PC Gaming Revenue Grew to $18.6 Billion in 2011

It grew due to free to play games and free to play social games.

Not sure that is much to brag about. I would argue those games take PC gaming in the wrong direction.

KC_Hokie

What's sad is games like Lol charge $$$ to unlock champions to even play the game, of course theres a few free champions and you got free champion rotation every Tue/week but if theres a champion you want you're gonna be spending that cold hard cash on buying champions (aka RP), oh and also to unlock other skins for champions it costs money (skins and champions cost 975 RP a piece which is like $10 for 1350 RP).

Funny how PC elitists make fun of consoles and DLC when they have games like Lol and MMO's with monthly subscriptions which cost way more than DLC on consoles.

All the revenue goes to M$ though. Since M$ owns PC.BullyRay44

Unlike consoles where you have to pay the company that owns the console royalties to be allowed to release a game on that console, nothing has to be paid to Microsoft in order to release a game on Windows.

That's why PC games are usually cheaper than their console counterparts, because those royalties can cost up to 8-10 dollars out of the 60 dollars you pay, which is a lot. And that's also why most (indie) developers start out on PC.

It grew due to free to play games and free to play social games.

Not sure that is much to brag about. I would argue those games take PC gaming in the wrong direction.

KC_Hokie

What's wrong with F2P games ? You know that business model will come to consoles as well don't you ?

I'd rather have F2P games than those casual Kinect focused games MS is publishing on 360 mostly now, I rarely use my 360 lately when I get stuff like this on PC:

FOR FREE !

F2P games, Zynga games? Gogo PC Gaming.

Current gen consoles are to outdated now. Everyone is going back.

Well this growth isnt from what you would call "hardcore" PC games. As a PC gamer myself and have been at different points from the last 15ish years maybe there are some significant changes. Such as the PC is not the default playing platform for pretty much 90% of games I would say. The big games that are almost what emodies PC gaming such as counterstrike is going to the consoles and with the horrible new weapon menu I cant see any reason why to shift up from CS:Source.

PC gaming still offers for the most part, the most freedom but getting back on topic, these are going to be increases in F2P and social games i.e. facebook games.

[QUOTE="Shielder7"]The problem with this is the same problem that hermits have been ignoring every year; is that this includes everything from Dollar Apps, to angry birds, to Face Book social media. In other words casual games no core gamer cares about very much. Take away the $ apps and facebook games micro transactions and come talk to me.SW__Troll

Can we remove all the dance games, Wii series of games, Kinect, Move, and all the other casual games from the console statistics?

If so then I bet we'd see the console market shrink dramatically.

Console guys always do that. and I called it. "All facebook games". But they act as if their systems have absolutely no casual or gimmicky games available. All those singing games, dancing games, kinect, move etc. they are all a part of console gaming as F2P and facebook games are part of PC.

Remove them from both PC and Consoles and PC will likely still have a bigger market share.

That money money, yeah yeah :lol: