Disclaimer: This thread represents my opinion. The main purpose of this thread is to express my opinion gaming PCs future. By gaming PCs I mean PCs that are meant for gaming. PCs that are used in office or home doesnt fall in this category. Please dont take the thread off topic.

Gaming PCs are something special. These PCs represents users taste in harware and reflects his personality. These PCs are meant for one thing and one thing only. Make the game beautiful. Play is smoothly.

But I think gaming PCs are turning more niche and niche every day. They are not dying. And given their customization options they will survive no matter what odds comes to them. But their progress might come to a stall. Why?

1. The games that push gaming PCs are usually so called AAA games. Love it or hate it but these AAA games breaks the barrier of virtual world which is not possible for many indie games. But AAA games and PC market doesn’t seem a perfect match.

2. AAA games require huge sales with $60 mark to make it profitable. But in PC gaming arena this is less frequent than console games. They are many AAA PC successful games but their number is less than console counterparts.

3. In PC gaming people are delighted with the sale of an AAA game at $10. And why they shouldn’t? It’s a great offer. But from a developers perspective this is not a good sign. They want as many games sold at $60 not in $10.

4. Plus piracy is another reason why these AAA games don’t get money. Piracy in PC is much bigger than console counterpart. If piracy reduced to 20% in PC then their revenue would be 5-10 times bigger than consoles revenue.

5. GPU manufacturers will be in dilemma in future. As the costs of making GPU will keep rising in future. Unless there is somne alternative cheap ways they might face the option to make less variants.

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=185680

6. PC gaming is bigger than console gaming. But majority of that revenue comes from MMO and MOBA games. And these games don’t push visual benchmarks. They don’t push it because they want to make it playable as many gamers they can. So in the end these so called AAA games will push PC graphics.

Ending words: Gaming PCs will never go obsolete. They will keep doing some amazing things. But their progress might face a downward trend.

And yet high end GPU sales are up YoY

I disagree with your opinion based on the higher sales YoY of high end cpu and gpu hardware.

Gaben will save us.

Is it just this year or has it been every year for a while?  If its just this year then that doesn't mean much considering the next gen started and nows probably when most people are gonna upgrade. 

I did one of Steam's survey's yesterday and looked at the results. Over90% of the PCs were weaker than an Xbox One.

"PC gaming is bigger than console gaming." This statement alone proves PC gaming is not niche.

If anything PC gaming appeals to a largely different audience than consoles, but that doesn't make it a niche platform.

I also believe PC gaming can grow as integrated GPUs on PC motherboards and laptops become more powerful.

I'm not sure how you managed to calculate that considering the sheer number of different CPU/GPU configurations, but that still leaves over 7.5 million Steam users with PCs more powerful than a console that released less than a year ago. That number will only climb as people naturally upgrade over time.

OT: I actually think "gaming" PCs are on the up. Building or buying an extreme PC for high-end gaming has always been niche but is actually showing strong signs of growth. It's more cost effective to build/buy a gaming PC now than at any time in the past.

Strange belief when steam just posted there record for highest number of online users last week

Did anyone have a good reason to upgrade within the last say 5 years? not really.
Thanks to archaic PS360 visuals.

I do have a 2009 CPU and a 2010 GPU. And I can play almost all games at 1080p60 with high/ultra settings or something like 1080p 45fps with ultra settings. (bought the GPU 4years ago for 120€ and the PC incl. ram, cpu, psu, mainboard, case, hdd etc. used this year for exactly 100€ )

The visually best game on PC IMHO (not shader wise because those simply didnt exist back then but polycount and textures etc) is still Crysis from 2007 which is VERY sad.

PS4 and X1 also dont help because I clasify them as alternate reality PC graphics from 2010 (where NO consoles slowed down PC graphic evolution)

IF i get less than 30fps with GTA5 (not if its again thanks to a shitty port) I will upgrade.  30fps because thats still better than the 25fps I get on my PS3...