Spyxos
Gold Member
I don't know what's so hard to understand about it getting smaller.
Dring: Are consoles in trouble? By the end of 2026, the PS5/XBS gen will be 20 m behind PS4/XBO at the same point in their life cycles
- Thread starter zedinen
- Start date
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
You think you can build a No Man's Sky or Fortnite using...Pong visual fidelity?
So let me get this straight. When it comes to console you use units sold to customers but when it comes to PC hardware you dispute the use of units and use revenue instead? You do know that Sony and Nintendo are showing much greater revenue increases over previous gen, right? >37%.
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lastmessiah
Member
I didn't read all of this gibberish but it seems you are mistaking photorealism for "graphics advancement".
Bojji
Gold Member
And PC doesn't? Did you miss Nvidia's price gouging?
By prebuilts. The study mentions that people upgraded entire systems too, same way how would they know? Because they collect that data most likely. The number of PC users decreasing is telling enough of "Units" though unless a great deal of them buy multiple PCs which isn't exactly a good thing anyway for using units for install base.
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Baemono
Gold Member
Due to shortages, it was 6 million behind the PS4, they catch up since
Will it go over and beyond ? Who knows, but GTA VI's release sure will help
Bojji
Gold Member
Nvidia is not the only company that gets money from one "PC unit": Intel, AMD, Gigabyte/MSI/Asus (...), Realtek etc. also get their share.
You can have 10 year old PC and change GPU in it - you count that as new PC or not? Millions of PC users are building their computers or pay shops to build them.
PC users decreasing while Steam users increasing?
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Felessan
Member
It's not hard to understand that you know nothing and just copypaste stupid stuff you read on internet without single shred of thinking
PSN had 60 mil users, 22 mil of them paying in 2016. Now it's 123 mil users, 50 mil paying. Where EXACTLY it's "getting smaller"?
Just because you read some bullshit article that focus on ps5 sales only doesn't mean that ~userbase~ as whole suffers for Playstation.
Elite managed to do it somehow
PC market 900m estimated, Steam 150m - take a guess whats going on.PC users decreasing while Steam users increasing?
Spyxos
Gold Member
Discussing things with you, if you're even capable of doing so, is really fun.It's not hard to understand that you know nothing and just copypaste stupid stuff you read on internet without single shred of thinking
PSN had 60 mil users, 22 mil of them paying in 2016. Now it's 123 mil users, 50 mil paying. Where EXACTLY it's "getting smaller"?
Just because you read some bullshit article that focus on ps5 sales only doesn't mean that ~userbase~ as whole suffers for Playstation.
Elite managed to do it somehow
PC market 900m estimated, Steam 150m - take a guess whats going on.
Felessan
Member
Yes, really fun
You just don't understand (or pretend not to) that your statement of "milking the smaller userbase more" is a pure bullshit. Because known metrics for Sony userbase point out they are "milking expanding userbase more" which is why their profits skyrocket.
lastmessiah
Member
IDK if even a decade more to squeeze. Geforce Now is fire and only going to get better.
Spyxos
Gold Member
With your attitude like that I don't even have the desire to try to read what you're saying
DeceptiveAlarm
Member
My one son is gen z and my other is either Z or alpha depending on what years I use. Their friends and them are on Xbox every chance they get.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Money is there.
Steam has rocketed up. Mobile gaming has even more so (different types of games to be fair).
Steam has rocketed up. Mobile gaming has even more so (different types of games to be fair).
Ok? Never said they did but nvidia owns 94% of the GPU sales so they are a massive driver of revenue.
why would an upgrade be a new prebuilt? What are you saying here exactly? Read the source it talks about prebuilds/laptops and upgrades. It distinguishes between the two and the revenue metric includes both.
yes we have discussed this before. Revenue up, steam up, overall playerbase can still decline.PC users decreasing while Steam users increasing?
twilo99
Member
There are always exceptions and outliers. It will be fascinating to watch what happens to "traditional" consoles
Self_Destructive
Member
Uh, no... I'm simply using the numbers provided. Consoles are factually ~20M behind where they were this time the previous generation. I don't give a shit that Microsoft and Sony figured out new ways to con their consumers out of more money... that doesn't grow the addressable market, it jus further monetizes a shrinking market. The PC market may very well shrink as well, but this thread is about consoles.
Self_Destructive
Member
Yes, because there's tons of conflating PC hardware sales... and PC gaming hardware sales... Often when there's reports of PC gaming shrinking, they're actually referring to just PCs in general.. whereas PC gaming can actually grow while the other shrinks... and vice versa.. It's never static.. Consoles however are sold for one purpose.. and thus when they're multiple millions behind where they were the generation prior, it means that people aren't buying into the new generation.. and of course that affects the addressable market for new games.
yurinka
Member
PS5 started selling faster than PS4 launch aligned, but had the supply issues and got a little behind. PS4 players are migrating slower due more reasons like a longer and better the crossgen support including for top selling series like the new CoD, GT, GoW Horizon, FIFA/EA FC and so on, plus PS4 still getting supported by its live service games and in addition to PS+ still supporting it. There's also bigger inflation, fucked up economy, etc. Plus Switch has been breaking sales records. And instead of price cutting the console, they had to increase their price multiple times. Plus there are top tier brands or studios like Rockstar, Naughty Dog or Bungie who still haven't released their first game for this generation.
Despite this, the sales are pretty much aligned with PS4, only a couple millions behind it, around 2-3%. And this is because a few key European markets, because in the rest of the main markets PS5 is ahead of PS4.
They are doing a great job getting a huge chunk of new users despite having all these challenges and compensate the people who are taking too long to upgrade from PS4 to PS5.
The industry continues growing, it only got stagnant/decreased a bit as a correction of the covid very unusual peak to bring back to normality, but now is growing again.
Sony is breaking revenue, profit and active userbase records, plus are also posting records in most KPIs, in many cases not only for PS history but for any console maker in gaming history.
GTAV pretty likely is the top grossing game in gaming history. If you go to check the list of top grossing games in PlayStation's history in USA (recently shared by Circana) there's like half of them being CoD games, several of them pretty recent. Bungie had a huge success with Halo, broke records with Destiny 1 and went beyond with Destiny 2, which continues being one of the top grossing PC games every year even now that is 8 years old. Despite the noisy haters, Marathon had a record viewship on its announcement trailers, had insane numbers for its gameplay reveal and got like half a million people joining the game's Discord to apply for a closed alpha that was limited to NA.
Sony has now the biggest active userbase any console maker ever had.
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ResilientBanana
Member
Consistently rising prices, frame gen, poor resolutions, chasing the GaaS dragon. Fuck yeah consoles are in trouble. Long are dead the single player games with multiplayer tied to them. Arose from the ashes like a fart cloud came Niki Manaj and Seth Rogan as Call of Duty avatars. I hope the industry burns to the ground to bring focus passion projects of the likes that built this billion dollar industry.
ChorizoPicozo
Member
I'm sure some people have mentioned this, but that deficit of 20M is due to the Xbox Series' incredibly bright market performance. This is why they just need to get the fuck out of the market, and ideally, MS needs to piss off from the industry altogether. Outside of that, PlayStation and now Nintendo (which I've seen increasingly negative vibes around) just need to figure out their economics and production timelines… and get rid of the woke. It's that simple.....but not that easy. If they don't correct course, then yes: SHIT is going to hit the fan for next-gen
PlayStation has it's own problems and demons. PlayStation has been very fortunate that Microsoft self-imploded, masking some of their issues. I'm sure they are not happy with what's happening in Japan. I'm never seen a video company benefit so much from competition self destructing.
Frexerik88
Member
I think PC is the future, it seems like handheld PC's are exploding right now, but its probably hard to quantify the amount of those devices out there.
Except this is specifically referring to PC gaming population and is a Famitsu report. Unless you think everybody else is dumb and doesn't distinguish between the two. It also works both ways if you make this assumption, does this mean the reports of growth are in fact businesses upgrading computers for Windows 10 end of support? No not really.
But you gave a shit that PC manufacturers figured out new ways of "conning their consumers"? That's the point, you said that the decreasing PC population is "not the most important" thing and concentrated on revenue. Revenue driven by sky high Nvidia prices and mostly driven by MS forcing people to upgrade hardware for latest OS support (as per your own links indicating this). You're ignoring the fact that consoles have had similar revenue increases anyway. So either the playerbase shrink is important for PC because you're applying it to console or it isn't. Either revenue is important for both or it isn't. you can't keep changing its importance depending on which it is.
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begotten
Member
It's because one of these platforms has turned to dust. MS are barely manufacturing systems?
PS5 is the only console pulling its weight globally - which is coming off the PS4 which had to do the same thing last generation.
Include the Switch 1 & 2, wait for Sonys' handheld in the Japanese market - and ask again come GTA6 launch if consoles are in "trouble".
PS5 is the only console pulling its weight globally - which is coming off the PS4 which had to do the same thing last generation.
Include the Switch 1 & 2, wait for Sonys' handheld in the Japanese market - and ask again come GTA6 launch if consoles are in "trouble".
Danny22
Member
People saying its because of XBOX sales imploding which might be correct but where are those people going? Not back to playstation it seems given its barely managing to keep up with the PS4 gen.
The article is good, the average customer age is increasing and young customers are interested in laptops, mobiles, Ipads, not consoles. With the inevitable console price increases, I can imagine these sales going further down next gen.
The article is good, the average customer age is increasing and young customers are interested in laptops, mobiles, Ipads, not consoles. With the inevitable console price increases, I can imagine these sales going further down next gen.
RetroGamingUK
Member
Retro gaming is booming and people are sticking with older consoles and games longer.
crackajack
Member
Would not shock me if a significant portion of young people never migrate and just stay forever or until their gaming days end on mobile devices. Not even ever getting a Switch. Mobile games look already good enough for a while now and if you grew up with mobile mtx riddled f2p garbage you might not even miss complete games that are not ransacking you. Their parents possibly also already partially mobile gamer veterans and ultimately spending a few bucks on crap might be cheaper than investing into platforms for them too, so they are happy to not raise "proper" gamers. At most having a PC with integrated graphics that is good enough for the most mainstream stuff.
Series S might have missed the mark, but going forward low end devices and cross gen might be more important than ever to reach the same number of people. Switch 1&2 have established themselves in that spot, while not even cheap, MS wants to be in every box but seems to be nowhere, and Sony needs to find a tough balance between the new mass market and their more demanding older fans.
FF:Enhanced_Reality
Member
££££££
It's all about the money. We're living in a moment in time where costs and inflation everywhere are going up daily and it's costing more to live, to buy food, to pay your bills, to get raw materials, to transport things, to make things, to pay people etc.
I bought a PS4 at launch for £349 and I bought a PS4 Pro at launch for £349.
Nearly 5 years after the launch of the Playstation 5, the average slim console is £429, Disc consoles are on offer for £479 but they're normally more and the Pro is £700 digital only, which is what I paid in hardware the entirety of last generation to buy both consoles.
I used to work for the biggest second hand retailler in the UK and now I've moved, I'm still in contact with the people I used to work with and consoles are one of their best sellers. Christmas and summer holidays, they run out constantly and have to pay a fuck tonne more than normal to buy them in.
Lack of major games over the course of this gen probably hasn't helped but do I need a PS5 Pro? Like do I NEED one? No.
And from the cross gen success this gen, I'm not sure I'll need a PS6 console at launch either. They still haven't fully tapped the PS6.
Global politics and still feeling the after effects of COVID lockdowns and such. It's fucked. But it's down to people not having as much money.
It's all about the money. We're living in a moment in time where costs and inflation everywhere are going up daily and it's costing more to live, to buy food, to pay your bills, to get raw materials, to transport things, to make things, to pay people etc.
I bought a PS4 at launch for £349 and I bought a PS4 Pro at launch for £349.
Nearly 5 years after the launch of the Playstation 5, the average slim console is £429, Disc consoles are on offer for £479 but they're normally more and the Pro is £700 digital only, which is what I paid in hardware the entirety of last generation to buy both consoles.
I used to work for the biggest second hand retailler in the UK and now I've moved, I'm still in contact with the people I used to work with and consoles are one of their best sellers. Christmas and summer holidays, they run out constantly and have to pay a fuck tonne more than normal to buy them in.
Lack of major games over the course of this gen probably hasn't helped but do I need a PS5 Pro? Like do I NEED one? No.
And from the cross gen success this gen, I'm not sure I'll need a PS6 console at launch either. They still haven't fully tapped the PS6.
Global politics and still feeling the after effects of COVID lockdowns and such. It's fucked. But it's down to people not having as much money.
NPlusEnjoyer
Neo Member
Why journos so often remove Nintendo out of the picture to drive their pre-assumed narrative?
Self_Destructive
Member
There's no numbers there showing that PC population decreased... there was an prediction that by X year it would decrease... and they're not even saying those people will leave for sure.. they're simply saying they'll move on.. which might mean better hardware, or mobile, or quitting..... or a console.
And I'm not ignoring anything... you're simply trying to find excuses and draw away from the fact that consoles are down 20M gen to gen and in general trying to claim there's no issue because it's just Microsoft consoles is a stupid argument. Imagine if Dell PCs basically stopped selling and I came in here and acted like it was fine because Acer is still selling close to what it always has...
Come back when you have some article posted that shows a 20M decline in gaming PCs and when analysts are asking the question "Is PC gaming in trouble".. Then we can have that discussion.
lastmessiah
Member
They are trying to pretend that Nintendo and Sony don't compete, for obvious reasons (it isn't working though).
Omnipunctual Godot
Member
Seriously. This is such junk data. In June, the PS5 was slightly behind the PS4 at the same stage in its lifecycle:
At the 56-month mark, June 2025 for PS5 vs. June 2018 for PS4,
PS5: 77.41 million units sold.
PS4: 80.62 million units sold at the equivalent time in its cycle.
Not ideal, but nothing close to "20 million behind" without the inclusion of Xbox. Especially when you take into account that there haven't been any sales-driving exclusives for years.
Durin
Member
Yeah, that's why I'm saying they're not doing great. They have multiple pressure points that make this gen harder than others, and in some areas they're doing a bit worse. The fact that they're still not far off last gen despite that is why I think they're fine and secure in the market. If the economy rebounds, I think that will give them a stronger last half than even GTA6.
I think it's possible, but it really will depend on the economy in the next few years, and I do worry with declining birth rates gaming will hit a possible decline in the next 10-20 years just because we saturate the people available. Not saying that will crash the industry or being doom & gloom, but I think it will force smaller budgets on games.
GTAVI I think will be huge, but I just wonder how much it can push if the console costs more to buy in than it did day one, when people have less money. That's just a unique problem that holds GTAVI back from what it could normally sell. Bungie though is literally in decline, Destiny is posting weaker concurrent numbers this year on PC than last year, and the last expansion disappointed. Marathon they've had didn't get delayed because the game's reception was good, they're offering real money for people to complete their current playtest so they can try to correct the game, and Sony's going to take more control because they're not outputting enough. It's possible Bungie can reverse course, but they're in a weak position for now.
I'm not saying Sony is in a bad spot, I just don't they're doing great. Revenue wise they still are, but even Microsoft now with a smaller userbase is reporting record revenue vs previous xbox gens when they had more people. Services + DLC from third-party devs are their biggest cushion, but if the economy improves I think Sony + Nintendo could end up doing great.
It is decreasing in that Famitsu article
No I'm not drawing away from anything. You're the one drawing away from PCs Japan decline and projected declines globally by suggesting revenue is important. Then when I say revenue has increased for console you suggest "they're conning customers". I'm just pointing out your blatant bias. And yes it is just xbox that is 20M down. Xbox is not dell. Xbox is like Huawei, once big now dead. Smartphones peaked in 2018 and have decreased in sales. Smartphones are not in trouble.
What analyst is asking "is console in trouble". Dring is a journalist not an analyst and yes analysts saw a decline in Japan and are predicting a decline globally too for PC.
Here's more out of Germany too, one of Europe's PC giants. Those articles exist:
PC gaming figures fall again in Germany, down to just 13.1 million — marking a 20% decline since 2019
At the same time, consoles are enjoying a growth spurt, while mobile gaming has plateaued.
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Felessan
Member
Xbox is not Huawei, Xbox is Nokia
Huawei suffered due to sanctions and it took them years to rebuild, but they did it and now on the rise (they are already #2 in China). Xbox unlikely will have such chance
yurinka
Member
Regarding 'they are doing it a bit worse in some areas' isn't really true, or it's happening because they are getting that money elsewhere instead:
- Hardware units: happens because of the reasons mentioned before, and once GTA, Bungie, ND and so on start releasing their current gen games many people should upgrade, putting the PS5 ahead of PS4 again both worldwide and in the few key EU countries where it's still behind. We also have to consider that despite PS5 generating less units sold, it's generating more hardware revenue (plus record software revenue, game sub revenue and accesories revenue), plus at the time they're generating more money from previous gen than any other generation happened at this point
- Less full game sales: in PS5 they are also generating record full game revenue or 'content & services (game revenue + subs)' revenue, mostly due to a big increase in game sub revenue and specially digital addons revenue due to the increase in popularity of PS+ and specially live service games. Meaning, players on average spend more in games than before, but the percentage they spend on buying full games decreases because the percentage gets being replaced by addons and game subs. This isn't any PS specific trend, also happens in the other consoles, happened before in PC and even before in mobile. And doesn't mean players spend less in games, means they spend their money in a different way.
- Less physical game sales: linked to previous point, in addition to the 'game revenue is migrating from full game sales to addons and subs' pattern there's another one regarding 'full game sales are migrating from physical to digital'. Meaning, the percentage of full game sales that are digital keeps increasing, as also happens in the other consoles and as previously happened in PC. Meaning, players are spending record amount of money on game software (but percentage of money spent in addons and subs are replacing the one of full game sales) despite them spending less on physical game sales, and physical game sales are decreasing the digital ones (and particularly addons and subs) are growing more than what the physical sales are losing.
GTAV built a giant, record userbase across many years. A huge percentage of them wil get it in the releae window, meaning, very likely will break all records for a game release in gaming history. With Xbox almost dead and the PC version to be released who knows when, it means it will sell a ton in PS5.
Including the over 90M users who already will have it before its release plus the many more who will buy it to play it. In April 2026 Gensin Impact will stop supporting PS4, meaning some of its players will move to PS5. Marathon -pretty likely to be realeased early 2026- won't release in PS4, so Bungie fans who will want to play it will migrate too. And same goes with other top sellers who wil stop releasing their new stuff in PS4 during 2026, as may happen with CoD.
Specially because of GTA6, but also because all the other games we'll see a specially huge amount of PS4 players migrating to PS5 next year, bumping its hardware sales for its 6th (and very likely 7th and 8th) way higher than any other console in gaming history did during their 6th, 7th and 8th year. Further distancing itself above PS4, PS2 and Switch (and any other console in gaming history) in launch aligned sales.
Destiny 2 is 8 years old, so it's normal that the game decreases regarding playerbase at this point. It happens to all games, and normally happens way before than is happening to Destiny 2. But stiil continues being a top seller of the year in PC every single year and continues appearing in the best selling/most preordered games when it releases expansions. Destiny 2 continues being a major success despite being in the tail of its lifetime.
Most games are delayed, and for the same reason than Marathon: devs need more time than the originally scheduled. Something normal because to make games isn't like working in a factory: market trends and tastes change over time, and there's stuff that sounds good on paper but when implemented doesn't work that well, so needs to be tested and interated multiple times until it gets good enough. There are always many factors that can cause game delays, and many of them can't be predicted or controller by the devs.
As all companies pay their testers when -like in this case- the playtests require players to play every single day during a month (or more). Normally are also payed in single day playtests or focus tests. It isn't a public demo or a public open beta, it's an internal playtest to test stuff. And testers get paid as they do everywhere.
Sony is in full control of Bungie since the moment SIE bought the 100% of Bungie back in 2022. To give all their gamedev studios creative freedom and in case of Bungie to keep them releasing their games in other consoles doesn't mean SIE allowed them to do anything they want. Since they were acquired they are a SIE subsidiary that reports to and follow orders of their boss Hermen Hulst (and Jim Ryan before he was promoted to CEO of SIE Studio Business Group).
They aren't in any weak position, Destiny 2 is performing great, Destiny Rising is performing great and Marathon got huge numbers on its 3 main marketing bullets they had so far: game reveal trailer, gameplay reveal live stream and people applying for their closed alpha limited to NA.
Plus the Team LFG project / team they were incubating progressed well and got their own studio.
Sony is doing great by any way you can objectively measure it, they have the largest active userbase and revenue any console maker ever had (plus records in many other KPIs) plus regarding first party games almost every year they either break a sales record with a new release or win a ton of awards, or even one of their games becomes the most awarded game of the year and multiple Sony games get a good chunk of GOTY nominations or awards.
According to all the market analysis firms the worldwide PC population and revenue continues growing and is expected to continue growing. There's absolutely no market analysis firms (real ones, not fanboy guesstimates like VGlolz and similar) that estimates a decline in PC (or console).
Japan only represents a very small percentage of the worldwide gaming market and its behavior isn't representative of the worldwide market. The Famitsu article (the yearly national industry report made by ASCII with the data from the publishers and retailers) what it said was that in the last 10 years the Japanese PC population decreased a small percentage but the PC game revenue during that period.
To be specific, said that the Japanese PC players aged between 5 and 59 years old decreased from 17.49M (2015) to 14.52M (2024), so there are 2.97M (a portion of them maybe continue in PC but became older than 59 years old so stop being included in the graph).
The same report says that regarding PC game revenue, in that 10 years period became multiple times bigger (blueish portion of this graph of Japanese game revenue, orange is mobile, green is console digital and pinkish red are physical game sales)
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Felessan
Member
PC stagnates in developed countries, sometimes even shrinks as PC there mostly enthusiasts gaming and it suffer greatly from raising prices
PC worldwide expand as developing countries becomes richier and more people get in into gaming and entry point for it is mobile/lowspec PC as they can serve multipurpose role and relatively cheap
It's grow together with online portion and it's because gacha games came to PC/Consoles and they are huge revenue drivers. Genshin coincidentally launch in 2020 matching unusual jump in revenue for digital/PC
Revenue has definitely gone up across the board. The PC population has decreased in several markets though and it can be argued so has the console population too despite this revenue growth. The source isn't VGlolz, the source isn't fanboy guesstimates, the PC decline globally is predicted by Jon Peddie Research a firm a lot of PC fanboys normally cite. it's Game.de from YouGov data for Germany. It's Famitsu for Japan. None of it is VGChartz.There's absolutely no market analysis firms (real ones, not fanboy guesstimates like VGlolz and similar) that estimates a decline in PC (or console).
Japan only represents a very small percentage of the worldwide gaming market and its behavior isn't representative of the worldwide market. The Famitsu article (the yearly national industry report made by ASCII with the data from the publishers and retailers) what it said was that in the last 10 years the Japanese PC population decreased a small percentage but the PC game revenue during that period.
To be specific, said that the Japanese PC players aged between 5 and 59 years old decreased from 17.49M (2015) to 14.52M (2024), so there are 2.97M (a portion of them maybe continue in PC but became older than 59 years old so stop being included in the graph).
The same report says that regarding PC game revenue, in that 10 years period became multiple times bigger (blueish portion of this graph of Japanese game revenue, orange is mobile, green is console digital and pinkish red are physical game sales)
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simpatico
Member
The peak is certainly over. It's a technological thing more than a failing of any single console maker. The living room is not what it used to be. There really isn't much need for a dedicated gaming box that serves a stationary, seated player. Even the 16x9 format is dying, so it's not just consoles. I owned a home theater business in the height of Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD, and I see consoles as one of the last surviving appendages of that entire economy. They could continue existing in a niche for sure, just like floor standing speakers do, but there's going to be a bumpy period where companies recalibrate what they want to invest in it. PS6 will certainly be the last release with any resemblance to what we know as consoles (local processing, clearly defined generations etc). PS7 will most likely be a Roku app. If a standalone box does end up existing, it will just be there to serve as an IO hub for cloud processing. Even doing the whole song and dance for PS6 seems a bit unnecessary. Coming up with menus and overlays. Trying to figure out what technical niche they're going to pretend to focus on like the super duper SSD in the PS5 that literally one Ratchet and Clank game made use of. A large part of that effort is just making sure the millions of games able to be played on the APU cannot be. Basically, building the walls to the garden. You wouldn't want any of those gamers emulating Uncharted 2 before Iron Labia has time to remaster it.
I'm sure there were some banging scrolls back in the day, and a rabid fanbase that was happy to buy them up. But once that printing press came out, it was just a matter of time. I'm actually interested in what can be done once we break free from our 16x9 prison. Can awesome gaming experiences take place in a tall aspect ratio? I'd love to find out.
I'm sure there were some banging scrolls back in the day, and a rabid fanbase that was happy to buy them up. But once that printing press came out, it was just a matter of time. I'm actually interested in what can be done once we break free from our 16x9 prison. Can awesome gaming experiences take place in a tall aspect ratio? I'd love to find out.
yurinka
Member
What YouGov Shopper (who mixed their own data with the Nielsen IQ one) said and was quoted by game.de, the German Games Industry association, was that PC German (not the ones of the whole world) gamers decreased only in 400K, 2.96% from 2023 (13.5M players) to 2024 (13.1M players), and 19.63% from 2019 (16.3M) to 2024 (13.1M).
The same report also mentions PC game revenue YoY also remained mostly flat, with a small 4% decline from 1255M€ (2023) to 1201M€ (2024).
Regarding the amount of console players in Germany, that report mentions it grew from 22.7M (2023) to 22.9M (2024) and from 19.5M (2019) to 22.9M (2024), which is normal because that longer period includes the PS5 release year plus the peak years of PS5 and Switch.
The report doesn't make any forecast for future PC player population for German or the world.
https://www.game.de/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Annual-report-of-the-German-games-industry-2025-1.pdf
Regarding the global population of PC gamers, this is what Newzoo said this month:
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Yes? This is what I said regarding PC. It isn't VGChartz. I didnt say the Germany one was a future estimate. It was a seen decline year after year. The Jon Peddie Research one is a global estimate.
mayham2199
Member
A lot of them might still be on their old Xbox's. Both Sony and MS have millions of people still on their old console. There was a point this year or last where MS said they had more console users than ever. With their current sales so low that must mean most of their users are still on Xbox one consoles.
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yurinka
Member
As I remember from some market report, which I think was talking about Germany, mentioned that regarding PC gaming hardware had a peak in 2020 due to the lockdowns, and since then obviously decreased because people didn't need to get a new PC. And now starting in 2025-2026 they'll start to replace them, so they expect an increase.
Other than some exception in some country (like Japan or Germany), in general the PC userbase is growing in all key gaming markets, making the global PC gaming userbase grow, in the same way that PC gaming revenue is also growing (even in these few exception countries where it had a somewhat small decrease).
GaaS (which includes F2P or the 'gatcha' loot boxes) have been super popular since way before 2020 in PC and consoles. They started with the MMORPG decades ago and kept evolving and growing, as an example Destiny was released in 2014 and Fortnite was released in 2017.
The 2020 bump in PC & console was because of the covid bump + PS5 release + Switch's peak year, wasn't related to Genshin Impact. In fact, covid lockdowns caused a bump in all digital business related to digital entertainment at home, including non-gaming stuff.
For 2020, Genshin Impact was top 6 in PSN F2P games for EU and top 7 in NA. Which is great performance, but not enough to cause a bump of the console business:
https://blog.playstation.com/2021/01/13/playstation-store-top-downloads-of-2020/
Felessan
Member
I have yet to see a proper analytical report to support your claim. Everything I saw support stagnation/regression in developed market and expansion in developing.
Your attitude "this and that are just exception" shows typical coping.
WHAT?
No, in Asia and Japan in particular it was 100% mobile, there were very few PC oriented gacha games and they were at the bottom on the list. It was Genshin that brought gacha to AAA and to PC/Console space.
Before Genshin all top grossing gacha games were mobile only.
You just inventing various bullshit. Covid is a rising tide that lifting all boats. Do we see it in mobile or physical on the graph? No. Because Japan didn't have so much of Covid splurt so effect was rather meek and not that noticeable.
Genshin on other hand earned roughly 3-5bil USD in the first year, around 30% of it comes from Japan, and paying customers are concentrated on PC/console. It's a huge number that completely changed landscape going forward
We are talking about JAPAN. Not EU and US.
You are completely uninformed on this. Japan is the second biggest market for chinese gachas, and they both contribute 80-90% of typical anime gacha revenue. Western revenue for those games are tiny compared to core market that was, is and probably will be for a long time - Asia.
Asia loves its anime style and west thinks it weeb shit for nerds.
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