It's never been easier to recommend PC gaming, so it sucks that it's rarely been harder to build a gaming PC. With consoles struggling and their market long since mature, PC gaming is responsible for a lot of the annual growth in the industry. It regularly surfaces a much more diverse lineup of top games, and more developers (especially in Asia) are investing more in the platform. But what gives PC gaming an edge?
I spoke to Emmanuel Rosier, Newzoo's director of market intelligence, about the growth of PC gaming. Some of the benefits are obvious. For example, PC gamers have Steam, a central storefront with strong features, they have more input options between M&K and controller support, there's better mod support, graphics have a higher ceiling, and a PC is useful for more than games and streaming. But there are a lot of other contributing factors.
"I had a look at that, because it's quite interesting when you look at the business models," Rosier says of PC and console differences. "When you look at the business model on PC, half of the revenue is coming from microtransactions because a lot of PC games are free-to-play. A lot of PC games are everlasting live services, and on console premium is still the biggest share, the biggest business model."
Even on console, however, the biggest premium games are iterative sports franchises or similar behemoths like Call of Duty, so they're still comparable to live services as "more of a continuation" of an experience. "You can consider it recurring revenue coming from within the same franchise," Rosier says.
This is less pronounced on PC. Sports games are much smaller on PC, for one, but it also "probably has to do with the audience somehow," Rosier adds. When you look at reports like Newzoo's and examine the most profitable or most played games each month, PC consistently surfaces more newcomers and indies, even if the top 10 are still stuffed with heavyweights like Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox.
Big Walk is a useful example: it got more user traction on PS5 because it was included in PlayStation Plus, but that meant it made way more money on PC. (It skipped Xbox over the BDS boycott, just as indie darling Celeste has now done.)
"PC players have more choice in general," Rosier says. "For a lot of indie publishers, it's easier to first release your game on Steam, on PC, and then if it works expand to console. PC players have a bit more choice, which means there is a bit less concentration of the bigger title, just because there is so much more choice around it."
Newzoo forecasts growth for the overall games market, but "slower growth for console compared to PC and mobile." Consoles are struggling to find success in Asia (particularly outside of Japan, Nintendo and Sony's home turf), but PC gaming is booming in huge countries like China. Consoles are also really struggling with pricing, and a new generation risks pricing out even the people who've been rebuying consoles generation over generation, to say nothing of new players who already aren't replacing aging gamers on core platforms.
PC is also dealing with its own AI data center-fueled price hikes, but Newzoo finds that "PC keeps growing" regardless. This is about more than new users, for one, and Rosier suggests there's still probably a lower barrier to entry to PC gaming right now just because "you're more likely to have a computer at home. Looking at those AI costs, Rosier reasons that "the initial effect of AI on video games is a bit negative for the consumer because they are stuck," land-locked in the consumer market from Hell.
"PC is really surfing on a very positive wave for the past two or three years," Rosier finds. "It's quite interesting, because if you look back at 2015 to 2020, PC was almost flat and consoles were booming with all the live service, Fortnite, everything. But now it's kind of the opposite.
"It's kind of like there is a ceiling for console but PC keeps growing. I was discussing with my team earlier this morning, and they say we're probably going to need to revise up the PC forecast for 2026 because the first-half result for some publishers on PC is really good, higher double-digit in some case There is this really strong momentum for PC, and I think the fact that PlayStation decided to release some of their games on PC, and they moved back, but I think it pushed a bit more players to go play on PC because they had access to almost every exclusive."
Once you're able to try PC gaming, it can be hard to go back. The platform's certainly not without its issues – horrible ports, Windows missteps, and fiddly settings, for three – but I'm definitely not the only one spending more and more of my game time at my desk, even if I still love my couch and my three consoles.
