pc-gaming-hardware posts

PC gaming-related hardware sales are supposed to increase 27 percent in 2011 to $22 billion worldwide. That's the result of a new study announced today by Jon Peddie Research. Part of the growth will be in China as that country's internet cafe upgrade their PC hardware in order for them to run newer and more hardware intensive games. Russia is another country that the study claims will be spending more on gaming-related hardware products.

The study also claims that PC gamers in general have an "increasing appetite" for products like "high quality speaker systems, headsets, mice, cases, cooling, and other accessories and customizations." It also claims that interest in 3D gaming continues to grow as does buying monitors with "higher resolution and better color capabilities."

The market for PC gaming hardware is massive, according to a new report issued this week by the non-profit PC Gaming Alliance. The Horizons Hardware report claims that in 2009, the shipments for the PC gaming hardware market were over twice that of the combined shipment numbers of the Wii, PS2, PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles. Consumer PCs that have a dedicated graphics card (which makes them better for PC gaming than desktops and notebooks with intergrated graphics) had sales of $54.6 billion in 2006, according to the report. It also predicts revenues from those PCs will increase to $61.3 billion by 2014.

PC users that own a rig with a discrete graphics solution total 212.6 million worldwide, according to the report. That number is predicted to go up to a whopping 322 million by 2014. Asia is still the largest segment for hardware PC gaming shipments with 33 percent, followed by Western Europe with 24 percent, the US with 22 percent and the rest of the world with 21.4 percent.

Last May, a study by the Jon Peddie Research group predicted that the PC gaming hardware market would suffer a 7 percent drop in 2009 due in part to the effects of the current worldwide economic recession. Now the same group is announcing that new research shows the market will actually grow this year to $21.26 billion, up 5.6 percent from 2008.

The reversal is due to what the study shows is a "higher than anticipated consumer demand for Enthusiast, Performance, and Mainstream hardware." In addition, the study claims that 2010 will see a massive surge in this category to $27.617 billion, up 30 percent from this year's predicted numbers.

The economy is on everyone's mind now but a new study released today by Jon Peddie Research predicts that the PC gaming hardware market will only suffer a mild loss in 2009 and will actually have revenues that will outpace the gaming console hardware market this year.

In a press release today, the organization predicted that the PC gaming hardware industry will suffer a 7 percent drop in revenue in 2009 to $18.65 billion compared to 2008 which had $20.07 billion in revenue. However that number will still be higher than the combined total of the console hardware market in 2009, beating it by almost $2 billion. Jon Peddie Research states that "PC gaming systems seem to have suffered the least discounting which illustrates the value consumers place on such systems."

In addition to the PC, the study assumes that the consumer will want to buy other hardware for their gaming rig including "a percentage for the monitor (because some people will already have one), a percentage of accessories like driving wheels and special mice/joysticks, as well as aftermarket and DIY parts and systems." The market is expected to expand to over $30 billion in revenue by 2012.