Wednesday, September 12th 2018
EEDAR: US Gaming Led by Mobile, Followed by PC, Console Gaming
A new report from EEDAR paints quite a rosy picture for PC gaming: much rosier than what most users would think it to be. That mobile gaming is the platform king is no secret: anyone and everyone seems to be rocking a smartphone these days, and every smartphone has a myriad of games available that are so easy to consume that practically everyone with a smartphone (particularly an Android one) qualifies as a gamer. The interesting bit comes in the result that PC gaming is ahead of console gaming in gamers' minds and usage.The EEDAR report states that in total, about 67% of US residents are gamers in some capacity. Of those, and in a sample of 5,000 active US gamers, 90% of American gamers play games on their smartphones or tablets. And 59% of those mobile American gamers play console and/or PC games in addition to mobile games. All in all, PC gaming accounts for 52% of the gaming intentions of the surveyed subjects, and only 43% reported gaming on console hardware. Seems the PC gaming market has booming - as well it should: that's one of the reasons so many companies launched gaming-focused product lines, after all.
Sources:
via PCGamesIndustry, EEDAR
34 Comments on EEDAR: US Gaming Led by Mobile, Followed by PC, Console Gaming
It's increasingly difficult to justify spending hundreds of dollars on a phone and on a console when the phone can do a passible job at casual gaming (and much more).
Don't get me wrong, consoles aren't going anyway any time soon but they're becoming the iPod. They've been superceded by devices that are more prevalant, accessible, and flexible, for similar cost.
Tetris, looks terrible.
Minecraft, looks terrible.
Grand Theft Auto V, looks good but it's on the list because of Grand Theft Auto Online, not because of looks. If they got rid of GTAO, it would have only sold 50 million copies at best (GTA4 did 25 million).
Wii Sports, looks terrible.
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, looks average.
Tetris and Minecraft are both available on mobile platforms. GTAV has a companion app on mobile. Wii Sports only "sold" fantastic because it shipped with the Wii U. PUBG is one of those fade games that especially caught on in Asia.
What games on that list are truly beautiful for their time? I'd argue the games that take the cake are Crysis and sons but they're not on that list at all. Even the original FarCry isn't. The highest a Call of Duty title got was 16th. Battlefield is down at 50th.
• superior controls (uhh... controllers) for consoles
• processing power/performance of the phone, vs console
• the phone's inferior screen compared to 99.9% of screens that can possibly be hooked up to a console
• vastly superior sound, even on a crappy TV, compared to abhorrent phone sound
• superior connectivity options compared to phone wifi, or god forbid cellular connection
• a gaming console is no longer just a gaming console, they're also fairly capable multimedia devices
• the phone still is going to rely on a battery which will drain fast when running games
• the phone will have crappy, slow, limited storage space
And there's probably more. Now, you can get around some of that by doing really daft things, like rigging up your phone to a TV, controller, sound system, charger, etc... at which point, all I have to say is WTF are you doing?!
...So yeah, I maintain that phones are not for anyone who really likes gaming all that much. Unless you're already a gamer (in the traditional sense? I would say) with at least a console, and you game on your phone in addition to your console at home. And coming from me personally, as a PC guy, comparing phones to superior consoles itself says a lot. There's of course the potentially very wide gap between what consoles can offer compared to PC, on top of that. Comparing a phone to a PC would be like comparing a light bulb to the sun.
Seriously though, as long as "statistics" are actually acknowledging that I'm buying completely different products, I'm OK with it. Bundling it all as "gamers" annoys me though, because it assumes I enjoy the same things. I don't. It's about as helpful as saying "we all like movies".