| I think another aspect that isn't always touched upon is the fact that many people will own some form of PC even as tablets and smartphones deliver more frequent updates and sales numbers. I've owned consoles in the past (last one I bought was an Xbox360 when it was on sale some years back) but I've always had a PC in the house. For all the talk of how expensive PC gaming is, for me it's always been the least expensive way to play video games. On the surface, a PC (of any stripe) will look more expensive than a game console at $500-1500 for a typical computer versus ~$400 for a game console. But to me, a game console is an additional $400 that I'd be spending for another box just for playing games. I think for a while, the growing popularity of laptops and fewer desktop sales might have affected this balance since notebooks were generally more expensive for equivalent hardware and often lacked the GPU power needed for even modest gaming. But now I see even more modest laptops with integrated graphics that can handle at least some level of game performance as well as a crop of reasonably priced ($800-1000) notebooks that come with some sort of dedicated GPU. I'm sure that for a lot of people whose computing usage can be handled solely with mobile-grade hardware (tablets, phones) the game console is a cheap and easy way to keep playing video games on a screen larger than 5 or 10 inches. But for anyone who already needs a laptop or a desktop, the cost difference to add a bit more RAM and a decent video card is less than the cost of a game console and even the base level specs are getting to the point where you can expect at least a decent level of gaming capability. I guess the tl;dr version is: eSports help and more powerful phones/tablets may be cutting into the desktop/laptop markets but at the same time, desktops and laptops continue to improve and even mainstream PCs can handle games now (even better if you put an extra $150-250 into RAM and GPU). As has historically been the case, the PC (whether a $600 Asus or a $2000 Macbook) is the gaming platform many people already own so it stands to reason that many will continue to use it as such. |
...which is basically anyone who is a white-collar worker or studying.