Most used gaming platforms in Germany 2024 vs 2019: Smartphone - 22.9m (+17.5%), Console - 20.5m (+26%), PC - 13.1m (-20%)

I mean, a lot of people here also play Fifa and Fortnite. The TikTok generation has no patience to deal with a PC. I have also observed that the overall technical literacy is dropping.
 
Quite telling knowing that Germany always was considered very PC-centric country
Correct. At the same time, I'd assume that right after a new console gen launches, the numbers are always going to be rising for consoles and declining for PC, as there's definitely a subset of customers who switch between these platforms. It's not like they're entirely different audiences.
 
Puts local PCMR crowd (me include) in a very realistic perspective.

Proper PC is getting more and more expensive. It's a cost-prohibitive hobby even for Germany (especially if you don't want to go 2nd hand), a PCMR stronghold. If you don't play sim games or MKB-specific titles, it's just easier and cheapre to buy a PS5/PS5 Pro for your 4K HDR screen.
 
I mean, a lot of people here also play Fifa and Fortnite. The TikTok generation has no patience to deal with a PC. I have also observed that the overall technical literacy is dropping.

They're the iPad generation

They have no clue about window management, file management, setting up printer drivers etc.

When I was in my teens everyone I knew had a desktop PC in their rooms. You NEEDED one for internet access, homework etc

For a great deal of teens now iPad is their only "computer"

 
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Puts local PCMR crowd (me include) in a very realistic perspective.

Proper PC is getting more and more expensive. It's a cost-prohibitive hobby even for Germany (especially if you don't want to go 2nd hand), a PCMR stronghold. If you don't play sim games or MKB-specific titles, it's just easier and cheapre to buy a PS5/PS5 Pro for your 4K HDR screen.
I'm at a point where I dumb everything down to this dichotomy:

Terrible performance & terrible software prices vs. Terrible user experience & terrible hardware prices
 
I don't buy physical for current gens, so that's irrelevant to me. I buy from key sellers online, and they're significantly cheaper for most freshly released games big or small.
See, that's the problem. This forum is not the market.

It's easier to buy a physical copy of a game that you can trade and return than to scout for shady key sites to shave a few dollars.

But even then, currently the entire PS5 with bundled games is still cheaper than 4070/5070 Ti.
 
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25k is a very good sample size for such survey
Sample size is only one thing though. It also matters where you got the sample size from. Spreading out that sample size all over the country, would probably give different results versus just asking 25k people in berlin.
 
According to the same source, in germany there has been a large purge of pc gamers in 2018 that wiped out around 4 million of them. But worry not, majority was back the following year for some reason.

bbe8rj.png
 
2024 revenues for PC gaming in Germany show a 1% decline. I doubt there is anything significant going on either way. Peoples anecdotal evidence of their kids preferring PC or some kid asking for a PC at Christmas on a viral video don't indicate wider trends. It's a small group imitating older youtubers that play on PC.

Also being centric implies being centered around. For 20 years I've seen this posted about Germany but it's been console centric according to the sales data. Even going back 15 years we had Steam sales for UK and Germany and per head UK bought more. Some train simulator interest doesn't make it centric.
 
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According to the same source, in germany there has been a large purge of pc gamers in 2018 that wiped out around 4 million of them. But worry not, majority was back the following year for some reason.
The mining boom.
 
Sample size is only one thing though. It also matters where you got the sample size from. Spreading out that sample size all over the country, would probably give different results versus just asking 25k people in berlin.
I will not go and look at the details
But if it's a proper survey - it should follow standards for surveys of relevancy and representativeness
Surveys are math and 25k survey is a 99% math.
 
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It's always nice to get actual data for a change instead of made up fantasies. With the way people talk on this forum you would think Europe was 95% PC.

With how GPU prices are consoles just hit the right spot in affordability and usability. You could probably buy a switch 2 and PS5 for the same cost as a decent PC. And have access to a more comprehensive games library to boot.

There is a reason there is suddenly a huge rush from PC manufacturers to put out console-like devices. They know that's where the market is moving to.
 
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I will not go and look at the details
But if it's a proper survey - it should follow standards for surveys of relevancy and representativeness
Surveys are math and 25k survey is a 99% math.
Survey are rarely accurate from what i can tell because people living in rural areas have vastly different livestyles than the ones in cities and they often just ask around in a lot of cities and think they did a good job because they've been to many places. Someone in berlin will have a more similar life style with someone in munich than someone living just outside of munich does.

And im not talking about this survey specifically. It could very well be accurate. But i know from personal experience how different things are in rural areas. Most people probably dont realize because they live in cities and have no reason to ever leaves the cities. A lot of people who live in rural areas will generally know because they spend a decent amount of time in cities. I see so many stats about my country all the time that i know are complete bullshit. For instance every fourth person in my country is supposed to know how to speak english? More than that actually. That's complete bullshit. Sounds about right if you only asked in cities, but it's absolutely not true for the genersl population. Even in cities i feel like i would have to get lucky if i was asking random people, for over 25% of them to say yes, but in rural areas? Yeah not even close. Maybe one in 50.
 
Considering how much GPUs cost nowadays, it's a wonder PCs only dropped 20%.

Quite telling knowing that Germany always was considered very PC-centric country

Those days are long gone. PC gaming used to be huge here in the 00's - early 10's mainly due to games like CS, WoW, farming sims and Anno.

Its popularity dropped a lot after the first mining boom in 2017 and it never really recovered.
I am surprised PC fell that much, but at the same time considering economic stagnation in Germany for years and absolutely stupid GPU pricing since the above mentioned crypto craziness... this does make sense. And its truly unfortunate.
 
The mobile gaming rush is cut from the same cloth as the Wii fad, only its longevity is due to the sheer number of people who have access to the platform. The growth narrative is ending and we are seeing the core gaming audience choose consoles as the most affordable entry to gaming.

What's interesting is the PC userbase decline, you would think the pricing would only affect newer builds unless people are abandoning their aging PCs and switching to console to play newer stuff.
 
Good to see the console market growing.

Sad to see PC losing market share so significantly, but greedy hardware makers with their exorbitant prices are to be blamed. Building a PC nowadays has become extremely expensive.
 
The big change for me is to see that phones and tablets have taken over half of the sales. Actually it is more, since the Switch is a tablet. And now we get PC handhelds.
 
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According to the same source, in germany there has been a large purge of pc gamers in 2018 that wiped out around 4 million of them. But worry not, majority was back the following year for some reason.

bbe8rj.png

I will not go and look at the details
But if it's a proper survey - it should follow standards for surveys of relevancy and representativeness
Surveys are math and 25k survey is a 99% math.
That kind of dip and return says sampling issues .
 
Survey are rarely accurate from what i can tell because people living in rural areas have vastly different livestyles than the ones in cities and they often just ask around in a lot of cities and think they did a good job because they've been to many places. Someone in berlin will have a more similar life style with someone in munich than someone living just outside of munich does.

And im not talking about this survey specifically. It could very well be accurate. But i know from personal experience how different things are in rural areas. Most people probably dont realize because they live in cities and have no reason to ever leaves the cities. A lot of people who live in rural areas will generally know because they spend a decent amount of time in cities. I see so many stats about my country all the time that i know are complete bullshit. For instance every fourth person in my country is supposed to know how to speak english? More than that actually. That's complete bullshit. Sounds about right if you only asked in cities, but it's absolutely not true for the genersl population. Even in cities i feel like i would have to get lucky if i was asking random people, for over 25% of them to say yes, but in rural areas? Yeah not even close. Maybe one in 50.
Like I said - a proper survey should follow the rules of surveying, and I expect 25k survey to do so, otherwise why bother with 25k sample
And proper rules of surveying is relevancy - a sample should be verified against representativeness. You have to make best efforts to make sure that small is actually represents big
So these rural areas are (should be) checked and added into survey. And it's not that hard as actual number of answers might be several times higher and they are just culled down for proper representation (or rural areas answers have an overweight that essentially the same).
 
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