PC Gaming's Growth Earns Itself a "Bright Spot" Amidst Tumbling Industry

As there seems to be no clear hint that the gaming industry we all care about will walk out of the down period anytime soon, we could get some hope and encouragement if we look at a silver lining — PC gaming, which has had a comparatively strong performance over the period of slightly more than a decade compared with consoles. 

According to a recently published report by Epyllion titled "The State of Video Gaming in 2025," whose analysis is based on data and information from various sources, including Newzoo, Pelham Smithers, and IDC, PCs have "added 65% more content spend than livingroom console since 2011 and 225% more than combined console, or $30B in total," therefore earning itself a "big bright spot." These numbers exclude the hardware and accessories spending. 

Notably, even though PC gaming has become obviously much larger over this time period, the growth of mobile gaming share is still times larger, making it a key player that helps drive gaming's growth. 

If we look at the metrics starting from twenty years ago about how the non-mobile video game content spending goes, it's easy to see how PC’s share here has grown from 29% in 2004 to roughly 53% in two decades later. 

The year 2021 was the ending of a 10-year growth wave that the industry had enjoyed. While consoles have been struggling but failed to achieve growth since then, the report shows PC has been acting differently, enjoying a growth of 20%.

The reasons behind PC gaming's growth have been attributed to its existing and increasingly significant advantages. The former includes a bigger library and social graph, the "ability to multi-task," lower entry cost, and better competitive capability, while the latter covers more game releases, PlayStation and Xbox also releasing exclusive titles on PC, premium Roblox games only purchasable on PC, etc. 

Things could be slightly different for 2025, as the second generation of Switch will debut. Do you believe it would encourage players to spend more on consoles? Share your thoughts with us.

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