Sure, but how many things changed since? For one, back then there were a lot fewer mobile gamers.
I called this a year ago - GPU sales are crashing.
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I don’t think the macroeconomic explanation is of first order relevance. The YoY drop for GPU’s this year is an order of a magnitude larger than, say, the 10% YoY revenue decline of Apple Macs for ‘23 Q3.
sixcolors.com
Granted, that’s a comparison of quantity and revenue, so some adjustment should be taken into account.
Apple announces $83B fiscal third quarter
Apple’s fiscal results are out. The company generated $83B in revenue. Compared to the year-ago quarter, Mac sales were down 10%, iPad sales down 2%, iPhone up 3%, Services up 13%, and Wearab…
sixcolors.com
Granted, that’s a comparison of quantity and revenue, so some adjustment should be taken into account.
arandomguy
Veteran
I don’t think the macroeconomic explanation is of first order relevance. The YoY drop for GPU’s this year is an order of a magnitude larger than, say, the 10% YoY revenue decline of Apple Macs for ‘23 Q3.
Apple announces $83B fiscal third quarter
Apple’s fiscal results are out. The company generated $83B in revenue. Compared to the year-ago quarter, Mac sales were down 10%, iPad sales down 2%, iPhone up 3%, Services up 13%, and Wearab…
Granted, that’s a comparison of quantity and revenue, so some adjustment should be taken into account.
GPUs themselves of course have additional issues beyond just the broader macro economic conditions.
The indications are that Apple has been more resilient against the macro economic conditions. General PC shipments are down much more - https://www.computerworld.com/artic...fell a,according the firm's Worldwide Tracker.
There is actually general indications that luxury/higher end products in general are actually showing to be more resilient currently, as something that seems to be skirted in the general discourse is that the economic turmoil stemming from the Pandemic have been rather divergent depending on socioeconomic status.
It would actually be interesting if there were data to show which GPU buyers are holding off purchases the most and who is still buying.
arandomguy
Veteran
GPU numbers back then were much higher due to being more necessary on the lower end even for non gaming PCs. If you look at the general trend line you'll see the decline coincides with Intel beginning to put more effort into their IGP (starting in 2011 with Sandybridge).
It also tracks with a general decline in PC shipments with the rise of mobile/tablets. With gaming there is also the growth and larger cross over with the console space which started to occur during the 7th gen, and firmly with 8th gen console releases. There is a reason why the discrete GPU market has shifted upwards, the bottom end simply is being served elsewhere.
There is also the issue in general that PCs simply last longer from an actual functional stand point. This is an issue a lot of enthusiast discourse seems to not account for. The general buyer doesn't really care about generational improvements, they care and buy if they have an actual functional need that needs to met, as in their existing GPU/PC/whatever has problems doing what they want to do. Enthusiasts are the ones that are buying because the new product is X% faster. The general buyer buys if their games aren't running well in not clearly defined sense.
In terms of the last point this is why I disagree to some extent with the notion that people are brining up that PC gaming has gotten more expense and less accessible. The enthusiast end has moved up market but general accessibility is actually higher. But this seems typical of when an hobby becomes more mainstream and mature.
Let's look at say ~$500 GPUs. How well did Fermi (GTX 470/480/570/580) "high end" GPUs age into the PS4 era versus how well "mid range" Turing (2060S/2070/2070S) will age into the PS5 era?
This does result in a catch 22 from the business stand point of lowering margins to chase sales. The problem is if everyone adopts current gen GPUs, how many will want to move up to next gen GPUs? A $500 hypothetical RTX 4070ti 12GB that everyone buys also effectively all those buyers have no actual need to upgrade until we move past this entire console generation (with some estimates at 2028).
Edit: Enthusiasts on forums like this might not feel these cards are acceptable, but in reality the yare usable for PC gaming. 4070ti, 4080, 4090 or 7900xt/xtx class cards are not needed for PC gaming. -
Even if you want console parity well the 6700XT is PS5 equiv or better in every aspect - https://pcpartpicker.com/products/video-card/#T=10&sort=price&P=6442450944,51539607552&c=501
The idea that PC gaming in its entirety has been gated to $1000 or more GPUs simply is not reality.
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Apple is more resilient because their iPhone covers a basic necessity in being a cell phone and having their target demographic be the entire population above the age of 7. PCs don't fit those criteria and thus as long as AMD/Nvidia/Intel continue to skyrocket the price of entry the market will keep shrinking. PCs are no longer necessary. Many people can fulfill their needs with an iPhone. Everything else falls into the want category. Only people in specific industries who aren't supplied a work computer need a PC.
What do you mean with this?
Same for consoles. Mobile gaming is where its at.
arandomguy
Veteran
I'm referring to the rise in the overlap between the game libraries of the consoles and PC and the basically the crossplatform era.
I think it's safe to say once we hit the PS4 era the game libraries between the consoles and PC space had considerable large overlap and therefore the the console/PC dynamic really became a choice between the hardware considerations as opposed to the software considerations. As such on the lower end of the market both in terms of cost and simplicity more and more buyers would end up choosing consoles.
At least to me I didn't feel like there was much discussion PS2 or earlier in terms of consoles vs PC's from a hardware choice perspective, it was really a software dependent choice as for the types of games you played they were on one or the other.
Seems more and more are opting for lower end pc gaming these days over consoles, for which IGP solutions work well enough. Fortnite, pubg, csgo, etc you dont need 3070’s and beyond.
I agree on the points about the heterogeneous socioeconomic effects of the pandemic.
But I guess I will politely disagree with the macroeconomy being the main driver here. The fluctuations in the GPU shipping figures don’t seem to correlate with macroeconomic fluctuations.
I respect your viewpoint however. It was interesting to consider.
That may be true for Apple overall. However I was only referring to Mac revenue in my previous post.
Turing was poorly received on release for similar reasons to ADA, the price/perf was not really all that much better than Pascal, you were paying entirely for new features like DLSS and Raytracing that literally zero games used on launch. It took a while for Turing to catch on at all. The main driving force was the Supers. You can see this from the sales chart. That dip during 2018-2019? That was Turing.
Of course a refresh is expected, the difference is in what form we get them - whether we get Ti models that are more powerful but also more expensive, filling in the gaps in the product stack without offering anything *better*, or whether we get Supers - the Supers were more "what they should have been in the first place" replacing the regular models by and large and providing greater performance at roughly the same price.
That's the distinction I'm making with hoping they make ADA Supers, and a more competitively priced Blackwell since that was what we got after Turing didn't do well - fix the price/perf of Turing and aggressive, market-appropriate MSRPs for Ampere.
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