Digital Foundry and console warriors alternate realities *spawn*

[Deleted member 11852]

It's a cycle and the message is based on conflict of interest. In 2006, Phil Harisson said PC was dead because of the power of the Cell Processor or something like that, I don't remember.

If you exclude Macs, the PC market has been selling fewer and fewer machines year on year for a while now and is still dropping. It may only be a few percent here and there but when you're talking about tens of millions of sales per quarter and hundreds of millions a year, that's a lot of sales disappearing.

This has bugger all to do with Cell, though

 

[dobwal]

But not in our hearts! Where do your allegiances truly lie?

Depends on the occasion. I love tennis shoes/sneakers but that doesn't mean I wish I could wear them to a job interview, funeral or wedding. I am rather repulsed by the ideal of wearing birkenstocks but thats neither here nor there. However if the occasion called for them, I guess I would have to throw some on.

Same with personal computing devices. I very much rather sit in front of a laptop or desktop versus a smartphone or tab when indulging in B3D, but on the ocassion where I am away from my computer, my smartphone will do. Luckily, there is no such thing as open toed computing devices nor do my devices clash with wearing socks.

LOL.

 

[dobwal]

If you exclude Macs, the PC market has been selling fewer and fewer machines year on year for a while now and is still dropping. It may only be a few percent here and there but when you're talking about tens of millions of sales per quarter and hundreds of millions a year, that's a lot of sales disappearing.

This has bugger all to do with Cell, though

From your own link.

"However, this decline is not necessarily a sign of sluggish overall PC sales long term. Mobile PCs, including notebooks, hybrid and Windows tablets, grew compared with a year ago. The first quarter results support our projection of a moderate decline of PC shipments in 2015, which will lead to a slow, consistent growth stage for the next five years.

"Desk-based PC shipments declined rapidly, with business desk-based PCs being impacted the most. Mobile PCs are being driven by a separate underlying replacement cycle, which led mobile growth in the first quarter. PC replacements will be driven by thin and light notebooks with tablet functionality. Our early study suggests strong growth of hybrid notebooks, especially in mature markets, in 1Q15."

Lenovo and HP were the only two vendors among the top five worldwide that experienced an increase in PC shipments in the first quarter of 2015 (see Table 1). Lenovo experienced its strongest growth in EMEA and the U.S. It has become one of the top providers of hybrid notebooks, especially its Yoga line in mature markets. HP performed moderately well in the first quarter, and it kept its top position in the U.S. and EMEA. HP increased share in the U.S., but in EMEA the share delta from Lenovo, the second-largest vendor in the region, narrowed compared with 4Q14."

 

[Deleted member 11852]

From your own link.

The hope that the decline is temporary and PC sales may recovered has been a regular view since sales plateaued. And these numbers further show that int terms of sales, the split between desktops and laptops or other mobile solutions continued to widen in favour of mobile. Although HP and Lenovo had better quarters than the same period last year, the PC market overall declined again by a little over 5% that quarter.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Theres a world of difference between gaming PC's and general use/low end or business desktops. Is there any evidence the PC gaming market is shrinking?

 

[goonergaz]

Theres a world of difference between gaming PC's and general use/low end or business desktops. Is there any evidence the PC gaming market is shrinking?

yes, and I've not bought a PC since 1997 (or something stupid like that) - how about the figures for buying components (specifically top end graphics cards)?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Figures for cards using specific GPUs would be interesting.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Its right there in Steam, should be fairly easy to extract some stats with a litle bit of research.

 

[AzBat]

You won't get the exact details you're looking for without paying for it, but here's a little bit of details from Q1 2015 for PC graphics...

According to the typical seasonal cycles, the first quarter is typically flat to down. This year, shipments were below the ten-year average of -3.6%.
...

• AMD’s overall unit shipments decreased -17.80% quarter-to-quarter, Intel’s total shipments decreased -12.01% from last quarter, and Nvidia’s decreased -13.5%.
• The attach rate of GPUs (includes integrated and discrete GPUs) to PCs for the quarter was 148%, which was up 2.95% from last quarter, and 30.57% of PCs had discrete GPUs, which is up 0.39%.
• The overall PC market decreased -14.77% quarter-to-quarter, and decreased -6.5% year-to-year.
• Desktop graphics add-in boards (AIBs) that use discrete GPUs decreased -8.79% from last quarter—less than the PC market.

...
The Gaming PC segment, where higher-end GPUs are used, was a bright spot in the market in the quarter. Nvidia’s Maxwell-based AIBs continued to do well and the company even managed to boost its market share in desktop. AMD on the other hand saw an improvement in its market share for discrete GPUs in notebooks even though the overall notebook segment dropped.
...
AMD’s shipments of desktop heterogeneous GPU/CPUs, i.e., APUs, decreased -22.6% from the previous quarter, and were down -15.0% in notebooks. AMD’s discrete desktop shipments decreased -14.55% from last quarter, and notebook discrete shipments decreased -13.6%. The company’s overall PC graphics shipments decreased -17.8% from the previous quarter. AMD is bringing out a wide range of new products for this year and hopes to pick up sales from them.

Intel’s desktop processor embedded graphics (EPGs) shipments decreased from last quarter by -12.0%, and notebooks decreased by -12.0%. The company’s overall PC graphics shipments decreased -12.0% from last quarter. The company’s overall sales were helped by devices for IoT but not enough to offset the overall decline of Q1 in the PC industry.

Nvidia’s desktop discrete shipments were down -6.96% from last quarter; and the company’s notebook discrete shipments decreased -20.8%. The company’s overall PC graphics shipment decreased -13.5% from last quarter. The company saw strength in gaming from North America and China which helped it buck a down quarter for the industry.

http://jonpeddie.com/publications/market_watch/

This report doesn't get into console graphics though. They have a separate report for that.

Tommy McClain

 

[goonergaz]

Unfortunately that data doesn't help for a few reasons for a start it includes GPUs inside PCs - PC sales are down so it's a given overall sales might be down also this is all GPUs - not just those bought for gaming (apparently bitcoin mining is a reason behind some of the drop).

What would be a fairer indicator (IMHO) would be the figures behind the 'bleeding edge top end gaming graphics cards' for a couple reasons. Firstly it's a fairly fixed target - is that market getting bigger or smaller? Secondly the trickle down effect, I've never bought a new graphics card - I tend to spend no more than £100 on a card and the more top end cards are bought the more 'good graphics cards' trickle down to folk like me sooner and at a better price meaning potentially more PCs capable of playing at similar levels of PS4/XBO.

I know there's a lot of assumption in there but at least if we knew the very top end figures we'd have a 'fixed' indicator of some sort.

Quote from the article "The Gaming PC segment, where higher-end GPUs are used, was a bright spot in the market in the quarter."

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Its right there in Steam, should be fairly easy to extract some stats with a litle bit of research.

Right, but the goal is to measure the number of gamers and according this guy called pjbliverpool, you can't assume that just because a PC is registered under the Steam Hardware Survey that person wants to play modern games. And I certainly recall others saying they've never been asked to participate in the hardware survey at all, or only have on low-end machines and not their gaming machine.

The Steam Hardware Survey seems to be one of those reference points that's valid or invalid depending on the argument.

 

[mrcorbo]

Right, but the goal is to measure the number of gamers and according this guy called pjbliverpool, you can't assume that just because a PC is registered under the Steam Hardware Survey that person wants to play modern games. And I certainly recall others saying they've never been asked to participate in the hardware survey at all, or only have on low-end machines and not their gaming machine.

The Steam Hardware Survey seems to be one of those reference points that's valid or invalid depending on the argument.

How about Steam setting a record for concurrent users in July at 8 Million and then upping that to 8.5M in January and then upping that again to 9M in March. Does that do anything for you?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

How about Steam setting a record for concurrent users in July at 8 Million and then upping that to 8.5M in January and then upping that again to 9M in March. Does that do anything for you?

Is the concurrent number people with the client running or people actually gaming? I almost always have the Steam client running on my MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and iMac (OS X and Windows) but I'm not always gaming. How many people have the client autorun at startup to ensure game updates are always installed?

 

[goonergaz]

Isn't it more to try and point out that more and more people are using PCs for gaming? If more and more people are on steam concurrently regardless of if they are using it for gaming at that point, they are using their PC for gaming.

 

[Rodéric]

I think he meant that if you have Steam installed on your machine, it likely means you're playing with it. (Not necessarily at the moment, but you have installed games and play with it at times.)

 

[Nesh]

Isn't it more to try and point out that more and more people are using PCs for gaming? If more and more people are on steam concurrently regardless of if they are using it for gaming at that point, they are using their PC for gaming.

The data may still be useless. Someone may have downloaded a game once, which could be just any game, even the cheapest most insignificant game, played it for a bit and then never touched a game ever on his PC but since steam was downloaded and set on auto run it may show as an active user.
If someone played once in a while "Race the Sun" for example, he is an infrequent casual user, who doesnt need a new GPU to play games. Gaming is something unimportant for that kind of person and may not even be considered a gamer.
Also there is strong piracy on PC and there are ways to run pirated games while being on steam. When I bought my new computer some time ago, since I wasnt sure how well a game would run, I would download a pirated version first and see how it would run. I would add that game on my steam list and get updates too. I am pretty sure piracy is still strong on PC. People who arent that interested in playing and finishing games, but love to test their PC strengths tend to download pirated versions of their games because they arent that interested about the game itself in order to be willing to pay.
Unfortunately too many people I know pirate games on PC, and use the ability to pirate as a PC advantage that consoles lack. Me on the other hand I dont game on PC much, I am a console gamer so I continue to pay for my games since I am also the type of guy that values games and likes to collect them.

 

[Globalisateur]

Wow, that thread has definitely derailed...

But in an alternate reality, everything is possible.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Right, but the goal is to measure the number of gamers and according this guy called pjbliverpool, you can't assume that just because a PC is registered under the Steam Hardware Survey that person wants to play modern games.

No, the goal to which I was responding was to measure the number of GPU's. Considering I responded directly to your post which said "Figures for cards using specific GPUs would be interesting". I have no idea how you came to the above conclusion.

I also think it's pretty safe to assume that most of the PC's on the Steam survey that are more powerful than the PS4 are actually being used for games and can be considered to make up the market for gaming PC's (in fact a subjection of that market). And that's in complete agreement with the post you linked to which says you can't assume every PC in the Steam survey is being used for gaming and thus constitutes the "majority f the PC gaming market". There's a world of difference between PC's with 8GB RAM and GPU's more powerful than the PS4 and PC's with 512MB of RAM and 6 year old integrated Intel graphics. One clearly constitutes part of the PC gaming market and the other clearly doesn't.

And I certainly recall others saying they've never been asked to participate in the hardware survey at all,

Which means precisely nothing considering it's a one time pop up box when you first install steam what most people will simply click past without reading or totally forget about a day after they did.

or only have on low-end machines and not their gaming machine.

Which is in complete agreement with my previous post that you linked but has no baring on my statement above about counting the number of GPU's on Steam that are above PS4 performance.

The Steam Hardware Survey seems to be one of those reference points that's valid or invalid depending on the argument.

Only if your arguments are completely inconsistent.

 

[pjbliverpool]

If someone played once in a while "Race the Sun" for example, he is an infrequent casual user, who doesnt need a new GPU to play games. Gaming is something unimportant for that kind of person and may not even be considered a gamer.

I completely agree with this. Just because a PC is on the steam survey it does not mean it should be considered part of the "PC gaming market". It's highly likely that the user above not only barely uses his PC for gaming but also has a pretty low spec machine. Thus why I have always said, the Steam Survey doesn't represent he "state of PC gaming" but (as I'm saying above) it is possible to get a rough idea of what the state of PC gaming is by looking at the percentage of higher end gaming PC's on Steam and multiplying that by the total Steam user base. Which is exactly what I did a couple of pages back to arrive at the 18m PC's above PS4 performance figure.

 

[Deleted member 86764]

Maybe we should have another new thread; "PCs are so superior to consoles and everyone owns one - ask your Gran about her Titan X", or PCASSTCAEOOAYGAHTX for short.