PC Gaming Hits $20 Billion In 2012, Has One-Billion Gamers Worldwide

The throngs of console-based developers yelling “PC is dead; woe to the PC Master Race. The PC is dead.” now have to bite their lip and hold their tongue because following up on last year's evidence that the PC gaming market is alive and well, new data further shows that it's actually kicking up more money than most people would know what to do with.

Blues News picked up reports from GamaPolitics about the latest bit of data mining from the PC Gaming Alliance who detailed some nice information on the PC gaming front from the previous year.

Last year we reported that the PC gaming market topped $18.6 billion in 2011, with strong growth from the Chinese gaming sector and free-to-play games that generated $6 billion in revenue alone. China saw a small growth percentage in 2012 going up to $6.8 billion, which is about a 14% increase over 2011's revenue margins.

The PCGA also expects the digital computer entertainment arena to further grow at a 6% CAGR to $25.7 billion by 2016. This fits in line with DFC Intelligence's estimates that the entire gaming industry will grow to $70 billion by 2017, with PC gaming making up for a large part of the market share.

One thing worth noting in the PCGA's report is that they believe that the emerging technology of mobile gaming and ease of development for cross-platform porting between PC and mobile devices will actually help the PC market grow. Small developers who can port popular titles from one platform to the next without certified processing fees or development kit expenses will help give the PC gaming market a big boost in sales over the years.

The above statements about mobile and PC collaboration is not just conceptualized analytical talk either, this method has been proven to be successful in some cases, such as the Subway Surfers developmental platform, which has some of the highest DAUs in the market and it actually ties various key methods of development to established monetization concepts, enabling developers to better leverage their abilities when branching into mobile gaming after having been established with console or PC gaming.

Take note, however, that mobile gaming is still a dark horse and despite a lot of publishers heading to phone and tablet-based gaming, the actual market data for that sector is not as financially affluent as some are leading on, which has resulted in the closure of a few studios, including those by Zynga and Tecmo Koei.