Cast you mind back to the end of last generation and it was all doom and gloom, consoles were dead, no one was going to buy them, PC gaming was the place to be. Well, according to a new report from Jon Peddie Research, the opposite is true.
They predict that up to 20 million PC gamers will be defecting to “TV gaming platforms,” which includes consoles along with cloud gaming platforms, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire, within the next four years.
“The PC market continues to decline because the innovation that took place in the past providing speed ups and clever new things has all but stopped, plus the product introduction times are stretching out to four years,” said President Jon Peddie.
“We are observing a higher percentage of Low/Mid-Range PC products sold because of the consumer’s intent to use with games,” added Senior Analyst, Ted Pollak. “This, unfortunately, does not generate more volume but does guide research and design as well as marketing investments for hardware providers and foreshadows the ultimate use model of the PC, a desktop ergonomic gaming/computing environment that embraces user choice and customization. Gaming services used with TV displays, whether local or cloud-based, will absorb PC defectors and likely flourish with new entrants.”
The report seems to forget that you can connect a PC to most TVs these days, both have HDMI so there’s nothing stopping you from running a gaming machine on a 52″ 4K monster of a television.
However, interest in the new consoles may sway a few PC owners if the specs are impressive and the cost is right. Google recently revealed their cloud gaming plans but as the most successful game streaming service on the planet, PlayStation Now, only has 700,000 subscribers, it seems that consumers are not very interested in streaming video games just yet but that may change.
I await your comments below with interest, get to it my little keyboard warriors!
