Esports And Free-To-Play Games Will Propel PC Gaming To $35 Billion By 2018

Forums and comment sections on most gaming portals seem to be divided into two major groups -- hardcore PC gamers who keep insisting on the inherent greatness of the "PC master race" and console lovers who love to point out how PC gaming is dying. But is PC gaming really fading into obscurity? This might seem true if the terribly patchy and mostly perfunctory commitment towards the PC platform exhibited by most big videogame publishers. However, the numbers suggest otherwise.

VG247 reports that PC gaming is nowhere close to dying out as most would like to believe. In fact, the Open Gaming Alliance (OGA), which is a non-profit collective dedicated to analysing the games industry business, believes that the PC gaming market will grow to a staggering $35 billion by 2018. The market is worth $26 billion at the moment, so that means a growth of nearly $9 billion in just the next three years.

This interesting statistic comes from OGA's seventh annual research report, which has been conducted by research firm DFC Intelligence, according to Gamasutra. The research study pegs this meteoric growth down to two main emerging trends exclusive to the PC gaming ecosystem. This includes the emergence of the unique free-to-play distribution model that is increasingly being adopted by popular PC games.

The other major factor is the popularity of the eSports scene. The extent of its influence can be gauged by the value of prize money at stake in an average eSports event and the sheer amount of eyeballs commanded by tournaments broadcasted over newer mediums such as Twitch. It isn't uncommon for competitive games such as Valve's "DoTA" to have prize money running into millions of dollars, with viewership for such tournaments running into hundreds of thousands.

"We are estimating a potential 86 million PC gamers outside Asia that we have targeted as market growth drivers,” said DFC analyst David Cole while speaking to VentureBeat. "These are the consumers that are driving spending not just on software, but also on PC hardware, as they buy expensive equipment to play, view and record games."

These seemingly improbable numbers begin to make sense when you look at Game Sauce's report estimating that a typical western core PC gamer spends an average of $200 per year. This isn't just restricted to videogame software. An even greater amount of money is pumped into gaming hardware by this demographic.

Interestingly, the same DFI study concludes that console gaming will attain its peak by 2018. It estimates the console revenues to max out at $30 billion, following which the earnings will begin to decline over the following years. Handheld consoles are expected to fare even more poorly, as the study expects them to be overthrown by mobile devices. In essence, PC gaming seems to have a rosy future compared to other videogame platforms.

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