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Kyuu on 02 November 2025
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SvennoJ said:
Kyuu said:

If you want to know whether the market is shrinking or growing, look more at software sales/revenue and less at hardware install base. But the more data you look into the better. Any individual metric will be misleading.

PS4 traditional software sales beat DS + Wii's combined, and PS3 + X360's combined. PS4 also has a massive f2p/mtx spending that beats its traditional software sales and completely dwarfs the 7th gen. PS4 remained a big platform years after PS5 launched. Looking at hardware data alone doesn't demonstrate this, rather it implies that PS4 instantly died after PS5.

PS5's popularity as an individual console will be a lot harder to estimate. Because Sony is combining its numbers with PS4 right now, and will combine them with PS6 in the future. Extrapolation is getting trickier over time.

I honestly don't care if the console market is shrinking. Handhelds/hybrids and PC are legitmate alternatives. If PC is the reason why the "console market" is shrinking, I'm okay with this.

Mobile phones are the reason though, PC gaming revenue is also shrinking. Engagement still goes up, yet Mobile rakes in the money while PC and console software revenue are stagnating / declining. (still forecast to grow thanks to FTP MTX etc, yay?)

The race to the bottom sale prices on PC and abundance of ftp are starting to hurt now, who doesn't have a huge backlog from Steam, Humble Bundle, GoG sales.

Steam had 147 million monthly active users (MAU) in Q1 2025, with a peak of 36.7 million concurrent users in January 2025

As of June 2025, the PlayStation 5 (PS5) has officially surpassed the PlayStation 4 (PS4) in monthly active users (MAU), although the exact number for PS5 is not public. The combined total of PS4 and PS5 MAUs reached 124 million as of March 31, 2025.

As of May 2025, there were approximately 128 million active monthly users of the Nintendo Switch globally, which was unchanged from the previous 12-month period. (Probably a bit more now after the Switch 2 launch)

Xbox has over 500 million monthly active users across all platforms, with a significant portion coming from its gaming ecosystem which includes consoles, PC, and mobile. (Even including those not gaming err, most useless stat)

Roblox had over 380 million monthly active users in 2025, with its user base continuing to grow. Recent data from the third quarter of 2025 indicates average daily active users reached 151.5 million. (80% of those users accessing the platform via mobile devices, tablet/phone)

There are an estimated 3 billion active mobile gamers worldwide, with this number expected to grow to 3.9 billion by 2028. Mobile gaming is the largest segment of the gaming market by player count and revenue. 


Nah the reason the console market is shrinking is not attracting new customers at the same rate anymore. People have lower attention spans nowadays, full games are too long, bit of twiddling on a smart phone in between scrolling social media is sufficient for gen alpha.

Mobile gaming remains its own thing for the most part. It has some similarities with consoles/PC in f2p and indies, but besides this they're almost two distinct hobbies appealing to different crowds.


I think traditional "Console + PC" gaming is quite a bit bigger now than it was in the 7th gen if we are to look beyond the misleading hardware figures (which are inflated by the same users buying multiple systems). The industry is now big enough that stagnation wouldn't be a problem, and I don't think it's stagnating yet anyway. PC (which is more than Steam) continues to grow thanks primarily to Asia. Playstation is a bigger business than ever, and the Switch 2 is so far the fastest selling console of all time. It's just Xbox that is rapidly declining.

Newer stantionary consoles are losing ground to PC and Switch, thanks in part to Xbox's decline. But it's hard to quantify because the Switch can count as a home console as well. The incentive to buy multiple consoles is much lower than before for a good number of reasons (high prices, weak/limited exclusives, Nintendo and Sony making one console per generation, Xbox declining, etc) which means that software sales and user spensing will be concentrated across a fewer relevant platform. It doesn't really mean the industry declined since gen 7. I primarily gauge decline/growth on a gen on gen basis as opposed to year over year which is often temporary.


Even with PC, Xbox, f2p, and mtx excluded, PS4 and Switch combined are much bigger than PS3 + X360 + Wii. And honestly... as much as I dislike f2p and microtransactions, I can't just pretend that they don't count as a popularity measure. People put countless money/hours into these because they think they're worth it. The same goes for subscription services.