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

[pokoko]

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.