PC Gaming Market Reaches Almost A Billion Players With 92% Of Them Preferring To Play Older Games

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Most Hours Spent On Live-Service Games!

Story Highlight
  • PC gaming has 907.5 million users as of 2024, whereas the console market only has 653.5 million. 
  • 92% of gamers from this amount preferred to play older games. 
  • Moreover, most hours were spent on live service games.

While fans may agree on the best console option for gaming, the PC is by far the most viable option for gamers worldwide. A new report suggests the market is closing on a billion players.

Moreover, the same report reveals that 92% of this player base’s total audience prefers to play older games.

Why it matters: Despite the rise of video games in the past few years, possibly the only upside of the pandemic, video game quality is declining, as evidenced by these figures. The industry needs to fix the root cause and retreat to its older ways of game development.

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A new article by PCGamer, which got an early sneak peek at the report by Newzoo, a company known for gathering video game analytics and reports, revealed the following metrics: The PC gaming market increased to 907.5 million players in 2024 from 873.5 million players in 2023.

The console player count reached an estimated 653.1 million users in 2024. 73,000 players conducted this survey, which used data from over 10,000 games.

Returning to the PC side, Newzoo reports a higher concentration on live-service titles from PC gamers. Almost 67% of the total play hours were reported to have been spent on games six years or older.

PlayStation Live Service Games
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The remaining 25% was spent on games 2-5 years old, while the remaining 8% was spent on newer games released in the last few years. A major chunk of the total hours, 7.1%, was spent on Counter-Strike 2, whereas 5.4% was spent on Fortnite. 

This also explains why the industry is prevalent in pushing live-service titles: If done right, they can be easy cash cows for publishers.

What are your thoughts on this report? Let us know in the comments below or head towards the Tech4Gamers forum.

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