of $1.14B. You know what, lets even make that $2B per quater though that is not what Nvidia said (they said $1.14B). Now for 4Qs thats $8B right? 

So lets use your $115/piece number here and the fact that as you have so kindly pointed out they sold 100M GPUs last year alone. Which so happens to cover the period their earnings report shows. Lets do some math now shall we? 100M x $115.

THAT IS $11.5 BILLION

Can you kindly tell us then, why Nvidia chose to lie about its anual earnings?

Now mind you, this $11.5B was made from selling ONLY discrete desktop GPUs. No tegra, no nvidia shield, no mobile GPUs. Nothing else. You clearly have no idea what you are tal;king about. All I have done is use the date you have provided and compared it to what Nvidia announced themselves.

So please tell us, why will nvidia announce the 2013-2014 finacial 4Q to be their best quater in a while at $1.14B in total revenue, when they somehow make an annual $11B in desktop GPU sales alone?????????? Are you delusional or something? or just plain confused.