Console Game Sales Projected To Leave PC Games In The Dust By 2030
Few topics can be as divisive as PC versus console gaming, kind of like Ford versus Chevy or Coke versus Pepsi (or politics, if things get really heated). Not without irony, PCs and consoles are more alike than ever these days. Even so, a new report on projected game sales in the coming years is not going to do anything settle the debate.
According to the report, the console gaming market is on pace to balloon to $79 billion in projected revenue by 2030, up from $52 billion in 2023. That's a staggering 52% bump, which is even more impressive when you're talking about tens of billions of dollars.
"Major players such as Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are driving the expansion in the console gaming market through technological advancements, including artificial intelligence (AI), cross-platform play, and hybrid gaming devices," the report states.
That's not exactly deep analysis, though it goes on to give AI a lot of credit for why gaming in general is booming. In that context, it's mainly referring to upscaling technologies like DLSS (NVIDIA), FSR (AMD), and more recently, XeSS (Intel).
What's interesting, though, is the above graph sourced from GlobalData Strategic Intelligence. It shows PC gaming on a downward trend, in terms of dollars spent on software (read: games), while console game sales are steadily climbing. By 2030, console game sale will be double that of PC game sales, if the graph proves accurate.
We wish the report dug deeper into the situation. It doesn't touch on the GPU shortage that gamers are facing in the PC space, particularly in regards to NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50 series cards, nor does it dive into the topic of price increases (thanks to the shortage, scalpers, plain old price gouging, and tariffs). The situation is looking a bit better so far with AMD's Radeon RX 9070 retail launch, but even there, we're seeing sold out listing and high partner pricing on custom models. It will be interesting to see how that impacts the landscape in the coming years.
The real winner, though, is mobile. Even though console game sales are seeing explosive growth, mobile game sales are on track to reach nearly $200 billion by 2030, leaving both console and PC platforms in the dust.
"Console games continue to generate significantly less revenue than mobile games, which currently produce 2.5 times more earnings. The market remains highly competitive, with contributions from game developers, publishers, cloud service providers, telecommunications companies, retailers, peripheral manufacturers, advertising networks, and payment processors, fostering continuous evolution in the industry," Infotechlead states in its report.
Meanwhile, VR/AR gaming remains a blip on the radar, comparatively. Not unsurprisingly, cloud gaming is growing more noticeably. From our vantage point, this directly ties in with the GPU situation mentioned above, though credit should also be given to improvements to cloud gaming in general (especially in regards to latency).
Platform comparisons aside, the bigger takeaway that is gaming is in great shape, and that's sometime to celebrate.
