PC Gaming in 2025

PC gaming has been growing quickly with enthusiasts over the past few years due to the power and flexibility with it. As it continues to grow and evolve many have asked the question, what will it look like in the future? It will obviously be faster and more powerful, possibly have continued growth into the near future, but how much faster will it be, will it get sidelined as mobile gaming takes over the world. Here I would like to examine what the future of what PC gaming might hold in 2025.

The rate at which computer hardware is progressing is astonishing. In the previous chapter of this course we learned about Moore’s law, which states “The number of transistors incorporated in a chip will approximately double every 24 months”, what this means is that every generation of processors have much more processing power than the previous generation. This does not translate directly into gaming performance on PC though, to look more directly at how processing power affects PC gaming and how it will look in 6 years we could look at what it was like 6 years ago. In 2013 Intel launched its Haswell generation of desktop processors, which included the i5-4670k at $242 USD. The chip had 4 cores and 4 threads, had a max frequency of 3.8 GHz. It was very fast for its day and was very popular among gamers. In June of this year AMD released its 3 generation of RYZEN desktop processors, among the release was the RYZEN 5 3600x which had a launch price of $263 USD, only $21 more than the i5 4670k released at. It had more cores (6), more threads (12) and a higher max frequency of 4.4 GHz. Even at a glance you can see the 3600x is much faster, multi-thread performance tests show the 3600x being over three times as powerful as the i5. So going forward 6 years we can expect a similar increase in performance as the increase from the i5 4670k to the new AMD RYZEN 5 3600x.

The PC gaming market will also likely grow in the next 6 years. The size of the PC gaming industry has seen steady growth for years and is projected to nearly double by 2025 from the $33 billion in revenue generated in 2018, according to a report by GlobalData. This growth is surprising at first due to the price tag of PC gaming compared to gaming on a console, or a phone (which most people already have), however there are many factors that make it attractive to many gamers. The wider selection of games, and the open-platform nature of PC gaming means that people are not locked into services with Sony or Microsoft if they had bought a console instead. It is unlikely that Sony or Microsoft will address these issues with their next generation of consoles rumored to come out in the next couple of years, with will help maintain the growth of PC gaming over the next 6 years. However, the rise of mobile gaming might eclipse the market share of PC gaming by 2025 as the unrivaled growth of mobile gaming takes the world by storm. In 2013 PC gaming made up 38% of the gaming industry market share compared to the 23% mobile gaming made up. By 2018 that number was 24%, while mobile made 51% and is projected to drop to 19% by 2021 while mobile gaming will rise to a 59% market share according to a report by the NewZoo. Overall, the PC gaming industry size will grow but will not be able to keep up with the rate at which mobile gaming is growing.

The state of the PC gaming industry is a constantly changing and growing environment that fosters the latest in computer technology and limitations, attracting new consumers and fans every day. The rate of computer hardware advancement and how the industry has grown over the last 6 years gives us a good look at what the next 6 years will be like.

Biography

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TechSpot. (2019). The Future of Tech: The Desktop PC. Retrieved from https://www.techspot.com/article/1832-the-future-of-the-desktop-pc/

HWBench. AMD Ryzen 5 3600x vs Intel Core i5-4670k. Retrieved from http://hwbench.com/cpus/amd-ryzen-5-3600x-vs-intel-core-i5-4670k

NewZoo. (2018). Mobile Revenues Account for More Than 50% of the Global Games Market as It Reaches $137.9 Billion in 2018. Retrieved from https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/global-games-market-reaches-137-9-billion-in-2018-mobile-games-take-half/

HWBench. AMD Ryzen 5 3600x vs Intel Core i5-4670k. Retrieved from http://hwbench.com/cpus/amd-ryzen-5-3600x-vs-intel-core-i5-4670k

Tom’s Hardware. (2013). High end gaming PC spec 2013 – opinions. Retrieved from https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/high-end-gaming-pc-spec-2013-opinions.1511448/