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Forums - PC Discussion - "There are 711 million PC gamers in the world today" says Intel

czecherychestnut on 12 September 2014
pokoko said:
czecherychestnut said:
See, I'd rather take the actions of game developers and publishers as a measure of how big PC gaming is, and if we look at the target platforms for a lot of big games released today (ie non indie games) then the overwhelming majority are targeting consoles. If you look at the earning reports of the major publishers such as Ubi, Activision, Take 2, the majority of their earnings come from consoles.

That would indicate that though I'm sure there are 711 million people that play farmville or solitaire, the majority of money paying gamers are on consoles, otherwise publishers would be seeing higher revenue from PC games than console games, and the PC platform would be the lead platform for most games.

You also need to keep in mind that intel has no presence in consoles (unlike its competitor), so its in their interest to promote and talk up PC gaming, just like nVidia.

I have no doubt that gaming revenue on PC dwarfs that on gaming consoles.

It's just a hell of a lot more spread out over a vast array of genres and types.  MMOs, micro-transaction games, and casual titles make up a massive segment of that in addition to AAA multi-platform titles.  A friend's wife spends a lot more time gaming than anyone I know, and probably a lot more money, even though she only plays easy puzzle and mystery games.

We might not want to count these other types of games but people in the gaming industry certainly do.  Money is money.

You say that, but the evidence says otherwise. Lets look at some of the major publishers and see how their revenue was split in 2013:

Activision (including Blizzard): PC + online: 1.254 billion (27%), Consoles: 2.379 billion (52%) (http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ACTI/3467226262x0x746096/2205B72D-1007-4DCB-A5F1-2D121D8EC95C/Activision_Blizzard_2013_AR.1.pdf)

Ubisoft: PC: 15% of revenue, Consoles: 82% of revenue (https://www.ubisoftgroup.com/comsite_common/en-US/images/18ubisoft%20fy14%20earnings%20english%20finaltcm99143202.pdf)

Take 2: Console: 91.4%  of 2.35 billion (PC is not disclosed, however is obviously less than 8.6%) (http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9NTUwOTc0fENoaWxkSUQ9MjQ1MzYzfFR5cGU9MQ==&t=1)

EA: PC: 928 million, Consoles (not including handhelds): 2.325 billion, mobile: 339 million (http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=762744)

Yes there is bucketloads of MMO's that are big in China/Korea, and lots of online games (and remember we are talking about PC here, not PC plus mobile), but the point is if PC was really so much larger than consoles then you would see that in the financial results of the big publishers, or at least a big push into that space. But we aren't seeing that, the major publishers are still focussing the majority of their efforts on consoles. 



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Nettles on 12 September 2014
pokoko said:
czecherychestnut said:
See, I'd rather take the actions of game developers and publishers as a measure of how big PC gaming is, and if we look at the target platforms for a lot of big games released today (ie non indie games) then the overwhelming majority are targeting consoles. If you look at the earning reports of the major publishers such as Ubi, Activision, Take 2, the majority of their earnings come from consoles.

That would indicate that though I'm sure there are 711 million people that play farmville or solitaire, the majority of money paying gamers are on consoles, otherwise publishers would be seeing higher revenue from PC games than console games, and the PC platform would be the lead platform for most games.

You also need to keep in mind that intel has no presence in consoles (unlike its competitor), so its in their interest to promote and talk up PC gaming, just like nVidia.

I have no doubt that gaming revenue on PC dwarfs that on gaming consoles.

It's just a hell of a lot more spread out over a vast array of genres and types.  MMOs, micro-transaction games, and casual titles make up a massive segment of that in addition to AAA multi-platform titles.  A friend's wife spends a lot more time gaming than anyone I know, and probably a lot more money, even though she only plays easy puzzle and mystery games.

We might not want to count these other types of games but people in the gaming industry certainly do.  Money is money.

You don't need a brand new intel PC/computer to play these easy puzzle games though.

As for the guy before saying Asian gaming market is the biggest in revenue.... ever heard of piracy? Besides the games sell for alot less over there because people don't earn as much.Alot of folks are grossly overestimating the numbers here.



Downanime00 on 13 September 2014

PC gamers is the pirate of all pirate so I wouldn't be proud of them.  Whenever they talk all high and mighty about how great PC is.  I alway think to myself, "If you guys are so great, buy the games".  I hate PC gamer the most so I could careless how many there are.  They are not gamer to me.



OttoniBastos on 13 September 2014

How much are low-end machines for business/facebook/league of legends?



jigokutamago on 13 September 2014

No Intel, playing farmvile does not make you a PC gamer.

Playing Minesweeper does however.



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pokoko on 13 September 2014
czecherychestnut said:

You say that, but the evidence says otherwise. Lets look at some of the major publishers and see how their revenue was split in 2013:

Activision (including Blizzard): PC + online: 1.254 billion (27%), Consoles: 2.379 billion (52%) (http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ACTI/3467226262x0x746096/2205B72D-1007-4DCB-A5F1-2D121D8EC95C/Activision_Blizzard_2013_AR.1.pdf)

Ubisoft: PC: 15% of revenue, Consoles: 82% of revenue (https://www.ubisoftgroup.com/comsite_common/en-US/images/18ubisoft%20fy14%20earnings%20english%20finaltcm99143202.pdf)

Take 2: Console: 91.4%  of 2.35 billion (PC is not disclosed, however is obviously less than 8.6%) (http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9NTUwOTc0fENoaWxkSUQ9MjQ1MzYzfFR5cGU9MQ==&t=1)

EA: PC: 928 million, Consoles (not including handhelds): 2.325 billion, mobile: 339 million (http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=762744)

Yes there is bucketloads of MMO's that are big in China/Korea, and lots of online games (and remember we are talking about PC here, not PC plus mobile), but the point is if PC was really so much larger than consoles then you would see that in the financial results of the big publishers, or at least a big push into that space. But we aren't seeing that, the major publishers are still focussing the majority of their efforts on consoles. 

I'm kind of at a loss here, to be honest.  I say that PC gaming revenue is high because it's spread out over a very wide spectrum of games beyond the AAA model, so you ... link to publishers that mainly deal with the AAA model?  Why?

You didn't even list the biggest gaming company, Tencent?  Why not?  King, Nexon, GungHo?  They're all bigger than Ubisoft.

You want to see games that make a lot of money?

That's only micro-transactions from one type of game, it's not even touching on other streams of revenue.

I know people don't like it, which is amusing, but PC gaming is massive.



Mohasus on 13 September 2014
Nettles said:

They're wrong.
A better calculation would be # of registered steam users.

Recent numbers of that are around 80 million.


No, recent numbers of ACTIVE USERS are around 80 million. That is, people that bought at least a game and played in the last month. And no, it isn't a better calculation. People also play blizzard games, LoL, EA games (BF4, FIFA, The Sims), MMOs, chinese and korean games that aren't on steam (Crossfire for example) and a lot of things that aren't on steam.



Aura7541 on 13 September 2014

Hmmmm..... I wonder how how many of the 711 million are core gamers...



ikki5 on 13 September 2014
jigokutamago said:
No Intel, playing farmvile does not make you a PC gamer.

Playing Minesweeper does however.


I would have thought that playing games on a PC on a regular basis would be a PC gamer....



pokoko on 13 September 2014
ikki5 said:


I would have thought that playing games on a PC on a regular basis would be a PC gamer....

Crazy talk.  Slander and libel.  They aren't PC gamers, they're merely people who play games on PC.  Totally different thing.

Next you'll be telling me that soda and pop are the same thing.  Disgusting.