PC gaming has expanded its lead over consoles in the hardware market, and may safely be called "dominant" in the industry, according to a recent study by John Peddie Research.

The study found the PC gaming market is worth $21.5 billion USD - over twice the size of its competitors in the console industry. The report took into account market sales of personal computers, accessories, upgrades, and other such form of hardware used for gaming purposes. Senior Gaming Analyst Ted Pollak says it's being driven by both casual gamers moving to mobile platforms, and by more hardcore gamers who desire gaming experiences not available through console technology.

Jon Peddie, President of JPR, attributes part of the success of the PC hardware market simply to more advanced technology:

"Nvidia, Intel, and AMD have enthusiast CPUs and GPUs that are so powerful, when combined with SSD's and fast memory, they absolutely trounce the computing power and gaming capabilities of the newest console generation,” and that “committed PC gamers...are power users and pay thousands for the ability to play games at very high settings.”

For commentary on the rise of PC gaming, see IGN’s article on the subject.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/07/14/pc-dominates-gaming-hardware-sales

I guess its not so "Niche" after all LOL

How exactly is this being defined? I bought a 350 buck computer and use it primarily for schoolwork... but I did play World of Goo on it. Does that count?

...and yet the software barely sells.

Well you would think so since you don't have to upgrade the hardware in a console after 2 years.

I know right? So many people just ignore PC gamers as "niche" and say that games don't need to be optomised for PC period. This completely contradicts that.

Gaming hardware, AKA enthusiast hardware (dedicated graphics, higher end CPUs, etc).

You don't in a PC either. The general rule is a new graphics card every 4 years (~$299) and a new CPU/MB (~$200) every 5 or 6 years.

I would make a parody thread about PC getting dominated in gaming software sales, but it only be true for AAAs and I ran out of pp creating responding to the marketshare thread.

Nice retort, on the surface.

But then you consider the following: the pc sales are being compared to ALL console hardware sales, not one particular brand or model, so PC hardware sales is twice that of ALL consoles combined.

Basically put, most people own more than one console, and many buy more than one of the same particular console, or replace a broken console, but despite this pc hardware sales is 2x the entire console hardware sales.

"Senior Gaming Analyst Ted Pollak says it's being driven by both casual gamers moving to mobile platforms,"

Doesn't seem like they're talking about high end graphics cards here.