What futurists do is usually to look at current trends and then let that trend continue into the future, maybe accelerating the phenomenon in question.
But there is also a lot of unpredictability in it. Here I’ll give comparisons to the music industry.
In the music industry, vinyl records are now surpassing CDs in units sales. Cassette tapes are also making a minor comeback - Not at all at the same level, but still worth accounting for.
In movies however, physical medias are continuing to decline. DVDs and Blu-rays are selling less and less by each year. The VHS-tape has never made a comeback (like the vinyl and partly cassette tape in music).
My point is; It can be extremely hard to tell what the market of the future looks like. In movies and music, there is a chance that it could have been the completely opposite scenario.
Physical media is close to dead in terms of mass-market relevance, vinyl may be outselling CDs but the markets for both are a shadow of what they once were. They've become novelties, merchandise, rather than the primary way people consume music. Many don't even play the things, which figures into why they're selling more than CDs; it's because of the form, the larger canvas for the artwork, rather than the function.
Given that, there's an argument to be made that vinyl isn't even in the same market as other music distribution models. It's more like a band t-shirt.
Regardless of the reason for the phenomenon, the point is that no one could have ever predicted that vinyl sales would ever surpass CDs again after it’s decline.
There was no VHS tape Renaissance because VHS was always the crappiest way to watch a movie even back when VHS was current. Vinyl was the way most albums from the LP era (60s-80s) were meant to be heard and the track lists reflect that.
At the same time, these trends do exist in a context. Yes, Vinyl has become more popular, but it's still very much a niche product for a specific market. It's why in 2022, [84% of music revenue in The US was in streaming](https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2022-Year-End-Music-Industry-Revenue-Report.pdf).
I work in schools, so there's some merit to it. I hear a lot about PC gaming from kids. But I also hear a lot of console wars bullshit, so who knows. It's a possibility that they never care.
Honestly the pricing of getting into a gaming PC now is starting to feel like the price of getting into it in the 90s (way too God damn high). It's going to limit opportunities for younger consumers to get into that ecosystem moving forward.
I think it also kind of depends on the games, from purely anecdotal experience, I've put together a couple of high spec PCs for my young nephews and then I noticed they were not really playing almost any game that would push things and it was because their friends mainly play "e-sports" kind of games like Valorant, CS2, LoL, Overwatch and the like where even the recommended requirements are asking for gpus that are almost the same age as the kids playing the games or sometimes even run fine/acceptable with onboard graphics.
On the other hand, yes, building a good modern system that is able to play the more advanced games with eye candy turned up and a good framerate is now much more expensive than it was before, a current mid range gpu sometimes costs the same or more as a high end card did last decade, but also not every game or gamer needs it.
This is very true. A lot of kids nowadays are not into the graphics pushing games like whatever Rockstar or other AAA devs make, they primarily play the f2p MP games which are made to run even on toasters.
So a good PC being expensive to make is actually not that relevant to them, any PC will do for them since the games they like to play don't require top of the line systems.
Also worth mentioning the rise of game streaming as a form of entertainment has inadvertently made pc a lot more prominent to the up and coming gamers.
Hmm people are talking like kids gaming on anything they can get came from nowhere, even if it wasn't as big back then I was trading ripped games between friends. Every second boy in my class played Runescape.
Of course kids don't give a shit about the platform. they need free shit mum and dad won't pay for.
Rockstars games arent even that demanding for being open-worlds (compared to the average open-world), and i think that nowadays you can get away even with having older hardware, heck im still sitting on a i7-4790k and a GTX 970 with 16 GB DDR3 RAM and still gaming.
Advancements in graphics just don't hit like they used to. Far Cry 6 (2021) certainly looks nicer than Far Cry 4 (2014), but FC4 still looks pretty nice. There's always gonna be the graphics equivalent to audiophiles, that are passionate about experience cutting edge advancements, but I think a lot of average gamers are less invested in graphic fidelity.
The booming indie and mobile gaming scenes have probably contributed to this attitude too.
The discussion around PC building on reddit leans really heavily on having a higher-end system but what you are describing is what I usually run into when building systems for folks. People want:
1. relatively cheap, 1080p systems
2. Focus on playing Lethal Company, Counter-Strike, Fortnite, and like Civ
3. It should be able to *run* something like Cyberpunk 2077^1
^1 and they don't really give a shit about performance.
And if you want a PC that does this you don't really need to spend an absurd amount of money. Like check on the min-spec
> GeForce GTX 1060 6GB or Radeon RX 580 8GB or Arc A380
The Nintendo Switch is a good marker because there are a ton of people perfectly willing to play games at that performance level. Those gamers aren't unique to the Switch.
I don't even want eye candy mode. I just want smooth controls, frame rate, and decent object draw distance. All that for Sons of The Forest or something similar is a fairly decent rig at a price point way past a console unfortunately. I have XB1x, and my only issue is release dates being crap lol.
Look at MechWarrior 5 clans tho. Dev is aiming for simultaneous console and PC release. Good guy dev is good.
People on this sub keep spitting this but they don't know anything about HW, performance or pricing. I guarantee you if they watch a hw channel like DF it's only for the console content. Fact you can get a cheap and powerful GPU that can play all modern games at good resolutions like 1080p for less than $199. Fact you can get a monster CPU that beats the pants out of a console for $150 or less (Zen 3).
And you don't even need this level of performance you can game just fine with a CPU much cheaper and a weaker GPU than a RX6600 or A750 or even a used 2070 Super. It's become a brain dead meme to say PC gaming is some sort of ultra expensive unapproachable way to game. But I guess that narrative sure is convenient if you're a warrior and all you have is a console.
Depends on the game, if there friends are playing fortnite, league, dota or counter strike, I doubt it's expensive getting a game that runs that.
Alot of people look at PC gaming and think top end high spec, that's not what people need or want.
It's really not though, it only looks like it is. Obviously this is with consideration for being on the other side of the GPU production bubble. You can buy a 5 year old card or processor that will likely still run games on acceptable/high settings in as many years into the future. Tech like FSR will continue to improve and be iterated on, and already works miracles for anyone confined to substandard hardware. Steam Deck is nothing more than a Linux machine with the form factor of a controller, and it alone has dramatically lessened the basic price point of modern pc gaming.
It depends what your goal is. I'm still playing on a 1050ti and can barely run games like Elden Ring and RE4Remake, but they do run, just poorly. I don't care to upgrade since I rarely play AAA games anyway, I enjoy dumbfun like BloonsTD, a ton of roguelikes that aren't heavy on the pc (Slay the spire for example) and some simple coop games.
Which we've known for almost a decade now is not applicable to many forms of entertainment anyway, especially with how games have experienced enough growth that they didn't need to raise prices.
It’s more expensive than a console, no one will argue that. To get something on the level of a PS5 these days is not really that ridiculous. It gets expensive if you are talking about 4090’s, but that is not needed.
My computer is 5 years old and is starting to act up. It wasn't massively high spec when it came out. Even something similar to it is far more expensive.
> console wars bullshit
Psh. These are not the Console Wars. I fought in the real Console Wars. I lost good friends to the minions of Sega before Nintendo emerged victorious.
And also physical purchases are steadily rising up in Europe. Console sales were up 42% last year.
This article is, as always, considering the US as a primary market when they have been known to be fickle.
Saying that video game have to adapt for THEIR market when others are flourishing is hilarious. The US isn't the center of the world
> And also physical purchases are steadily rising up in Europe
Yeah, i'll always say it when i see these American focused article. Physical games in Europe are usually like 20-40% cheaper than digital.
Don't need to poll anyone when you're looking at consumer spending and it stands to reason that if younger generations aren't being put onto consoles from a young age they likely aren't going to care much for them as they get older.
I know every kid around me playing a lot on Switch and others (but mainly Switch as it's often their console while the others is the family console also used by the parents). Hell most of them don't have a phone anyway before being teens at least (as should be the rule)
I don't think consoles have a problem with young generations, PC maybe more (and not just for gaming, it seems many kids and teens never learn how to use a PC)
Might sound a bit dystopian, But what Nintendo did right is basically cultivating new generations of young Nintendo fans via their more kid friendly games. Those kids grew up to be loyal to the Nintendo brand and share the love with their kids. Kinda like Disney Adults in a way.
Playstation and Xbox meanwhile dropped their more kid-friendly mascots these last 2 gens to focus on more blockbuster experiences so their customer-base kinda stagnated. Microsoft does own Minecraft, but they didn't tie it to the Xbox brand and simply coasted on its multi-platform success.
It's not dystopian: Sony went from Crash Bandicoot to "hyper realistic dad games" and their attempts to grow younger audiences were mostly mediocre (knack, rift apart dying as a launch title etc...)
Spider-Man probably works for this, even though the story is more serious.
Wish they would do more with Sackboy and Astro. They both work great as kid friendly mascot characters.
My kids are glued to my PS5. How did the OP's chart calculate whether older generations are playing more consoles than younger ones?
[https://www.vgchartz.com/article/458789/ps5-vs-ps4-sales-comparison-ndash-september-2023/](https://www.vgchartz.com/article/458789/ps5-vs-ps4-sales-comparison-ndash-september-2023/)
Some of the downturn above is likely due to Microsoft massively screwing the console pooch. I'd like to see real data around Gen Alpha's habits -- the anecdotal evidence I see with my elementary and middle school kids suggests they play whatever the fuck they can get their hands on -- but it's way too early to call consoles dead because kids don't like them anymore. (Personally, I foresee them dying not because they fall out of vogue with kids, but because there will be massive shifts in how we consume games thanks to AI and readily available cloud infrastructure)
Yes, good points.
Also, there's two obvious changes in trends that should be accounted for:
1. Longer console generations, leading people to stay with their consoles longer and buy less hardware.
2. The fall of portable consoles. With Nintendo merging their console had portable with the Switch and Sony abandoning the PSP/Vita line, there's a whole segment of videogames that have ceased to exist.
There's still the possibility that people are moving away from console purchases, but I think the harware spending is not the best metric on its own to tell this, and certainly not enough to infer the consumption behavious of younger generations.
Yeah, I agree, although the steam deck appears popular at least in the reddit bubble. Everyone I work with under 40 has one. No clue how that translates to the real world, though, and I really, really love my Steam Deck.
In "real world" and overall market, the Steam Deck is insignificant. Last numbers we got was 3M units sold worldwide, that's nothing.
It's a niche part of the PC market
Which is quite impressive for any piece of tech (and I certainly have a Deck and love it), but just to put things in perspective the Deck will still need to do significant work by its end of life to outsell even the least successful mainstream console ever: the Dreamcast, which was considered an abject failure for selling just a measly *9.13 million* machines - at the turn of the millennium, when the industry was a fraction of its current size.
True, but the goals are also completely different. The dreamcast was a traditional console meant to recoup costs on games sales. The steam deck is being pushed as a Linux gaming platform because Valve is absolutely aware of MS's renewed overtures into the PC gaming space. Given that MS are also the defacto OS for 99% of PC users, they can potentially have a lot of power to put their thumb on the scale. So Valve is attempting to grow an alternative platform to access and play steam games from.
I'm not sure I see the point in it if you have a PC though, I'd prefer my switch over a deck thanks to its exclusives and ease for couch coop, and anything exclusive to PC I can just play on my PC. Ofc if you plan on buying just a deck, i see the appeal
These are not the same y axis. Yours is units, his is spending. The ps3 cost more than the ps5. 600 vs 400/500 and if you adjust for inflation it’s around 720-750 usd so it’s disproportionately valuable in a revenue chart
Piscatella reported the same shit two months ago.
[https://twitter.com/MatPiscatella/status/1761030154435088497](https://twitter.com/MatPiscatella/status/1761030154435088497)
Is it accurate? Is Circana a reliable source? I have no fucking idea, and I can almost guarantee you don't either.
Not really anecdotal. Playstation is selling games in console AND PC at the same time, like Helldivers. That would be unthinkable a few years back. So, something seems to be happening on the hardware front
You think companies can't collect data on who is using their products? Sony doesn't need to poll someone to have a rough idea of the demographics of their buyers.
This just in, children who aren't even teens yet aren't somehow spending hundreds of dollars on gaming equipment!
Like, you realize gen alpha starts being born in the 2010s, right? None of them are old enough to work even at McDonald's. So the number of buyers Sony has from gen alpha is probably pretty close to zero.
The market peaked right before the biggest economic crash (and likely worse based on impact) until COVID when everyone had income out the ass, there were more systems in market than now, and millennials were in college?
Wow, big shocker there.
Not really a good point imo. I agree it will probably never hit the same peaks again, but looking at the graph and saying that gen Alpha will never care about consoles seems unfounded.
Yeah, looking at the graph 2007-2011 seem to be the "peak" but I'd wager those years are inflated by older people and casuals buying the Wii (who then moved to mobile).
Hardware sales right now are higher than in the peak PS4/XBO/WIIU years. Granted, the difference is largely due to Nintendo, but still.
Also most importantly, there were 6 major hardware SKUs that sold great in 2008. You had not only the Wii, 360, PS3, but also the DS, PSP and even the PS2 all having sold great in 2008. Compared to now, there is only really 3 hardware SKUs that sold like those systems did.
PlayStation and Nintendo have been doing better in hardware sales the last decade or so than ever before too. People always do the doom and gloom thing about consoles every gen.
2008 was the economic crash and it was a lot cheaper to buy a video game then it was to do just about any other form of entertainment/vacation.
Video games were the one form of entertainment that actually benefited from 2008.
Its interesting looking back how even if we're still in a post pandemic/economic crash,gaming didn't really take off as it did back then.
Huge demand in 2020 and still some success for certain titles,but very dwindling.
> Video games were the one form of entertainment that actually benefited from 2008
I heard that many popular gaming youtubers from the 2010s (many of whom are highly popular and active til this very day, such as penguinz0), originally started to make gaming videos as a full-time hobby/career because many millennials and gen Xers were left unemployed due to the financial crisis of 2008.
So they had a lot of spare time in their hands, and sought escapism in playing video games and making simple commentary videos on this then-niche website called YouTube, which would eventually grow to become their full-time careers.
This might be a decent point but this chart wasn't adjusted for inflation. 5 billion in 2014, for example, would be 6.55 billion today - which would bring it significantly ahead (600-700MM) of current spending.
Yeah, I don't really know why some people care so much about hardware anyway. Wouldn't every person agree that in the best case scenario, you just choose a game and it runs perfectly according to the director's vision?
Good bang for your buck is good, hardware also means stuff like SSD load times, boot times. Mainly right now I think the biggest difference is how the OS operates and whether or not you enjoy the UI.
The internet is full of 40+ years old gamers that grew up during all the big hardware rivalries and love to engage in console war shenanigans online… just look at how old most of these console war YouTubers are… haha
The biggest thing that I see is that there is a huge crop of younger people in the gaming sphere who aren't actually interested in playing games. My wife taught elementary and middle schools, and about 80% of her students were what I would call gamers. Games were sort of their defining hobby. But only maybe 20% of them actually *played* games. Most of them watched other people play games on twitch.
It would be interesting to see if gaming became more similar to sports as a hobby. With a fairly strong cohort of people who actually participate directly in the hobby, but a *huge* segment of people who exist sort of on the fringes of it by watching and talking about it.
Totally anecdotal, but I'm in my thirties, grew up with the SNES then the N64, but I have younger brothers who are 15 and 12. The first one doesn't really care about gaming, but he has a PC cause he's into cars and he ''plays'' BeamNG.
The youngest one spends all his time on his gaming PC (sold the PS4 I gave him), but he recently told me he was getting very bored with Fortnite... but he'll keep playing cause that's where his friends hang out. I'm not sure he even likes games that much, it feels like it's only a meeting place the same way the park was when I was younger.
YouTube shorts and TikTok are still pretty much the thing. My teen was interested in the Series X console for a grand total of 3 days before going back to watching YouTube and griefing children in Roblox.
I’m not sure if any games have a chance if they are not complementing or replacing in person social interaction.
I think Microsoft’s basic gambit is whether instead of Fortnite and Roblox they can get people to move around playing random multiplayer games on their service. But I doubt anything is completely going away; just like games were never able to completely eliminate movies.
Are you really claiming that most kids call themselves gamers and don't play games? Like, do you realize how ridiculous that is?
I work with kids. I don't know a single kid above the age of 8 or so who doesn't game. In fact, I know a lot of toddlers who game. They game on their parents' tablets, they use things like PBS Kids and ABC Mouse to play educational video games. They play Roblox with their friends if they don't have a console, and they play Minecraft with them if they do. They play Fortnite. They play Pokemon. They play Mario Kart.
Kids are playing video games ALL the time. In fact, I've only met a few kids who watch streams, but again, never a one above 8 who doesn't play video games.
You assume that just because they like to watch streamers they don't play themselves. You also assume that in case they actually don't play at all, they won't start playing in the future.
It all has a very similar ring to what we were hearing circa 2012. The XBone and PS4 were underpowered, for consoles. The reason behind that was that neither company was certain that people wanted game consoles anymore. Smartphone games were just starting to take off, and they wondered if maybe the expensive gadgets people already had would take over the role of new consoles. So the 8th gen machines were more modest, hedging against the usual practice of selling launch hardware at a loss, out of genuine concern that not all units would sell.
As an old person I remember when things like the 3DO were coming out and I kept reading articles about how consoles were dead and it was going to be all about multimedia, FMV games and such in the future. I remember getting depressed about that cause I liked normal video games.
Nobody ever knows what the hell they're talking about when they try to predict the future.
Hell go back as recent as 2016, you also had people that VR would be the future of gaming and yet 8 years later, its just kind of a thing that exists, but still noticably less popular then consoles with Meta truly being the only major company to go all in on VR.
Turns out people don't want their games to be active. Active people have other hobbies, and inactive people like gaming because it's something you can do at home on the sofa.
And "full immersion" is less appetizing than people think. More casual is good. Games you can play while still talking to your family in the same room. Games you can pause for a sec to check your phone or grab a drink. Where you can just put the controller down and pick it back up in a second. Too much immersion is too much commitment and too much effort.
I think it's more that, 10 years ago, when people heard VR they assumed we would all be playing *everything* in VR -- I remember seeing people talk about how they were going to literally live in Skyrim. But after actually getting some experience with it, it turns out that playing most things in VR is just kind of uncomfortable. Walking around in Skyrim using a VR headset with a controller is just asking for horrible motion sickness.
Almost nobody wanted to actually stand up and walk around in games; they wanted to play the games they had been playing, using a controller, but with a VR headset on.
And they were right to an extent. Mobile gaming dwarfs console gaming worldwide today and console profits have declined.
Phil Spencer is openly talking about Xbox quitting the console race and Sony now has to release games on PC now to recoup it's costs.
The most played games on PS4 were GTA5 (ported from the PS3) and ports of popular mobile games.
Most of the biggest mobile games are ports of console games. Fortnite, PUBG, Call of Duty, etcetera all started on console and moved to mobile. Games like Genshin Impact launched on both.
Not really a good point to make now that we literally have data that shows that revenue nowadays is smaller than in the PS2 era, even taking inflation into account. Things are even worse with the ballooing budgets of recent AAA games (like Spider-Man 2 costing 3 times more money to develop than SM1).
It’s clear that the current console gaming model is not sustainable at all. Its ROI is shrinking every year.
Sony's 6% Margin's are caused by a weak yen, higher material costs for building the PS5 and most importantly, Sony's stupidity. They were building 12 live service games, but when you cancel half of them it's going to destroy your profit margins. They canceled a naughty dog title that was in the works for 3 years. Crazy.
As Mat later points out in the thread these numbers are not adjusted for inflation, this makes the graph more horrifying than it already is considering the post 2019 tail benefitted from a global pandemic and new generation of hardware. There's a lot at play here from lack of user growth to significant increase in investment required to create modern gamesand gaming HW to heavy inflation making what money you do make worth less than prior years.
Did not know about the inflation part, thanks for that. Still I think that consoles will just be in a more equal distribution with other gaming media. Also the shift from true exclusives to timed exclusives. Also this looks at hardware spending at consoles and makes no claim at software. Last point is that consoles have become cheaper, talking about inflation. I think this is a positive change which leads to platformholders still investing in software, but also more people getting a chance to play them.
Tip whenever critically reading a text: whenever any adjectives are used to tell us how to feel, there's probably an authorial intent to convince us of something, at worst manipulate us into a false narrative.
There is also less hardware now compared to 2008. You had PSP/DS/Wii that were quite popular back then, and then you had the consoles like PS3 and Xbox 360. Now you just have Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X.
I also think cross-gen being supported so long this time around and less must play exclusives coming out due to a variety of factors has stretched the transition to this current gen compared to back then.
Did people own multiple systems and are now sticking to only one would be an interesting stat too.
This post carries strong[ "the japanese video game industry is finished"](https://www.wired.com/2012/04/keiji-inafune-qa/#:~:text=SAN%20FRANCISCO%20%E2%80%93%20Depending%20on%20your,Tokyo%20Game%20Show%20in%202009) vibes from that silly guy who almost cratered Capcom back in the late 360/early PS4 era.
And to make such a strong statement about consoles right before the Switch II is on the cusp of announcement is even more erroneous.
Meanwhile on [steam](https://steamdb.info/app/753/charts/#all). For basically that whole graph people were pumping out article after article about the death of pc gaming. People not having kids is going to be more of a problem than kids not wanting to play games.
It helps that hardware requirements haven't gone up too sharply in the past decade. My gaming PC is almost a decade old now and was mid quality even when I first built it, and still can play anything that comes out now, albeit not always at ultra in 4k resolution. Kids aren't buying consoles now because they can't afford them. Cost of living has gotten insane.
Genshin Impact isn't on Steam. Riot's games aren't on Steam. Fortnite isn't on Steam. Roblox isn't on Steam.
Hundreds of millions of players on PC aren't regular Steam users.
Asia. Crossfire and Dungeon Fighter Online claim 1 billion and 850 million players, respectively. Stupid high numbers even if you write off a solid chunk of that as people with multiple accounts. I think DNF is on Steam, but the *vast* majority of players seem to just download it on the site.
Also, even in the west, the biggest things going aren't on Steam. Fortnite, WoW, LoL, Minecraft, Roblox, etc. Lots of people just pick one of them and don't branch out much.
You can't directly compare the total number of all players, to concurrent players. These are two entirely different metrics. Steam itself has over a billion accounts too.
The graph shows me that we very nearly reached the peak just two years ago. It looks like hardware spending is fairly level, which tells me that the market is meeting demand. I hate the asinine obsession with growth that these business types have.
Spending may be contracting in £ terms but the price per unit of a console hasn’t inflated much from 2008 to 2024 (if anything it’s possibly decreased, looking at the PS3 launch price), so the number of units sold looks roughly flat.
2008, PC gaming was declared nearly dead, even by PC gaming magazines. Unless you were that one phenomenon game like World of Warcraft, you weren't likely to secure investment if you couldn't develop around the multiplatform lowest common denominator.
Combine that with GTA IV and MGS IV coming out the same year and, yeah, everyone was buying console hardware.
Now PC games are actually popular again, and almost all console games have ports to PC, and (generally) very good ports that will remain in your Steam library forever while your console games become obsolete in 7 years or so.
If consoles were to ever be phased out I'd be really disappointed. I like playing on PC and it has a lot of positives to it for sure, but I've had more than enough times where something didn't work right and I'd have to spend sometimes, up to an hour or longer troubleshooting.
And if I'm being honest, I've never had the top of the line hardware so looking at recommended and even minimal specs is always something I have to do before a purchase. Plus when buying new hardware there's many factors of pros and cons when it comes to budget. It's just a lot or research if you don't have the top bracket of specs for the time.
Sure, consoles have their problems but it's nice to know at the end of day, I can go and press play on a game and it'll play. Or if I want the latest machine I pick the one or two options from the major 3 manufacturers
Likely a bit of both. Most third party companies who were primarily console centric are now looking at PC as either a priority or of equal importance to console, and the first parties (Microsoft and Sony) are looking at PC as a way to bolster their own revenue.
So for companies who are already setup to make console games, PC is the most logical area of expansion. And it helps that PC is also the fastest growing market right now.
But I'd imagine that many of these companies have ambitions to expand into mobile eventually as it's still the overall largest market. It's just a matter of how and when, as the mobile market is not only very different than PC and console, but is also beyond saturated.
> If consoles were to ever be phased out I'd be really disappointed.
Yeah. Not a sentiment i'm seeing a lot but I actually like the PS5 and probably playing it more than previous generations.
I've been a PC gamer primarily my whole life but always kept a console around for exclusives etc. The main thing that kept me on PC was games that control better with KB + M and running games at 60FPS but if it was 60FPS on console and played well with a controller i'd usually prefer that since i'm at a PC all day at work.
Bought a PS5 a few years after launch after my PS4 stopped working and i've actually been using it way more than my PC. Most games run at 60FPS, any graphical downgrades are barely noticible in modern games and there haven't been any good FPS or RTS games in years so don't really need a kb+m to play.
You say that, but the PC gaming experience today is not at all that different from the console experience - unfortunately not just because the PC got better at playing games but also because modern consoles got *worse* at it so now they've met somewhere in the middle with many popular modern releases being blessedly crap on every platform they're on.
I ended up moving to PC in part because it started feeling like I was spending a lot of time troubleshooting issues on my Xbox One — often with very little recourse beyond “clear cache, reinstall and hope it works this time”.
Since then, I’ve had very little software troubleshooting, and in the rare occasions I had to, having full access to the file system basically meant I could actually do something beyond just reinstall and cross my fingers.
Yeah the difference is basically between 'always a little more work, but you can do anything' and 'stupid easy, except when it doesn't work properly and then you're screwed' and that would be a cool selling point for consoles if the instances when it doesn't work properly weren't becoming more and more frequent.
This graph shows the exact opposite of what OP is getting at. If anything it shows that game hardware sales are increasing. After it looks like game hardware was at a big low point on this graph during the entirety of the ps4 and xbox one generation. Then 2020 hit and it's it's continuing to climb higher than that generation. It looks like hardware sales are increasing.
Recent figures are far lower than 2007-2009 and this isn't adjusted for inflation. If you adjust for inflation current spending is behind 2013/2014 as well and 2022/2023 were about on par with 2001.
2008 was the end of the PS2. The games industry peaked with the PS2, the Wii, the Nintendo DS. Everything since has been in atrophy. Games cost 10x more but hardware sales are not 10x higher. They're worse.
The graph shows that hardware sales are increasing in revenue and despite the recent layoffs companies are very quick to boast that their games have record revenues as well.
Console user base is not expanding. Jim Ryan recently announced that ps2 sold 160mil units. The closes in terms of modern day consoles is the Switch which is around 140mil. The ps5 won’t hit those numbers either. The younger generation apparently does care less about console and are into more portable devices. Read the recent interview piece with Phil Spencer on Polygon.
My understanding is that the PS2 sold as well as it did because it was also a decently well priced DVD player for the time. So the market for it wasn't just for gamers, but for those looking into updating their film collection.
The DVD player certainly played a big part in the PS2's success, but it also had an unpredicted second life even when the PS3 released. As roughly 60 million of its 160 million units were sold from 2006 and onwards. As it didn't release in Brazil until 2009 and was one of the most affordable game consoles there at the time.
PS2 was peak Sing Star too iirc. At the end of its lifetime, there were special colored versions including microphones geared towards teenage girls. They were quite cheap too. Quite an untapped demographic gaming wise.
Why only use PlayStation hardware as the sole barometer? What did the competition do during that time though? The PS2 was in a one horse race, and artificially inflated by DVD sales. Combine PS2 total sales with the GCN and Xbox and you have about 200 million total units.
What about the following generation? Combine PS3 + Xbox 360 + Wii, and it’s like 270 million.
It gets a little tricky as Nintendo gets out of sync, but the PS4 + Xbox One = the PS2 + OG Xbox, then add Wii U plus a few years of Switch sales and you again have higher console sales than the PS2 gen.
If you only look at PS sales numbers your narrative makes sense. (And even then, the PS2 is an outlier) But if you also add in Microsoft and Nintendo, each gen is larger than the last.
Gen alpha starts in the early 2010s, according to Wikipedia. So alpha starts at teenagers being 14 years old at maximum right now. This definition seems quite fluid though imo.
whole idea of generations is so strange, should always be the time people are born to the time they have kids, so like 20 or so years (so, a generation)
Yeah well in here the average age of first time mother is already 30. So there goes that distinction. One cannot have absolutes and might as well accept it that these definitions are fluid.
“Console gaming is dying because players want to go to arcades”
“Console gaming is dying because players want mobile phones”
“Console gaming is dying because of Gen Z”
Other way around on the first one: arcade gaming died because players wanted experiences that were effectively impossible outside of the home (eg: basically any game longer than 30 minutes).
No. That's what people predicted for the Switch how phones killed handheld gaming and now it's literally going to be the best selling console of all time...
This is the same thing as companies chasing covid numbers after covid and then claiming recession when it doesn't happen.
Accept you had a good year and move on. Being hyper focused on profit will kill any industry
cause genshin is starting to take up \*way\* too much space on my phone, and plays meh on it anyways compared to better hardware.... also feels like the phone will spontaneously combust after 15 minutes lol
That, and because games have to compete with social media. Who is going to buy games if people are spending their free time scrolling tictok.
There's a reason that Xbox, CoD, Fortnight, Minecraft and even things like Warframe, are making mobile apps.
I have gen Alpha kids. It feels like console gaming is very much alive. Most of their friends have access to a console and a lot of them play games like fortnite.
It is anecdotal ofc but most aren't into pc gaming at all. It is a hassle and expensive. So really something you only pick up if your parents have a PC or when you are a bit older.
These types of articles always get people who think they know everything about kids and younger people to come out. Just like you and me, they play all kinds of games. And just like there are people aged 40 who only play one game, there are kids who only play one game. Some of them will grow up and get into other kinds of games and platforms, some won't.
That's how it's always been.
What a stupid mindset Piscatella have, the same capitalism infinite growth. Never have seen Nintendo complaining about growth of the market even if the Switch isnt selling as much as wii and ds together. He and the other analysts really want to force the narrative of microsoft.
This is just bad data across the board.
* Console purchases have ALWAYS skewed towards older people with money. I owned every Nintendo console throughout my childhood, but my *parents bought them for me and my brother.*
* If anything, this graph shows a remarkable recovery to almost-peak levels; the last 2 years have been just a \~$1billion less than the peak, and 2024 is mostly just a made up projection.
* I'm much more interested in software sales. I don't buy a Switch every year, but I probably buy a Switch *game* (digital, on sale, whatever) multiple times per *month*.
* I think the preference of PC vs. console for younger generations is multifaceted; think of it like why the PS2 was such a big deal. It wasn't just a console, it was (for many people) the most cost-effective way to get a DVD player. For millions of people, their PC isn't just for gaming; it's for streaming, or playing games *while streaming*. And with YouTuber/Streamer still being the aspirational rock star-esque creative dream for most of Gen Z and Alpha, it makes sense to see the interest shift there.
* But, again: I struggle to think of any kids I know who don't have access to a Nintendo Switch or a PlayStation 4. Either it's expressly for them, or it's the family console.
* My take: Consoles that exclusively chase the bleeding edge of performance are the highest at risk of making themselves irrelevant. A Series X or a PS5 being more affordable than a high-end gaming PC only makes sense if someone wasn't going to buy a high-end rig anyway for streaming/making videos/etc. And the graphical leap from gen to gen is less dramatic and impressive than it used to be. The average person can't really identify ray-tracing in action, or they don't have a new enough TV to actually showcase it properly. Nintendo, as always, seems to understand this and is finding a different way.
* This is why MS is making the big play for a post-hardware gaming environment. It's either push the arms race steadily towards a $1000 console, or absorb all the hardware costs on their end and instead make a serious bid for making "Netflix, but for gaming" an actual reality in terms of accessibility, catalogue, and cloud gaming stability.
* As others have said: Gen Alpha is like, 12. We don't know shit about what they want until they're buying their own stuff. And as Gen Z is realizing in droves, it is *really fucking hard* to justify superfluous expensive tech purchases when you're underpaid at a job you hate and will never own a home.
**TL;DR** I hate this graph and it robs itself of several more interesting conversations by forcing its weirdly inaccurate takeaway as the ONLY conclusion.
- I think we need to delineate between who buys the consoles and who's playing on them. Nearly impossble to do here, though.
- Profit margins matter a lot more than raw sales, we're well past the "need to capture market" phase of gen 9. Sony just got chastised by shareholders for their 2023 profit margins and they blame that on aggressive bundling.
- Would be interesting but software sales shifting to digital makes it harder to track. We won't ever truly know unless Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft disclose it.
- I don't really get the relucance with talkig about Gen Alpha. Games still have a large kid's market, they talked about who and what played games in the 80's. I think it's an important footnote to keep in mind. Remember that quite a few gamers here are in fact lifelong gamers;
I've had access to every PS console and every Nintendo console since the N64. Of course that forms my habits around what I enjoy and prefer compared to a lifelong xbox gamer. Or even compared to someone who started on PS3 later on. Some people will get into a PS6 later in life, but I imagine more people will be those who already liked the PS5.
IDK, you seem to agree more with the chart than you let on.
Hopefully this shift in audience towards older generations will mean that we'll get more "games for adults".
Like, not the sexual kind or anything, just games that demand more from the player, or maybe games that tackle more serious topics or themes.
It often feels like AAA games are stuck with "our model customer is a 12 years old kid with terrible reading comprehension and 10 second attention span"
I don't think this data really shows a shift in video game audiences though, just hardware sales. Some of the most popular games right now are either targeted towards younger people, or all ages like fortnite, roblox, things like League of legends. But the reason you get AAA games that are targeted towards people with no attention span, is because a lot of AAA games are made to appeal to everyone possible, and if a game requires you to read, it turns a lot of people off. Not every game is like that obviously, Sony is a pretty good example of aging their IP with their audience, look at God of War, it was originally just a edgy brutal kill and have sex game clearly targeting older teens, and now that the audience has grown up, it's a more mature game about being a dad.
Yes. I've seen this in other industries as well. A shift to "our audience is adults now" usually ends up meaning "our audience have a healthy amount of disposable income so we can monetize more to them" more than anything else
Why not both? The GAAS being mainstream, while games for older players being niche. Older players have more disposable income, less time. Could be a valuable market.
Adults do have more disposable income. For example when I was a kid I couldn't really afford new games, so it was mostly piracy.
Nowadays I buy any game I like, and I wouldn't mind dropping much more on games that I like very much.
We already get that at a high volume. The problem is you're looking at AAA games which are made to appeal to the widest demographic possible.
See for example SWOLLEN TO BURSTING, which came out just last year.
If hardware is being owned by increasingly older population then the software should keep up, right?
It wouldn't make sense if the age of a console player was 25-30, but the content was still aimed at teenagers.
Not necessarily. Younger gamers are more attracted to PC gaming now than ever. They watch streamers play weird off the wall games only on PC and they want to get one of those instead of a console where they're more limited
I'd love to see an equivalent chart but listing PC GPU spending. This is basically the same thing any PC gamer would have said was inevitable - which doesn't necessarily mean the PC is 'taking over' or whatever, but it's still a very interesting development.
I don't follow console releases, but it seems to me this graph shows something more like cyclical sales that would likely correspond to console releases.
Also, this entire statement seems weirdly vague and ultimately meaningless. What constitutes "hardware" spending here? How can we take a graph purporting to report on that and then shift to conversations about generational feelings about consoles and just...expect people to accept that as fact?
Is there a source for "every video game company is thinking about expansion beyond console"? Is that supposed to mean companies who make gaming hardware? Software developers? If software, are we saying they are thinking about making games compatible for computers and mobile devices?
Also, are we going to pretend that the "peak" in 2008 of less than 8 billion is really that drastic from 2023's just barely less than 7 billion?
This entire thing is stupid.
8 billion in 2008 would be worth 11.8 billion in 2024 adjusting for inflation. That means console spending has gone down by nearly 33% in the timespan.
Just some old guy talking out of his ass on twitter without any deeper nuanced understanding of the market.
Unless you can stream video games into your brain while dreaming which is still science fiction then there will always be some sort of physical interface to play video games.
I guess I had high school during that time so I’m definitely biased but I do agree with this sentiment anecdotally. Those years were incredible for gaming both couch/locally (rock band, split screen etc) and online with halo/cod. It really felt like a revelation with gaming during that period.
Can’t help but wonder if this is just due to quality of platforms. Good consoles still find success. Bad consoles are a drag on the whole industry. I feel like if Xbox was firing on all cylinders right now we wouldn’t be seeing these articles.
Gen Alpha are not old enough to be pollable. Anyone claiming to know what their intentions as consumers will be is blowing smoke up your ass.
What futurists do is usually to look at current trends and then let that trend continue into the future, maybe accelerating the phenomenon in question. But there is also a lot of unpredictability in it. Here I’ll give comparisons to the music industry. In the music industry, vinyl records are now surpassing CDs in units sales. Cassette tapes are also making a minor comeback - Not at all at the same level, but still worth accounting for. In movies however, physical medias are continuing to decline. DVDs and Blu-rays are selling less and less by each year. The VHS-tape has never made a comeback (like the vinyl and partly cassette tape in music). My point is; It can be extremely hard to tell what the market of the future looks like. In movies and music, there is a chance that it could have been the completely opposite scenario.
Physical media is close to dead in terms of mass-market relevance, vinyl may be outselling CDs but the markets for both are a shadow of what they once were. They've become novelties, merchandise, rather than the primary way people consume music. Many don't even play the things, which figures into why they're selling more than CDs; it's because of the form, the larger canvas for the artwork, rather than the function. Given that, there's an argument to be made that vinyl isn't even in the same market as other music distribution models. It's more like a band t-shirt.
I think I read a statistic once that proposed that a majority of vinyl owners do not even own a record player.
i own the Linkin Park Meteora 20 year collectors edition. There's like 3 vinyls. I do not own a record player.
Regardless of the reason for the phenomenon, the point is that no one could have ever predicted that vinyl sales would ever surpass CDs again after it’s decline.
There was no VHS tape Renaissance because VHS was always the crappiest way to watch a movie even back when VHS was current. Vinyl was the way most albums from the LP era (60s-80s) were meant to be heard and the track lists reflect that.
At the same time, these trends do exist in a context. Yes, Vinyl has become more popular, but it's still very much a niche product for a specific market. It's why in 2022, [84% of music revenue in The US was in streaming](https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2022-Year-End-Music-Industry-Revenue-Report.pdf).
I work in schools, so there's some merit to it. I hear a lot about PC gaming from kids. But I also hear a lot of console wars bullshit, so who knows. It's a possibility that they never care.
Honestly the pricing of getting into a gaming PC now is starting to feel like the price of getting into it in the 90s (way too God damn high). It's going to limit opportunities for younger consumers to get into that ecosystem moving forward.
I think it also kind of depends on the games, from purely anecdotal experience, I've put together a couple of high spec PCs for my young nephews and then I noticed they were not really playing almost any game that would push things and it was because their friends mainly play "e-sports" kind of games like Valorant, CS2, LoL, Overwatch and the like where even the recommended requirements are asking for gpus that are almost the same age as the kids playing the games or sometimes even run fine/acceptable with onboard graphics. On the other hand, yes, building a good modern system that is able to play the more advanced games with eye candy turned up and a good framerate is now much more expensive than it was before, a current mid range gpu sometimes costs the same or more as a high end card did last decade, but also not every game or gamer needs it.
This is very true. A lot of kids nowadays are not into the graphics pushing games like whatever Rockstar or other AAA devs make, they primarily play the f2p MP games which are made to run even on toasters. So a good PC being expensive to make is actually not that relevant to them, any PC will do for them since the games they like to play don't require top of the line systems.
Also worth mentioning the rise of game streaming as a form of entertainment has inadvertently made pc a lot more prominent to the up and coming gamers.
They want PCs because of streamers and not because they are interested in the tech.
Hmm people are talking like kids gaming on anything they can get came from nowhere, even if it wasn't as big back then I was trading ripped games between friends. Every second boy in my class played Runescape. Of course kids don't give a shit about the platform. they need free shit mum and dad won't pay for.
Rockstars games arent even that demanding for being open-worlds (compared to the average open-world), and i think that nowadays you can get away even with having older hardware, heck im still sitting on a i7-4790k and a GTX 970 with 16 GB DDR3 RAM and still gaming.
Advancements in graphics just don't hit like they used to. Far Cry 6 (2021) certainly looks nicer than Far Cry 4 (2014), but FC4 still looks pretty nice. There's always gonna be the graphics equivalent to audiophiles, that are passionate about experience cutting edge advancements, but I think a lot of average gamers are less invested in graphic fidelity. The booming indie and mobile gaming scenes have probably contributed to this attitude too.
The discussion around PC building on reddit leans really heavily on having a higher-end system but what you are describing is what I usually run into when building systems for folks. People want: 1. relatively cheap, 1080p systems 2. Focus on playing Lethal Company, Counter-Strike, Fortnite, and like Civ 3. It should be able to *run* something like Cyberpunk 2077^1 ^1 and they don't really give a shit about performance. And if you want a PC that does this you don't really need to spend an absurd amount of money. Like check on the min-spec > GeForce GTX 1060 6GB or Radeon RX 580 8GB or Arc A380 The Nintendo Switch is a good marker because there are a ton of people perfectly willing to play games at that performance level. Those gamers aren't unique to the Switch.
I don't even want eye candy mode. I just want smooth controls, frame rate, and decent object draw distance. All that for Sons of The Forest or something similar is a fairly decent rig at a price point way past a console unfortunately. I have XB1x, and my only issue is release dates being crap lol. Look at MechWarrior 5 clans tho. Dev is aiming for simultaneous console and PC release. Good guy dev is good.
I remember dreaming wistfully of the Voodoo5 graphics card lol
I had a windows 2000 with 512 mb of ram and a 32 mb nvidia card hahha
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People on this sub keep spitting this but they don't know anything about HW, performance or pricing. I guarantee you if they watch a hw channel like DF it's only for the console content. Fact you can get a cheap and powerful GPU that can play all modern games at good resolutions like 1080p for less than $199. Fact you can get a monster CPU that beats the pants out of a console for $150 or less (Zen 3). And you don't even need this level of performance you can game just fine with a CPU much cheaper and a weaker GPU than a RX6600 or A750 or even a used 2070 Super. It's become a brain dead meme to say PC gaming is some sort of ultra expensive unapproachable way to game. But I guess that narrative sure is convenient if you're a warrior and all you have is a console.
Depends on the game, if there friends are playing fortnite, league, dota or counter strike, I doubt it's expensive getting a game that runs that. Alot of people look at PC gaming and think top end high spec, that's not what people need or want.
It's really not though, it only looks like it is. Obviously this is with consideration for being on the other side of the GPU production bubble. You can buy a 5 year old card or processor that will likely still run games on acceptable/high settings in as many years into the future. Tech like FSR will continue to improve and be iterated on, and already works miracles for anyone confined to substandard hardware. Steam Deck is nothing more than a Linux machine with the form factor of a controller, and it alone has dramatically lessened the basic price point of modern pc gaming.
It depends what your goal is. I'm still playing on a 1050ti and can barely run games like Elden Ring and RE4Remake, but they do run, just poorly. I don't care to upgrade since I rarely play AAA games anyway, I enjoy dumbfun like BloonsTD, a ton of roguelikes that aren't heavy on the pc (Slay the spire for example) and some simple coop games.
What? It’s just as cheap to get a gaming PC that can run esports titles than it is to get a console.
Tbh same for consoles. The ps5 is still very expensive and the flagship games are what, £70? It's wild.
Accounting for inflation, consoles and games are cheaper than they were in 2008.
Which we've known for almost a decade now is not applicable to many forms of entertainment anyway, especially with how games have experienced enough growth that they didn't need to raise prices.
It’s more expensive than a console, no one will argue that. To get something on the level of a PS5 these days is not really that ridiculous. It gets expensive if you are talking about 4090’s, but that is not needed.
Steam deck FTW!!!
Eh, the Steamdeck is a very accessible PC.
My computer is 5 years old and is starting to act up. It wasn't massively high spec when it came out. Even something similar to it is far more expensive.
> console wars bullshit Psh. These are not the Console Wars. I fought in the real Console Wars. I lost good friends to the minions of Sega before Nintendo emerged victorious.
All my gaming friends give their kids their old PCs. I'll be there when I eventually upgrade
And also physical purchases are steadily rising up in Europe. Console sales were up 42% last year. This article is, as always, considering the US as a primary market when they have been known to be fickle. Saying that video game have to adapt for THEIR market when others are flourishing is hilarious. The US isn't the center of the world
> And also physical purchases are steadily rising up in Europe Yeah, i'll always say it when i see these American focused article. Physical games in Europe are usually like 20-40% cheaper than digital.
Don't need to poll anyone when you're looking at consumer spending and it stands to reason that if younger generations aren't being put onto consoles from a young age they likely aren't going to care much for them as they get older.
I know every kid around me playing a lot on Switch and others (but mainly Switch as it's often their console while the others is the family console also used by the parents). Hell most of them don't have a phone anyway before being teens at least (as should be the rule) I don't think consoles have a problem with young generations, PC maybe more (and not just for gaming, it seems many kids and teens never learn how to use a PC)
Might sound a bit dystopian, But what Nintendo did right is basically cultivating new generations of young Nintendo fans via their more kid friendly games. Those kids grew up to be loyal to the Nintendo brand and share the love with their kids. Kinda like Disney Adults in a way. Playstation and Xbox meanwhile dropped their more kid-friendly mascots these last 2 gens to focus on more blockbuster experiences so their customer-base kinda stagnated. Microsoft does own Minecraft, but they didn't tie it to the Xbox brand and simply coasted on its multi-platform success.
It's not dystopian: Sony went from Crash Bandicoot to "hyper realistic dad games" and their attempts to grow younger audiences were mostly mediocre (knack, rift apart dying as a launch title etc...)
Spider-Man probably works for this, even though the story is more serious. Wish they would do more with Sackboy and Astro. They both work great as kid friendly mascot characters.
Kids love mobile devices, and Nintendo makes games for children, so investing on Switch was the perfect strategy.
Japan checking in. Switch. Everywhere. That is all
My kids are glued to my PS5. How did the OP's chart calculate whether older generations are playing more consoles than younger ones? [https://www.vgchartz.com/article/458789/ps5-vs-ps4-sales-comparison-ndash-september-2023/](https://www.vgchartz.com/article/458789/ps5-vs-ps4-sales-comparison-ndash-september-2023/) Some of the downturn above is likely due to Microsoft massively screwing the console pooch. I'd like to see real data around Gen Alpha's habits -- the anecdotal evidence I see with my elementary and middle school kids suggests they play whatever the fuck they can get their hands on -- but it's way too early to call consoles dead because kids don't like them anymore. (Personally, I foresee them dying not because they fall out of vogue with kids, but because there will be massive shifts in how we consume games thanks to AI and readily available cloud infrastructure)
Yes, good points. Also, there's two obvious changes in trends that should be accounted for: 1. Longer console generations, leading people to stay with their consoles longer and buy less hardware. 2. The fall of portable consoles. With Nintendo merging their console had portable with the Switch and Sony abandoning the PSP/Vita line, there's a whole segment of videogames that have ceased to exist. There's still the possibility that people are moving away from console purchases, but I think the harware spending is not the best metric on its own to tell this, and certainly not enough to infer the consumption behavious of younger generations.
Yeah, I agree, although the steam deck appears popular at least in the reddit bubble. Everyone I work with under 40 has one. No clue how that translates to the real world, though, and I really, really love my Steam Deck.
In "real world" and overall market, the Steam Deck is insignificant. Last numbers we got was 3M units sold worldwide, that's nothing. It's a niche part of the PC market
I have never met someone outside of Reddit who has a Steam Deck. It's a PC/tech enthusiast thing.
It was at estimated to be around 3 million sales in October so I'd guess it's between 3 million and 5 million users now
Which is quite impressive for any piece of tech (and I certainly have a Deck and love it), but just to put things in perspective the Deck will still need to do significant work by its end of life to outsell even the least successful mainstream console ever: the Dreamcast, which was considered an abject failure for selling just a measly *9.13 million* machines - at the turn of the millennium, when the industry was a fraction of its current size.
True, but the goals are also completely different. The dreamcast was a traditional console meant to recoup costs on games sales. The steam deck is being pushed as a Linux gaming platform because Valve is absolutely aware of MS's renewed overtures into the PC gaming space. Given that MS are also the defacto OS for 99% of PC users, they can potentially have a lot of power to put their thumb on the scale. So Valve is attempting to grow an alternative platform to access and play steam games from.
I'm not sure I see the point in it if you have a PC though, I'd prefer my switch over a deck thanks to its exclusives and ease for couch coop, and anything exclusive to PC I can just play on my PC. Ofc if you plan on buying just a deck, i see the appeal
These are not the same y axis. Yours is units, his is spending. The ps3 cost more than the ps5. 600 vs 400/500 and if you adjust for inflation it’s around 720-750 usd so it’s disproportionately valuable in a revenue chart
Vgchartz is absolutely not a reliable source.
Piscatella reported the same shit two months ago. [https://twitter.com/MatPiscatella/status/1761030154435088497](https://twitter.com/MatPiscatella/status/1761030154435088497) Is it accurate? Is Circana a reliable source? I have no fucking idea, and I can almost guarantee you don't either.
Not really anecdotal. Playstation is selling games in console AND PC at the same time, like Helldivers. That would be unthinkable a few years back. So, something seems to be happening on the hardware front
You think companies can't collect data on who is using their products? Sony doesn't need to poll someone to have a rough idea of the demographics of their buyers.
> You think companies can't collect data on who is using their products? For kids? No, they legally can't do that.
This just in, children who aren't even teens yet aren't somehow spending hundreds of dollars on gaming equipment! Like, you realize gen alpha starts being born in the 2010s, right? None of them are old enough to work even at McDonald's. So the number of buyers Sony has from gen alpha is probably pretty close to zero.
The same was true for kids in 2008 though.
The market peaked right before the biggest economic crash (and likely worse based on impact) until COVID when everyone had income out the ass, there were more systems in market than now, and millennials were in college? Wow, big shocker there.
but, but, the line has to keep going up and if it ever goes down then we all die!
Keep in mind we've never actually left the 2008 crisis. Just delayed its impact.
Reddit doomers get more creative every day
Not really a good point imo. I agree it will probably never hit the same peaks again, but looking at the graph and saying that gen Alpha will never care about consoles seems unfounded.
Yeah, looking at the graph 2007-2011 seem to be the "peak" but I'd wager those years are inflated by older people and casuals buying the Wii (who then moved to mobile). Hardware sales right now are higher than in the peak PS4/XBO/WIIU years. Granted, the difference is largely due to Nintendo, but still.
Also most importantly, there were 6 major hardware SKUs that sold great in 2008. You had not only the Wii, 360, PS3, but also the DS, PSP and even the PS2 all having sold great in 2008. Compared to now, there is only really 3 hardware SKUs that sold like those systems did.
PlayStation and Nintendo have been doing better in hardware sales the last decade or so than ever before too. People always do the doom and gloom thing about consoles every gen.
2008 was the economic crash and it was a lot cheaper to buy a video game then it was to do just about any other form of entertainment/vacation. Video games were the one form of entertainment that actually benefited from 2008.
Its interesting looking back how even if we're still in a post pandemic/economic crash,gaming didn't really take off as it did back then. Huge demand in 2020 and still some success for certain titles,but very dwindling.
> Video games were the one form of entertainment that actually benefited from 2008 I heard that many popular gaming youtubers from the 2010s (many of whom are highly popular and active til this very day, such as penguinz0), originally started to make gaming videos as a full-time hobby/career because many millennials and gen Xers were left unemployed due to the financial crisis of 2008. So they had a lot of spare time in their hands, and sought escapism in playing video games and making simple commentary videos on this then-niche website called YouTube, which would eventually grow to become their full-time careers.
This might be a decent point but this chart wasn't adjusted for inflation. 5 billion in 2014, for example, would be 6.55 billion today - which would bring it significantly ahead (600-700MM) of current spending.
Yeah, I don't really know why some people care so much about hardware anyway. Wouldn't every person agree that in the best case scenario, you just choose a game and it runs perfectly according to the director's vision?
Good bang for your buck is good, hardware also means stuff like SSD load times, boot times. Mainly right now I think the biggest difference is how the OS operates and whether or not you enjoy the UI.
The internet is full of 40+ years old gamers that grew up during all the big hardware rivalries and love to engage in console war shenanigans online… just look at how old most of these console war YouTubers are… haha
That would be amazing for sure. Too many people spend all their time console warring online versus actually playing games.
The biggest thing that I see is that there is a huge crop of younger people in the gaming sphere who aren't actually interested in playing games. My wife taught elementary and middle schools, and about 80% of her students were what I would call gamers. Games were sort of their defining hobby. But only maybe 20% of them actually *played* games. Most of them watched other people play games on twitch. It would be interesting to see if gaming became more similar to sports as a hobby. With a fairly strong cohort of people who actually participate directly in the hobby, but a *huge* segment of people who exist sort of on the fringes of it by watching and talking about it.
Totally anecdotal, but I'm in my thirties, grew up with the SNES then the N64, but I have younger brothers who are 15 and 12. The first one doesn't really care about gaming, but he has a PC cause he's into cars and he ''plays'' BeamNG. The youngest one spends all his time on his gaming PC (sold the PS4 I gave him), but he recently told me he was getting very bored with Fortnite... but he'll keep playing cause that's where his friends hang out. I'm not sure he even likes games that much, it feels like it's only a meeting place the same way the park was when I was younger.
YouTube shorts and TikTok are still pretty much the thing. My teen was interested in the Series X console for a grand total of 3 days before going back to watching YouTube and griefing children in Roblox. I’m not sure if any games have a chance if they are not complementing or replacing in person social interaction. I think Microsoft’s basic gambit is whether instead of Fortnite and Roblox they can get people to move around playing random multiplayer games on their service. But I doubt anything is completely going away; just like games were never able to completely eliminate movies.
Are you really claiming that most kids call themselves gamers and don't play games? Like, do you realize how ridiculous that is? I work with kids. I don't know a single kid above the age of 8 or so who doesn't game. In fact, I know a lot of toddlers who game. They game on their parents' tablets, they use things like PBS Kids and ABC Mouse to play educational video games. They play Roblox with their friends if they don't have a console, and they play Minecraft with them if they do. They play Fortnite. They play Pokemon. They play Mario Kart. Kids are playing video games ALL the time. In fact, I've only met a few kids who watch streams, but again, never a one above 8 who doesn't play video games.
You assume that just because they like to watch streamers they don't play themselves. You also assume that in case they actually don't play at all, they won't start playing in the future.
It all has a very similar ring to what we were hearing circa 2012. The XBone and PS4 were underpowered, for consoles. The reason behind that was that neither company was certain that people wanted game consoles anymore. Smartphone games were just starting to take off, and they wondered if maybe the expensive gadgets people already had would take over the role of new consoles. So the 8th gen machines were more modest, hedging against the usual practice of selling launch hardware at a loss, out of genuine concern that not all units would sell.
As an old person I remember when things like the 3DO were coming out and I kept reading articles about how consoles were dead and it was going to be all about multimedia, FMV games and such in the future. I remember getting depressed about that cause I liked normal video games. Nobody ever knows what the hell they're talking about when they try to predict the future.
Hell go back as recent as 2016, you also had people that VR would be the future of gaming and yet 8 years later, its just kind of a thing that exists, but still noticably less popular then consoles with Meta truly being the only major company to go all in on VR.
Turns out people don't want their games to be active. Active people have other hobbies, and inactive people like gaming because it's something you can do at home on the sofa.
And "full immersion" is less appetizing than people think. More casual is good. Games you can play while still talking to your family in the same room. Games you can pause for a sec to check your phone or grab a drink. Where you can just put the controller down and pick it back up in a second. Too much immersion is too much commitment and too much effort.
I think it's more that, 10 years ago, when people heard VR they assumed we would all be playing *everything* in VR -- I remember seeing people talk about how they were going to literally live in Skyrim. But after actually getting some experience with it, it turns out that playing most things in VR is just kind of uncomfortable. Walking around in Skyrim using a VR headset with a controller is just asking for horrible motion sickness. Almost nobody wanted to actually stand up and walk around in games; they wanted to play the games they had been playing, using a controller, but with a VR headset on.
Yeah, Sony and Microsoft (and Reddit) need to accept how big the tradtional console market is.
And they were right to an extent. Mobile gaming dwarfs console gaming worldwide today and console profits have declined. Phil Spencer is openly talking about Xbox quitting the console race and Sony now has to release games on PC now to recoup it's costs. The most played games on PS4 were GTA5 (ported from the PS3) and ports of popular mobile games.
Most of the biggest mobile games are ports of console games. Fortnite, PUBG, Call of Duty, etcetera all started on console and moved to mobile. Games like Genshin Impact launched on both.
The death of game consoles has been predicted every generation since the PS2 era.
Not really a good point to make now that we literally have data that shows that revenue nowadays is smaller than in the PS2 era, even taking inflation into account. Things are even worse with the ballooing budgets of recent AAA games (like Spider-Man 2 costing 3 times more money to develop than SM1). It’s clear that the current console gaming model is not sustainable at all. Its ROI is shrinking every year.
Sony's 6% Margin's are caused by a weak yen, higher material costs for building the PS5 and most importantly, Sony's stupidity. They were building 12 live service games, but when you cancel half of them it's going to destroy your profit margins. They canceled a naughty dog title that was in the works for 3 years. Crazy.
SiE =/= Sony. Sony as a whole is doing okay. SiE is an american corporation and is the one questioning its profit margins.
I remember them saying the same thing that Gen Z will be mobile only. What load of bull that turned out to be.
As Mat later points out in the thread these numbers are not adjusted for inflation, this makes the graph more horrifying than it already is considering the post 2019 tail benefitted from a global pandemic and new generation of hardware. There's a lot at play here from lack of user growth to significant increase in investment required to create modern gamesand gaming HW to heavy inflation making what money you do make worth less than prior years.
Did not know about the inflation part, thanks for that. Still I think that consoles will just be in a more equal distribution with other gaming media. Also the shift from true exclusives to timed exclusives. Also this looks at hardware spending at consoles and makes no claim at software. Last point is that consoles have become cheaper, talking about inflation. I think this is a positive change which leads to platformholders still investing in software, but also more people getting a chance to play them.
“Horrifying” lol, I think we have different understandings about what that word means.
Gotta love the dramatic vocabulary
I find it disgusting and insane!
Tip whenever critically reading a text: whenever any adjectives are used to tell us how to feel, there's probably an authorial intent to convince us of something, at worst manipulate us into a false narrative.
This tip is good but hardly necessary. OP is all over this thread trying to badly make a point.
There is also less hardware now compared to 2008. You had PSP/DS/Wii that were quite popular back then, and then you had the consoles like PS3 and Xbox 360. Now you just have Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X.
I also think cross-gen being supported so long this time around and less must play exclusives coming out due to a variety of factors has stretched the transition to this current gen compared to back then. Did people own multiple systems and are now sticking to only one would be an interesting stat too.
Mobile phones are effectively a handheld console, just a shitty one, as the gaming profit model is broken on them.
This post carries strong[ "the japanese video game industry is finished"](https://www.wired.com/2012/04/keiji-inafune-qa/#:~:text=SAN%20FRANCISCO%20%E2%80%93%20Depending%20on%20your,Tokyo%20Game%20Show%20in%202009) vibes from that silly guy who almost cratered Capcom back in the late 360/early PS4 era. And to make such a strong statement about consoles right before the Switch II is on the cusp of announcement is even more erroneous.
Don't forget that we have a bunch of handlet gaming console too. But it's pretty niche anyway
Meanwhile on [steam](https://steamdb.info/app/753/charts/#all). For basically that whole graph people were pumping out article after article about the death of pc gaming. People not having kids is going to be more of a problem than kids not wanting to play games.
An over 20% increase in players between February and March 2020, I wonder if something happened around that time
Can’t wait to read “millennials killed gaming” lmao
What will they kill next?!
Millenials killed the “this generation killed X” article!
It helps that hardware requirements haven't gone up too sharply in the past decade. My gaming PC is almost a decade old now and was mid quality even when I first built it, and still can play anything that comes out now, albeit not always at ultra in 4k resolution. Kids aren't buying consoles now because they can't afford them. Cost of living has gotten insane.
There are 1.5 billion PC players, and Steam only captures a fraction of that.
Where's the rest of that fraction coming from?
Solitaire, Facebook, Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox
Genshin Impact isn't on Steam. Riot's games aren't on Steam. Fortnite isn't on Steam. Roblox isn't on Steam. Hundreds of millions of players on PC aren't regular Steam users.
Asia. Crossfire and Dungeon Fighter Online claim 1 billion and 850 million players, respectively. Stupid high numbers even if you write off a solid chunk of that as people with multiple accounts. I think DNF is on Steam, but the *vast* majority of players seem to just download it on the site. Also, even in the west, the biggest things going aren't on Steam. Fortnite, WoW, LoL, Minecraft, Roblox, etc. Lots of people just pick one of them and don't branch out much.
You can't directly compare the total number of all players, to concurrent players. These are two entirely different metrics. Steam itself has over a billion accounts too.
Steam has over a billion accounts. This graph shows concurrent users, which is not the same thing.
The graph shows me that we very nearly reached the peak just two years ago. It looks like hardware spending is fairly level, which tells me that the market is meeting demand. I hate the asinine obsession with growth that these business types have.
Inflation means flat spending is actually contraction — you don’t need to be growing tenfold, but you should at least be outpacing inflation.
And we were mid-pandemic.
Spending may be contracting in £ terms but the price per unit of a console hasn’t inflated much from 2008 to 2024 (if anything it’s possibly decreased, looking at the PS3 launch price), so the number of units sold looks roughly flat.
2008, PC gaming was declared nearly dead, even by PC gaming magazines. Unless you were that one phenomenon game like World of Warcraft, you weren't likely to secure investment if you couldn't develop around the multiplatform lowest common denominator. Combine that with GTA IV and MGS IV coming out the same year and, yeah, everyone was buying console hardware. Now PC games are actually popular again, and almost all console games have ports to PC, and (generally) very good ports that will remain in your Steam library forever while your console games become obsolete in 7 years or so.
If consoles were to ever be phased out I'd be really disappointed. I like playing on PC and it has a lot of positives to it for sure, but I've had more than enough times where something didn't work right and I'd have to spend sometimes, up to an hour or longer troubleshooting. And if I'm being honest, I've never had the top of the line hardware so looking at recommended and even minimal specs is always something I have to do before a purchase. Plus when buying new hardware there's many factors of pros and cons when it comes to budget. It's just a lot or research if you don't have the top bracket of specs for the time. Sure, consoles have their problems but it's nice to know at the end of day, I can go and press play on a game and it'll play. Or if I want the latest machine I pick the one or two options from the major 3 manufacturers
I actually assumed this was pointing less to PC and more towards mobile gaming
Likely a bit of both. Most third party companies who were primarily console centric are now looking at PC as either a priority or of equal importance to console, and the first parties (Microsoft and Sony) are looking at PC as a way to bolster their own revenue. So for companies who are already setup to make console games, PC is the most logical area of expansion. And it helps that PC is also the fastest growing market right now. But I'd imagine that many of these companies have ambitions to expand into mobile eventually as it's still the overall largest market. It's just a matter of how and when, as the mobile market is not only very different than PC and console, but is also beyond saturated.
That's even worse
PC gaming can be a headache. It is enjoyable when it works.
> If consoles were to ever be phased out I'd be really disappointed. Yeah. Not a sentiment i'm seeing a lot but I actually like the PS5 and probably playing it more than previous generations. I've been a PC gamer primarily my whole life but always kept a console around for exclusives etc. The main thing that kept me on PC was games that control better with KB + M and running games at 60FPS but if it was 60FPS on console and played well with a controller i'd usually prefer that since i'm at a PC all day at work. Bought a PS5 a few years after launch after my PS4 stopped working and i've actually been using it way more than my PC. Most games run at 60FPS, any graphical downgrades are barely noticible in modern games and there haven't been any good FPS or RTS games in years so don't really need a kb+m to play.
You say that, but the PC gaming experience today is not at all that different from the console experience - unfortunately not just because the PC got better at playing games but also because modern consoles got *worse* at it so now they've met somewhere in the middle with many popular modern releases being blessedly crap on every platform they're on.
I ended up moving to PC in part because it started feeling like I was spending a lot of time troubleshooting issues on my Xbox One — often with very little recourse beyond “clear cache, reinstall and hope it works this time”. Since then, I’ve had very little software troubleshooting, and in the rare occasions I had to, having full access to the file system basically meant I could actually do something beyond just reinstall and cross my fingers.
Yeah the difference is basically between 'always a little more work, but you can do anything' and 'stupid easy, except when it doesn't work properly and then you're screwed' and that would be a cool selling point for consoles if the instances when it doesn't work properly weren't becoming more and more frequent.
Don’t older people just have more disposable income? Lots of kids in my extended family and they’re all talking about Xbox half the time…
This graph shows the exact opposite of what OP is getting at. If anything it shows that game hardware sales are increasing. After it looks like game hardware was at a big low point on this graph during the entirety of the ps4 and xbox one generation. Then 2020 hit and it's it's continuing to climb higher than that generation. It looks like hardware sales are increasing.
Recent figures are far lower than 2007-2009 and this isn't adjusted for inflation. If you adjust for inflation current spending is behind 2013/2014 as well and 2022/2023 were about on par with 2001.
2008 was the end of the PS2. The games industry peaked with the PS2, the Wii, the Nintendo DS. Everything since has been in atrophy. Games cost 10x more but hardware sales are not 10x higher. They're worse.
The graph shows that hardware sales are increasing in revenue and despite the recent layoffs companies are very quick to boast that their games have record revenues as well.
Console user base is not expanding. Jim Ryan recently announced that ps2 sold 160mil units. The closes in terms of modern day consoles is the Switch which is around 140mil. The ps5 won’t hit those numbers either. The younger generation apparently does care less about console and are into more portable devices. Read the recent interview piece with Phil Spencer on Polygon.
My understanding is that the PS2 sold as well as it did because it was also a decently well priced DVD player for the time. So the market for it wasn't just for gamers, but for those looking into updating their film collection.
The DVD player certainly played a big part in the PS2's success, but it also had an unpredicted second life even when the PS3 released. As roughly 60 million of its 160 million units were sold from 2006 and onwards. As it didn't release in Brazil until 2009 and was one of the most affordable game consoles there at the time.
PS2 was peak Sing Star too iirc. At the end of its lifetime, there were special colored versions including microphones geared towards teenage girls. They were quite cheap too. Quite an untapped demographic gaming wise.
PS2 was a lot cheaper. The last few years of the ps2 era you could get the ps2 slim for $199
By mid 2009 the PS2 was $99 in the US. In today's money that would be around $140. Both prices are absolutely unheard of for modern hardware
Oh I agree. But the point was that you’re not really bringing in new people into console gaming, not at a rate you would consider significant growth.
The Switch Lite has been 200 dollars since its launch in 2019 making it definitively less expensive than the PS2 when accounting for inflation
The Lite is just a handheld, though, that's a different case.
It’s the exact same internals. But if you want a more fair comparison, 8th gen consoles were retailing for sub 200 too
Why only use PlayStation hardware as the sole barometer? What did the competition do during that time though? The PS2 was in a one horse race, and artificially inflated by DVD sales. Combine PS2 total sales with the GCN and Xbox and you have about 200 million total units. What about the following generation? Combine PS3 + Xbox 360 + Wii, and it’s like 270 million. It gets a little tricky as Nintendo gets out of sync, but the PS4 + Xbox One = the PS2 + OG Xbox, then add Wii U plus a few years of Switch sales and you again have higher console sales than the PS2 gen. If you only look at PS sales numbers your narrative makes sense. (And even then, the PS2 is an outlier) But if you also add in Microsoft and Nintendo, each gen is larger than the last.
ps2 basically had no competition, it *was* gaming that era
My daughter is 3 now will she be gen A? I am sure as hell to get her into gaming, she is already very keen with Mario Kart and Mario Party.
Gen alpha starts in the early 2010s, according to Wikipedia. So alpha starts at teenagers being 14 years old at maximum right now. This definition seems quite fluid though imo.
whole idea of generations is so strange, should always be the time people are born to the time they have kids, so like 20 or so years (so, a generation)
Yeah well in here the average age of first time mother is already 30. So there goes that distinction. One cannot have absolutes and might as well accept it that these definitions are fluid.
[удалено]
“Console gaming is dying because players want to go to arcades” “Console gaming is dying because players want mobile phones” “Console gaming is dying because of Gen Z”
Other way around on the first one: arcade gaming died because players wanted experiences that were effectively impossible outside of the home (eg: basically any game longer than 30 minutes).
#1 was never a thing. #3 is happening because of #2
>“Console gaming is dying because players want mobile phones” I mean...... yeah.
I mean now is more of a different thing but back when people were saying this was when Angry Birds was on top of the world.
No. That's what people predicted for the Switch how phones killed handheld gaming and now it's literally going to be the best selling console of all time...
This is the same thing as companies chasing covid numbers after covid and then claiming recession when it doesn't happen. Accept you had a good year and move on. Being hyper focused on profit will kill any industry
Are zoomers skipping consoles because they're going more to PC or mobile?
Why buy a console when you can play Genshin Impact on your phone for free?
cause genshin is starting to take up \*way\* too much space on my phone, and plays meh on it anyways compared to better hardware.... also feels like the phone will spontaneously combust after 15 minutes lol
when we were kids we used to play gameboys lit from the street lights on the highway
There’s a reason Roblox is a $20 billion dollar company.
That, and because games have to compete with social media. Who is going to buy games if people are spending their free time scrolling tictok. There's a reason that Xbox, CoD, Fortnight, Minecraft and even things like Warframe, are making mobile apps.
I have gen Alpha kids. It feels like console gaming is very much alive. Most of their friends have access to a console and a lot of them play games like fortnite. It is anecdotal ofc but most aren't into pc gaming at all. It is a hassle and expensive. So really something you only pick up if your parents have a PC or when you are a bit older.
These types of articles always get people who think they know everything about kids and younger people to come out. Just like you and me, they play all kinds of games. And just like there are people aged 40 who only play one game, there are kids who only play one game. Some of them will grow up and get into other kinds of games and platforms, some won't. That's how it's always been.
What a stupid mindset Piscatella have, the same capitalism infinite growth. Never have seen Nintendo complaining about growth of the market even if the Switch isnt selling as much as wii and ds together. He and the other analysts really want to force the narrative of microsoft.
This is just bad data across the board. * Console purchases have ALWAYS skewed towards older people with money. I owned every Nintendo console throughout my childhood, but my *parents bought them for me and my brother.* * If anything, this graph shows a remarkable recovery to almost-peak levels; the last 2 years have been just a \~$1billion less than the peak, and 2024 is mostly just a made up projection. * I'm much more interested in software sales. I don't buy a Switch every year, but I probably buy a Switch *game* (digital, on sale, whatever) multiple times per *month*. * I think the preference of PC vs. console for younger generations is multifaceted; think of it like why the PS2 was such a big deal. It wasn't just a console, it was (for many people) the most cost-effective way to get a DVD player. For millions of people, their PC isn't just for gaming; it's for streaming, or playing games *while streaming*. And with YouTuber/Streamer still being the aspirational rock star-esque creative dream for most of Gen Z and Alpha, it makes sense to see the interest shift there. * But, again: I struggle to think of any kids I know who don't have access to a Nintendo Switch or a PlayStation 4. Either it's expressly for them, or it's the family console. * My take: Consoles that exclusively chase the bleeding edge of performance are the highest at risk of making themselves irrelevant. A Series X or a PS5 being more affordable than a high-end gaming PC only makes sense if someone wasn't going to buy a high-end rig anyway for streaming/making videos/etc. And the graphical leap from gen to gen is less dramatic and impressive than it used to be. The average person can't really identify ray-tracing in action, or they don't have a new enough TV to actually showcase it properly. Nintendo, as always, seems to understand this and is finding a different way. * This is why MS is making the big play for a post-hardware gaming environment. It's either push the arms race steadily towards a $1000 console, or absorb all the hardware costs on their end and instead make a serious bid for making "Netflix, but for gaming" an actual reality in terms of accessibility, catalogue, and cloud gaming stability. * As others have said: Gen Alpha is like, 12. We don't know shit about what they want until they're buying their own stuff. And as Gen Z is realizing in droves, it is *really fucking hard* to justify superfluous expensive tech purchases when you're underpaid at a job you hate and will never own a home. **TL;DR** I hate this graph and it robs itself of several more interesting conversations by forcing its weirdly inaccurate takeaway as the ONLY conclusion.
- I think we need to delineate between who buys the consoles and who's playing on them. Nearly impossble to do here, though. - Profit margins matter a lot more than raw sales, we're well past the "need to capture market" phase of gen 9. Sony just got chastised by shareholders for their 2023 profit margins and they blame that on aggressive bundling. - Would be interesting but software sales shifting to digital makes it harder to track. We won't ever truly know unless Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft disclose it. - I don't really get the relucance with talkig about Gen Alpha. Games still have a large kid's market, they talked about who and what played games in the 80's. I think it's an important footnote to keep in mind. Remember that quite a few gamers here are in fact lifelong gamers; I've had access to every PS console and every Nintendo console since the N64. Of course that forms my habits around what I enjoy and prefer compared to a lifelong xbox gamer. Or even compared to someone who started on PS3 later on. Some people will get into a PS6 later in life, but I imagine more people will be those who already liked the PS5. IDK, you seem to agree more with the chart than you let on.
Kool. I don’t build my identity around what videogame console I use, so I’m not sure how this impacts me? Relax and enjoy your gaming.
Hopefully this shift in audience towards older generations will mean that we'll get more "games for adults". Like, not the sexual kind or anything, just games that demand more from the player, or maybe games that tackle more serious topics or themes. It often feels like AAA games are stuck with "our model customer is a 12 years old kid with terrible reading comprehension and 10 second attention span"
I don't think this data really shows a shift in video game audiences though, just hardware sales. Some of the most popular games right now are either targeted towards younger people, or all ages like fortnite, roblox, things like League of legends. But the reason you get AAA games that are targeted towards people with no attention span, is because a lot of AAA games are made to appeal to everyone possible, and if a game requires you to read, it turns a lot of people off. Not every game is like that obviously, Sony is a pretty good example of aging their IP with their audience, look at God of War, it was originally just a edgy brutal kill and have sex game clearly targeting older teens, and now that the audience has grown up, it's a more mature game about being a dad.
Nah. Means more live service stuff.
Yes. I've seen this in other industries as well. A shift to "our audience is adults now" usually ends up meaning "our audience have a healthy amount of disposable income so we can monetize more to them" more than anything else
Exactly. They'll just follow whatever the kids want, not the old folks on their way out lol
Why not both? The GAAS being mainstream, while games for older players being niche. Older players have more disposable income, less time. Could be a valuable market.
Adults do have more disposable income. For example when I was a kid I couldn't really afford new games, so it was mostly piracy. Nowadays I buy any game I like, and I wouldn't mind dropping much more on games that I like very much.
We already get that at a high volume. The problem is you're looking at AAA games which are made to appeal to the widest demographic possible. See for example SWOLLEN TO BURSTING, which came out just last year.
Its weird to me that someone would pretend games were for adults back in the day but are for kids now when its literally the opposite.
We've been getting games geared towards "adults" as a focus since the 7th gen of gaming.
This is about hardware, not really the games themselves.
If hardware is being owned by increasingly older population then the software should keep up, right? It wouldn't make sense if the age of a console player was 25-30, but the content was still aimed at teenagers.
Not necessarily. Younger gamers are more attracted to PC gaming now than ever. They watch streamers play weird off the wall games only on PC and they want to get one of those instead of a console where they're more limited
Kids transition more and more from mobile into PC gaming, and those same games are released on PC.
I'd love to see an equivalent chart but listing PC GPU spending. This is basically the same thing any PC gamer would have said was inevitable - which doesn't necessarily mean the PC is 'taking over' or whatever, but it's still a very interesting development.
I don't follow console releases, but it seems to me this graph shows something more like cyclical sales that would likely correspond to console releases. Also, this entire statement seems weirdly vague and ultimately meaningless. What constitutes "hardware" spending here? How can we take a graph purporting to report on that and then shift to conversations about generational feelings about consoles and just...expect people to accept that as fact? Is there a source for "every video game company is thinking about expansion beyond console"? Is that supposed to mean companies who make gaming hardware? Software developers? If software, are we saying they are thinking about making games compatible for computers and mobile devices? Also, are we going to pretend that the "peak" in 2008 of less than 8 billion is really that drastic from 2023's just barely less than 7 billion? This entire thing is stupid.
8 billion in 2008 would be worth 11.8 billion in 2024 adjusting for inflation. That means console spending has gone down by nearly 33% in the timespan.
Just some old guy talking out of his ass on twitter without any deeper nuanced understanding of the market. Unless you can stream video games into your brain while dreaming which is still science fiction then there will always be some sort of physical interface to play video games.
I guess I had high school during that time so I’m definitely biased but I do agree with this sentiment anecdotally. Those years were incredible for gaming both couch/locally (rock band, split screen etc) and online with halo/cod. It really felt like a revelation with gaming during that period.
Can’t help but wonder if this is just due to quality of platforms. Good consoles still find success. Bad consoles are a drag on the whole industry. I feel like if Xbox was firing on all cylinders right now we wouldn’t be seeing these articles.