Triumph of PC gaming: player spending has been growing for 13 years in a row, 40% higher than on consoles

Contrary to many opinions, PCs feel quite confident in gaming. A large-scale study of PC games and more indicates growth amidst the stagnation of consoles.

Lately, it’s often heard that the future belongs to consoles, and the PC market is bleak. The Epyllion research, presented in the form of a massive presentation with over 200 slides, completely refutes this. The PC gaming market is almost the only one demonstrating continuous growth since 2011. Meanwhile, consoles have been stagnating for the last five years, and the mobile market shows only a slight decline.

On the slide, it is easy to see that in 2024, user spending on consoles, including Nintendo Switch, amounted to $18 billion — at the same time, PC gamers spent $30 billion. However, even together, they are far behind the $83 billion of mobile games, which make up 55% of the market. The infographic also well demonstrates the trends. The growth of the console market stopped in 2020, and since then has only small declines and jumps. The mobile segment has stalled and has been slightly decreasing for the last three years.

Games on handheld consoles became the fourth highest in revenue — players spent $9 billion on them. This segment also continues to grow, albeit very slowly. Despite efforts by many companies, virtual reality games have not gained widespread popularity and brought in up to $2 billion.

Epyllion analysts have listed the reasons for the success of PC games:

• Greater selection of games than on consoles, even combined
• Broader coverage of various social categories
• Multitasking (through Alt+Tab one can quickly access guides, streams, editors, etc.)
• Lower (despite popular belief) minimum cost of entry
• The best possible performance
• Greater compatibility with peripherals — mice, keyboards, controllers, etc.
• Greater availability of early access games

Factors for increasing success are:

• More game releases every year
• Availability on the platform of many console games (Sony has started publishing many games from PS, Xbox publishes all)
• Premium Roblox games available only on PC and other associated service factors
• Growth in the segment of fully compatible portable Windows consoles

The chart by platforms does not include device purchases but does include, for example, spending on skins and other similar purchases. They are very significant: just for Counter Strike the market is about $5 billion and exclusively related to PC. Overall, spending on games has slowed recently, but resumed growth last year.