OH NOES! PC is dying! Again!

I'll just leave this here so upcoming flood of morons couldn't start 50+ page topics how PC gaming is dying - because it isn't.

Anyway, Forbes says: "PC sales for 2013 will fall to 314 million units. That 10% decline below 2012 levels is the worst ever."

More here.

A perfect flame topic. Except it will be false because it doesn't say anything about PC gaming.

So, there you go.

We don't know steam sales and steam has risen to 70 billion users.

But they aren't.

I have a nexus 7 myself, great for youtube/email, ebooks and surfing, but my gaming pc gets the most attention.

Granted, games always sold better on consoles than on PC, and probably always will. But PC gaming is far from being dead or dying.

Still 314M PC units >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 2.1M of PS4

PC is slowly becoming an enthusiast & business only platform, if you are a casual who only goes on facebook, just get a damn tablet

PC gaming will die eventually, when cloud gaming (gaikai) takes over

What I mean with that is that everyone will be able to enjoy the best graphics for a cheap price, compared to upgrading your rig.

Holy shit, again?!? God save us all.

Becoming? Dude, PC always was and always will be enthusiast and business platform.

People ALWAYS had a platform of choice, whether it was NES, SNES, PS1, PS2, Xbox, PS3, 360, PS4, Xbox One, handhelds, smartphones or tablets.

And yet PC gaming keeps getting stronger.

When Gaikai takes over, there will probably be 37 better cloud services available to gamers.

PC has been dying since the Atari 2600 days. At least according to the media.

I agree but right now that's practically impossible for the high end. ISP's, at least in America, refuse to upgrade. Some of them like Comcast even go so far to donate large amounts of money against politicians who favor gigabit internet.

Short of Google deciding to lay their brand of fiber all across America, we'll find ourselves putting the 4k and cloud gaming revolution on hold for a while.

And just how many of those PC's are capable of playing games at PS4 spec.....

ohh i see what you did there preemptive strike and all before someone says something stupid in the lines of pc gaming is dying

A lot. Any modern PC with GTX650 or above plays games at PS4 specs or better.

Most steam users only have low end PC's. True story. U mad, bro? X3

How many of those PC's are kitted out for GTX650's? Not a lot.

Even if 10%, that still will be 30M units.

30M >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 2.1M of PS4

My first day with my gaming pc...

Woaw. Not sure if it's dying but I still love it.

Ooops.

Anyone know the sales numbers for Nvidia and AMD video cards? Most businesses and academics rarely buy dedicated video cards unless it's the professional level ones that cost way more than those we gamers buy.

I think it's a safe bet most dedicated video cards are for gaming.

Depends. I know that many people buy dedicated graphics for HTPC's.

I know a couple of people with HTPCs and they game on it too.

Link for 10% validation please.

Will be interesting to see how PC fares this gen, when most people only have 1080p displays and there wont be a significant graphical advantage over consoles no matter how beefy your rig is.

I definitely think PC gaming will move away from big bulky desktops and I have a feeling the whole steambox initiative is an attempt to stay ahead of the curve as consumers want smaller and less intrusive devices in their home. But i expect gaming laptop sales to pickup steam as well.

The days of traditional tower cases were always numbered imo as diminishing returns will shift demand from wanting more horsepower, to wanting more convenience. If i had to guess we are probably in the prime of traditional PC gaming, and while I have no idea how the PC gaming industry will fare as a whole, I expect we will see the hardware market shift quite a bit in the coming years.

Actually Forbes doesn't say that. Some contributor says that on Forbes.

What's dying isn't PC but pre-built PC sales such as are used in business. PC's are starting to last longer and longer so businesses aren't buying them as rapidly.

More people are buying PCs to use for gaming than to work. Fewer PC are being sold this year perhaps because tablets are useful replacements. But PC gaming is actually growing at about 6% per year according to analysts.

Look at the Steam hardware survey.

Last time I compiled that data a few months ago, the percentage of people with equal or better hardware to an Xbone was around th 17% mark. That means around 12 million gamers on Steam alone, today. The GPUs with the necessary grunt are also rising in adoption, so that percentage will continue to climb.

Steam hardware survey numbers show a good percentage distribution of gaming PCs vs non-gaming.

When I actually took 10% figure as a estimation, I took the lowest denenominator possible. While in reality Steam survey shows that

32.61% of Steam gamers game at 1080p resolutions.

And 4,18% game at above 1080p resolutions, which clearly shows the percentage of high-end pcs.

And at least 20% of Steam gamers have 2GB or more of VRAM,.

So we have 32.61% of Steam gamers gaming at 1080p resolutions and 20% of Steam gamers having 2GB or more of VRAM. This suggests that at least 20% of Steam PCs are equivalent or better than PS4.

So when I am taking 10% figure as an estimation, I am acutally being pretty humble as i should take 20% according to Steam hardware survey.

Do you think this is the 360's gen? How many PC's werecapable of playing games aThe 360's spec in Nov 2005? Dont you know that the PS4 is a joke compared to the 360 at their repsective launches?

PC gamers also dont upgrade like they used to though. Back then you upgraded your rig every 2 years or so just to keep up with games. Nowadays you dont have to worry about spending $600 on a gpu, only to have a game like crysis come out and completely bend it over less than a year after you bought it.

Games dont push hardware like they used to, and as a result PC gamers dont upgrade frequently like they used to.

Every platform dies...not every platform truly lives!

I do wonder if maybe sometime in the next decade, I'm going to get rid of the tower and replace it with a laptop. If Laptops do make great strides in performance and battery life, maybe they could do to consoles what the Commodore 64 did back in the day!

Plus a $600 PC rapes the PS4 $400+Online $50 per year.... What a $600 PC did to the 360 in Nov 2005 we all know....

PC will never die, as worse it will go back to be workstation only.

Okay, see you guys at the funeral then

Typical PCs are a dying breed - the world is moving toward specialized devices for specific needs.

@jhonMalcovich:

Also keep in mind that Steam surveys are not mandatory or automatic. I am willing to bet that the number is even higher than that because there is no real incentive to do the survey so many people will just skip it. It might just be a few percentage points (or double digit) but that still equates to millions more that are just not recorded.

Typical PCs sure. Gaming PCs nope.

lolwut?

Every single person on earth must have at least 10 accounts then.Either that or aliens.

Just joking.I assume you meant 70 million.

PC gaming is one of those things you talk smack about..... till you can afford it

Sorta, SteamOS is a big step toward making gaming-specific PCs (which has previously been a space occupied by consoles).

There is a demand for higher performance from games that consoles can't facilitate, but there isn't much of a way to get it outside of Windows-based devices.

The people that aren't buying PCs are not the people that play games. Those people aren't buying PCs because they've already got iPads.

Its probably the opposite. If there is one thing people with high end rigs love to do, its brag about their high end rigs. People with low end PCs probably are much less likely to go around sharing their specs.

Other tablets are available.

PC gaming is forever dying but never die.

Console gaming will always die then reincarnate.

Don't be hyper-sensitive. Of course I know other tablets are available.

This Again? look this happens every console cycle.

At the beginning of a console gen, the Console hardware is cheaper and measures up relatively well, so with the new consoles on the Horizon and the lack of need to get new pc parts (we can all debate if it is even needed in the pcs we have now), it is fairly natural.

Then a year Down the line, when consoles are so far behind in hardware that it is not even funny, and the upkeep turns out to be freakin expensive, then the PC sales shoot up Again, just like every gen.

The difference now is: Most people WHO just need a simple pc moved to laptops 8none gamers) just for writing and net browsing, and now those people are moving to tablets. It has Little to do with the gaming crowd (which has seemingly grown so much that every year high end gpus does not sell out, it is a Financial disaster). (hint: my CPU is from 2011 and it still kicks the crud out of most CPUS released today, and the ones that are better, are only better by a really small increment (like 0.1 Ghz)

Shame on you for not seeing a Topgear reference.