Jon Peddie Research Firm’s latest report isn’t very encouraging if you are a PC gamer. According to the analyst, more and more PC gamers will probably shift to consoles because of increasing GPU prices and the inclusion of PC-specific features like 4K and ray tracing in the next-generation of these platforms. The coming of streaming services like the Google Stadia and the new Xbox One S console is going to further push gamers away from PC gaming.
Google Stadia and other Game Streaming Services
Lately, console gaming has been seeing a bifurcation of sorts with Google and Microsoft further encouraging it. The Stadia service and the new streaming console from Microsoft are all the evidence you need to believe that this new platform is only going to get bigger and bigger. It reduces the overall cost of “gaming” by a significant degree and anyone with a subscription, a smart TV and a controller can just plug it in and play. In contrast, a good gaming PC usually costs north of a grand, plus add to it the additional cost of games, accessories and so on. Although consoles like the Xbox One and the PS4 cost less than half of that, they are still notably more expensive than a simple cloud-based gaming service. As already discussed in an older post, the coming of 5G will only bolster this new segment.
These days the gaming GPU market isn’t doing all that well. Although thanks to AMD’s Ryzen chips, mid-range CPUs have become much more affordable now, team red still doesn’t have much stake in the discrete video card space. The Radeon RX 570 and 580 are the only mention-able offerings from them, and these too are Polaris re-brands almost four years old. NVIDIA has had an upper hand, especially in the high-end and enthusiast markets for years now which has resulted in the present bizarre pricing of the GeForce RTX 20 series cards. A flagship GPU used to cost $600-700 just a few years back, but the present king of the hill, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti costs more than $1200 on an average. That in itself is reason enough to rethink your gaming platform.
AMD is expected to reveal the Zen2 based Ryzen 3000 CPUs and the Navi GPUs in the coming months but I’ve got a feeling NVIDIA’s iron grip over the PC gaming market won’t get any weaker. However, you can be sure of one thing, the most hardcore of PC gamers won’t be going anywhere, and they’ll continue to build ridiculously expensive builds to reach heights their console counterparts can’t quite match.
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Heh, good one. Not gonna happen, at least not by this huge of a margin
I’ve seen this time and time again, they said PC gaming was dead or dying in 2010 smh.
I think switch is the wrong word here.\
Many PC gamers just buy a console for the exclusives on top of playing their PC.
If you have the money, why would you have to choose?
i wouldnt say 20m will leave for consoles but ill say with game streaming on the horizon and consoles having their mid gen upgrades there will be no NEED to build a $1500 gaming pc if i can stream the same game to any device.
there wont be a need to invest in to pc gaming hardware.gaming streaming if done right can replace s pc gaming.rig.
IMHO opinion, it will be the opposite (or at least I hope so). Why buy a console for 500 Euros when you can only play with it while you can do the same thing on a very lower end PC (that could cost less that a console) thanks to Stadia or similar service?
The PCs will still be used for everything else that is not gaming while the console will become completely useless and pricey boxes that haven’t a real exclusive use (a part from exclusive games like today).
Also it would be very liberating to finally being able to have ALL your games in a single platform, PC. Why should not be possible to play Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft and all the other publishers games ALL on the PC?
In the end consoler are only PCs with custom GPUs and CPUS and lower performances, so if the performances is taken out from the equation, consoles just don’t’ have reason to exist anymore.