Despite trends, report suggests PC gamers will move to console
posted Saturday Apr 27, 2019 by Scott Ertz
If you know anything about PC gamers, you know that they look down on console gamers. They claim that console gaming can never stand up to the capabilities of PC gaming. PCs have the ability to upgrade hardware, creating capabilities that a console simply cannot replicate with its standardized hardware. But, a new study suggests that the superiority complex will come to an end in the fairly near future.
According to the report, by the year 2022, it is estimated that as many as 20 million PC gamers will make the switch to consoles. This theory is being led by the fact that PC hardware is simply not changing as fast as it once did. System processors have not really gotten faster, with most of the focus going into power efficiency and heat conservation. In addition, the cost of video cards has increased over the last few years, in part because of the trend of cryptocurrency mining.
The next generation of consoles is likely to have hardware that rivals many gaming PCs on the market. Microsoft and Sony have both been working on their next hardware releases, with information to be released in the next few months. While this hardware will not likely be upgradable in the way a PC is, it will likely be powerful enough to stand up to the changes that are coming to the gaming industry.
The biggest change is in the way games are being delivered. With Microsoft and Google working to deliver modern games instantly through streaming, the requirements on the system hardware will be less important than the requirements on the network connection. It will allow more powerful, more graphically intense games to be played on the same hardware we use today.
In reality, the idea of PC gamers moving exclusively to consoles and smart TVs seems like a jump that could only be made by someone outside of the industry looking inside. A change in technology is more likely to change the amount of PC that gamers need, rather than the type of system that is used.
