Now is an ideal time to recommend PC gaming, but awkwardly, building a gaming PC has become more difficult than ever. The console market is sluggish and mature, while PC gaming has become the core driver of annual industry growth. The PC platform consistently sees a more diverse range of top-tier games, and more developers (especially Asian studios) are increasing their investment in it. But what exactly is the core advantage of PC gaming?
I spoke with Emmanuel Roussier, Director of Market Intelligence at analytics firm Newzoo, about the growth of PC gaming. Some advantages of the PC platform are obvious: for instance, PC players have Steam, a robust core storefront; more diverse control options supporting both keyboard/mouse and controllers; better mod support; higher graphical ceilings; and PCs offer practical utility beyond gaming and streaming. But there are many other driving factors as well.
"I've studied this issue, and the differences in business models are quite interesting," Roussier said when discussing the disparities between PC and consoles. "Half of PC platform revenue comes from microtransactions, as many PC games are free-to-play, with a large number being long-term live-service titles. Meanwhile, the console platform is still dominated by the premium buy-to-play model, which remains its core business strategy."
However, even on consoles, the best-selling premium games are mostly annual sports titles or blockbusters like Call of Duty, which are essentially similar to live-service games in being "continuous extensions of experience." Roussier said: "You can view it as sustained revenue from the same franchise."
This phenomenon is less pronounced on PC. Roussier added that sports games have a much smaller footprint on PC, and "it also has something to do with the audience." Reviewing reports from firms like Newzoo, which track the highest-earning and most-played games monthly, reveals that the PC platform consistently sees more new releases and indie titles, although the top ten spots remain dominated by giants like Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox.
"A Short Hike" is a typical example: it had a larger user base on PS5 due to its inclusion in the PlayStation Plus library, but it generated significantly more revenue on PC. The game did not launch on Xbox due to the BDS boycott movement, a choice recently mirrored by the indie masterpiece Celeste.
Roussier stated: "Overall, PC players have more choices. For many independent publishers, launching on Steam and PC first, then expanding to consoles if the response is positive, presents a much lower barrier. The richer selection for PC players means less concentration among blockbuster titles, simply because there is so much content to choose from."
Newzoo predicts that the overall gaming market will continue to grow, but "console growth will lag behind PC and mobile." Consoles have struggled to expand in Asian markets, especially outside Japan, the home turf of Nintendo and Sony, while PC gaming is booming in populous countries like China. Additionally, console pricing remains a serious issue; the high price of next-gen consoles may deter even loyal upgraders, let alone new players who are reluctant to invest in core platform updates.
The PC sector also faces rising hardware prices driven by AI data center demand, but Newzoo found that PC gaming continues to grow despite this. This isn't solely due to new user acquisition; Roussier believes the barrier to entry for PC gaming might actually be lower now, since "most households already have a computer." Regarding cost increases driven by AI, Roussier argues that the initial impact of AI on video games is somewhat negative for consumers, as they find themselves passive and stuck in a poor consumer market environment with little room to maneuver.
Roussier observed: "Over the past two or three years, PC gaming has been riding a wave of rapid development. This is interesting because looking back at 2015 to 2020, the PC market was nearly stagnant, while consoles surged ahead thanks to live-service games and titles like Fortnite. But now the situation has completely reversed."
"Consoles seem to have hit a growth ceiling, but PC is still growing steadily. I just discussed this with the team this morning; we may need to raise our growth forecasts for the PC gaming market in 2026, as many publishers have seen outstanding PC performance in the first half of the year, with some achieving double-digit growth. The momentum in the PC market is very strong. Moreover, I believe Sony's earlier decision to bring some exclusive titles to PC, despite later scaling back, has driven more players toward the PC platform—after all, they can now play almost all exclusive titles there."
Once people experience PC gaming, many find it hard to return to a purely console-based way of playing. The PC platform certainly has its own issues—such as poor port optimization, various Windows system quirks, and tedious setup and troubleshooting, to name just three. But I'm surely not alone in increasingly preferring to sit at my computer to play games, even though I still enjoy curling up on the sofa with my three consoles.