Ben Porter, director of consulting at videogame market intelligence firm Newzoo, is giving a GDC discuss this week that picks out some highlights from the agency’s annual take a look at the state of the video games trade. PC Gamer was lucky sufficient to get a sneak peek at his slides, and one of many takeaways is that PC gaming is larger than ever: And we like to play outdated video games.
The outcomes are extrapolated from a yearly in-depth survey of 73,000 gamers, alongside knowledge from over 10,000 video games. From this Newzoo says that the PC market is rising at a gentle charge, with an estimated 873.5 million gamers in 2023 rising to 907.5 million in 2024.
I do know you will all like this one: that handily beats out the console viewers, of whom there have been an estimated 653.1 million in 2024.
And the info additional reveals, in Newzoo’s personal phrases, that these 908 million “PC gamers are closely skewed in direction of older, reside service video games.”
The information reveals that from January 2024 to December 2024, 67% of participant hours on PC have been spent on a recreation that was six or extra years outdated. An additional 25% of participant hours have been spent on video games that have been two to 5 years outdated, and the remaining 8% of time was spent on video games which can be lower than two years outdated.
Newzoo’s knowledge additional breaks down that 67% chunk. Inside this:
- 7.1% of the whole hours spent have been on Counter-Strike: International Offensive / Counter-Strike 2
- 6.4% have been in League of Legends
- 6.2% have been in Roblox
- 5.8% have been in Dota 2
- 5.4% have been in Fortnite
Clearly we may cut up hairs right here: Counter-Strike 2 solely launched final yr, so what’s it doing on this class? I can see the argument, as a result of it’s basically a ground-up remake of 2012’s CS:GO, which itself could possibly be thought-about a remake of 2000’s Counter-Strike.
However whether or not we settle for CS2’s presence or in any other case, the overall image would not change. PC gamers are overwhelmingly spending their time on older video games: 92% of our time goes into video games which can be greater than two years outdated.
As a short apart, for those who ever surprise why publishers are so obsessive about making reside service video games, and why so a lot of them fail, this offers you each solutions. Get it proper and a reside service recreation is a golden goose, a perpetually cash machine. Why do new ones fall flat? As a result of by-and-large the viewers already likes what it likes.
That is in some methods not stunning, and displays the scale and scale of the PC gaming market. Not everyone seems to be enjoying on the most recent {hardware}, or has the cash to consistently purchase the most recent titles, however PC as a platform presents countless methods to play for ‘free’ (the 5 titles that Newzoo picked out as dominating playtime are all F2P) alongside common alternatives to choose up older titles for a pittance.
The attention-grabbing factor is, as somebody who does this for a dwelling, it reveals the disconnect between shopper pursuits and far of the trade protection, which are inclined to skew in direction of the most recent sizzling recreation or large catastrophe. However that is not being mirrored in PC avid gamers’ normal enjoying habits the place, very like consolation meals, we are inclined to have favorite older titles and stick to them.
