Hey guys

I have a question that I think your colective minds can answer much better then a google search

I just had a conversation with a girl that said more pc games are sold then console games. She reckons a friend did some research but I think this research is bogus because from what I have seen on VG charts the home console sells far more games a year then the PC. I estimated based on attach ratios that home consoles, including hand held consoles sell over 2billion games a year. I would be game to say maybe 3billion. She said that alot of PC sales are for games online. And I said more people would play games online because any one can jump on a site and play a free flash game when ever they want but she said she was talking about full price games made by real publishers. I didnt think PC digital distribution was big enough to eclipse 3 current gen consoles, current ps2 sales and 2 hand helds if my estimations are correct.

I just wanted to know if any one here knows how much the home console market sells a year compared to how much the pc market sells a year.
And how much the hand held market sells a year. Or by month or week or just anyway to compare the two so I can settle this arguement and find out who is wrong.

Thank you for your time guys I really apreciate your knowledge.

is her friend Shio?

if by sold you mean pirated, then there's a little possibility

The short answer is yes, the long answer is no......

The short answer is - when you count all types of games, across the world, include things like MMO revenues and micropay and hundreds of smaller games - yes the PC outperforms consoles overall as a platform.

The long answer, is when you start talking about AAA titles and such, and other fare targeted at "mainstream core gamers" and leave out MMO and renewables, consoles currently have a sizably larger market share.

So really it depends on what metrics you are using to come up with your numbers, but if you are talking overall gaming revenue worldwide then yes PC is still superior. If you were making a single player large budget game, you would need to be on consoles.

Unit sales are irrelevant, software sales revenue is a better measure. I believe PC gaming revenue was close if not over home consoles revenue combined.

Even software sales are largely irrelevant when it comes to how much profit each platform generates (if such is your desire). Micro-transactions rule on Facebook, for example, and are utterly huge (billion dollars at least this year, iirc). Facebook, and similar, is changing gaming and how it is perceived. No console necessary, and far better social integration than any Live or PSN account alllows.

@ Xellos: this is a direct quote from face book "i'm not talking about 'free', i'm talking about sales of proper games that are also available on the shelves in shops." Thats the metric she is using here, what are your thoughts on that?

This is another quote: "If you look at sales in the shops then you'll see that console games sell better, but if you take into account online sales, PC game sales outstrip console games in total." and thats when I agreed that pc gaming as a whole is more popular (thanks to pirating, demo software, cheap casual games etc) but then she told me she was specificaly talking about the DD counterparts to the shelf bought games. And that was something I couldnt belive so I asked her for proof and she said a friend did some research and told her that.

So thats why I wanted to check if there was something I missed hahaha and theres no better place then VG chartz!

Based on that narrow definition, the answer is probably 'no' overall. Certain regions (Germany being the most notable) and certain games targeted specifically at the PC (Dragon Age for example, many RTS's, Valve games etc) will see higher retail and DD sales than individual consoles, but taking everything into account, consoles have higher sales of those sort of games. The PC is still a very profitable platform though for retail games and has a far more diverse and interesting range of games.

Thanks Foamer, thats what I thought. Yeah I love PC gaming and totaly agree that on the broad spectrum of things its as vast as ghost in the shells internet lol, but because she specified a tiny facet of the pc gaming market she was at a loss from the start hey? I told her if she hadnt specified this particual area of the market I would have totlay agree that pc gaming is HUGE!!! Like other have said it intergrates face book and a lot of other little things that we dont generaly think about as gaming but actual are.