I noticed something yesterday at Best Buy. They've got gaming PC's & laptops at random locations all over the store. And just 2 years ago, I was told by a Geek Squad moron that the best gaming PC that they carried was the high end iMac. I love the Mac and the MBP is my laptop of choice. But an iMac does not make a good gaming PC. So I was very impressed that Best Buy corrected their shortcomings. But I was worried that this change was only done locally. Thankfully, it's global. http://www.pcgamer.com/pc-shipments...utive-quarter-but-gaming-pcs-are-on-the-rise/ "At Puget Systems, our high end gaming PC sales have never been better. Windows 10, Skylake, 4K, VR, and a strong year of gaming title launches, has made 2015 a strong year for enthusiast gaming PCs, and we expect 2016 to be even stronger," Jon Back, founder of Puget Systems, told Maximum PC. "Keep in mind, when Gartner and IDC talk about PC shipments, they're talking about the volume market, and most of the volume is entry level. We enthusiast PC builders live is a completely different world!" So, cheap/crap PC's are dying -- thank God -- and they're being replaced by the more robust gaming PC. Awesome. Because I really need a second system to complement my Xbone and the PS4 just ain't cutting it.
PC sales in general are the lowest they've been in 10 years but I believe things will pick up again after the summer.
As bfun said, while PC sales had picked up a few years ago, they are at a low point right now. But the PC is doing fine as a gaming platform. Steam is very popular with around 125 million active users. High-end nvidia cards sell well. Indie games are popular. There's a huge amount of casual gaming on the PC too. PC gaming brings in around $32B a year, which is more than console or mobile gaming. The idea that PC gaming is dying or struggling is a myth, based on old data that didn't take digital distribution into account. It's a very different market from the consoles in a lot of ways though. MMOs and MOBAs are very popular. PC gamers tend to stick with games for a long time, Counter-Strike, WOW, LoL, or DOTA being good examples of this. PC gamers tend to be less interested in flavor of the week AAA blockbuster type games, and usually buy them cheap during sales, which is probably why PC versions are often an afterthought. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/...the-pc-is-the-worlds-biggest-gaming-platform/
how does one even track pc gaming sales and activity anymore? it's all split now. steam being the defacto choice is not a thing anymore. ea started origin. blizzard games are on battle.net. League of Legends is from their own riot games' installer. ubisoft games run on uplay which can piggy back off of steam, but only if you buy them from steam. otherwise you're gonna be using uplay on its own. rockstar games require rockstar games social club. it feels like there's only a few big publishers left that haven't branched off into their own ecosystem.. Bethesda and Activision. I'm a super casual gamer nowadays as I don't buy many games, but already as is, I have to pop open steam, uplay, and battle.net everytime I boot up my pc. imagine if I played LoL, ea games, and gta5
And that's when you end up only playing a fraction of the games out there. You want to play starcraft? warcraft? diablo? overwatch? well too bad, you have to get battle.net want to play any EA published game? Titanfall 2's coming out.. interested? well too bad, get origin. hey gta5 and the division are on a 50% off sale on amazon pc download.. want them? well too bad, they aren't steam activations. my steam account has been just for shits and giggles for a while now. The only reason I have even used it in the past few months is because I bought rainbow six siege on steam on launch day. if i had waited a few weeks, i would've bought it on sale at green man gaming as a uplay code.
This is true, I also pay more sometimes since non-Steam activation sales are quite popular nowadays. But it's just something I won't do. I'm not even sure why, it's not loyalty or anything like that. I just don't like installing a lot of redundant software and am in too deep with Steam.... The way I look at it, it's 2016 and I can just as easily be entertained by free Youtube videos. If they want my money it will be on my terms. I don't have much free time either, so it helps narrow my game selection.
A big part of my preference for Steam is their great refund policy. I feel like it makes a steam copy more valuable, because you can easily get a refund if you're not happy. Steam is also the platform the majority of my friends use. I consider non-Steam games less valuable, and often won't pay as much for them. I wish other game companies would just get onboard with steam. I don't like having to use a bunch of similar but nowhere near as good services like uplay and origin to be able to play everything.
Despite the bad PC sales PC gaming is still doing well. PC sale are down because Windows 10 was free and people haven't a good reason to upgrade. By the time back-to-school sales starts next year there will be mid-range laptops that can match PS4 graphics while sipping battery power. The industry is also banking heavily on virtual reality and is expected to generate $24 billion in PC sales this year. An estimated 2.5 million VR devices will be sold in 2016. 12 million in 2017 and 24 million in 2018. All those devices require high-end hardware to power them. 90fps is the target to prevent motion sickness.
Confirmed, Intel firing 12,000 people, PC sales are certainly not on the rise. http://news.sky.com/story/1681660/intel-to-cut-up-to-12000-jobs-over-next-year
Yeah that sucks but I've been wondering what's in Intel's future since their announcement about the future of their CPUs. Even worse for them is AMD's Zen CPU is supposed to be competitive with Skylake so we might have a price war soon.
I think Intel is a victim of their own success. Their processors have been so good for so long that no one is upgrading. Their CPUs are good enough for what most people do with them, even gamers and power users.
I've actually begun to wonder if Nvidia will someday surpass Intel. It seems like they got big plans for the future while Intel is reducing and concentrating on a single market segment.
Don't worry guys. I did some more research and I found tomorrows gaming PC. And the nice thing is, it's out now for less than a $1000. Yay! That's right. We're all going mobile!
I am still not considering tablets as mainstream gaming devices until they have actual 1st party controllers made with a standard key layout. Playing any kind of game with virtual screen controllers is horrible and so tablets are restricted to basic tap the screen crap. I wan't to be able to plug it into my TV, sit back and play with controller. It would be nice I guess to see AMD come up with something to counter Intel. It may refocus Intel into actually working on something special again.
I originally posted that iPad Pro video as a joke but now I'm afraid that it's actually happening. http://toucharcade.com/2015/05/26/m...-all-other-gaming-sectors-says-latest-report/ I hate the fact that the casuals are steering mainstream gaming towards mobile gaming. All casuals seem to do is screw up gaming for the rest of us. The Nintendo Wii held the top location in retail for years because the mindless buying direction of the casual player. And that's probably why the Xbox One was designed with the casual in mind. And now Sony is trying to embrace the casual. Thankfully, MS either fired or forced out everyone that was involved with that lame casual direction and now their focus is on the hardcore gamer. Hopefully they can continue to keep the Xbone away from casual control.
Mobile gaming is not 100% casual. It's a mix of a wide variety of genres and relative levels of complexity. And as mobile chipsets become more powerful/sophisticated, that will naturally continue to expand. Joystick support does not necessarily equal "hardcore" either.
As far as the XB1 is concerned, I feel like the damage is done. They tried to attract casuals with kinect, except no one wanted kinect. And bundling the kinect sensor with the console jacked the price up to $500, which scared away the casuals and made the cheaper, more powerful PS4 an easy choice for hardcore gamers. They also thought they could get away with weaker hardware if they were targeting more of a casual crowd. The XB1 needs a more powerful refresh much more than PS4. Maybe this time they'll use the right kind of memory and an adequately powered GPU. It's especially strange that they tried to attract casuals because the Xbox brand has always been about high-end hardware and core gamers. The original Xbox used a Geforce 3, which was state of the art for 2001, and the 360 used a souped up X1900, which was state of the art for 2005. Using low-end hardware that was out of date by several years didn't fit with the Xbox brand or the customers Xbox usually attracts. Xbox was always meant to be an extension of or alternative to PC gaming in the living room. A GPU on par with a Radeon 7970 or R9 290 would have been a better fit for the Xbox One.