What Will Happen? The Game Industry PC Games Edition

The PC game market has many titles that have gained popularity through live game distribution and other means, and many games have been hits for a long time.

The market is already so large that it should be compared to the consumer market, and it is expected to continue to grow in size.

The PC game market is expanding its market size year by year

As an emerging force in the game market, the PC game market has quickly expanded in size since the 2010s.

In 2023, the PC game market as a whole will expand 3.9% year-on-year. Compared to the 1.7% year-on-year increase in the consumer market in the same year, this is almost double the expansion of the PC game market.

Looking at the overall game market, the PC game market is almost the same size as the consumer game market, each accounting for about 20-25% of the total (the rest is almost entirely the mobile game market). The mobile game market accounts for the majority of sales, followed by the consumer and PC game markets.

In Japan in particular, the market has expanded dramatically in recent years due to the popularity of games such as “Fortnite” and “Vallorant. The number of PC game players, especially among the younger generation, continues to increase.

One reason behind this is that PC games are easier to play for those who already own a PC, rather than for consumers who need to go to the trouble of purchasing dedicated hardware. Another reason is that many game distributors, including Vtubers, often distribute PC games, and many users start playing games because they admire them.

In the past, PCs were not widely used in households, and their specifications were not as good as today's, making them unsuitable for game play. However, these problems have now been solved, and there is little reason for the younger generation to purchase dedicated hardware.

In addition, in recent years, it is not unusual for game companies that have been active in the consumer market to release PC versions of their games. In the past, a certain level of knowledge was required to play PC games, but today, platforms such as Steam have become widespread, lowering the bar for getting started. As a result, there are many players whose first experience with a game is a PC game.

A market where hit titles continue to “sell” over the long term

One of the characteristics of the PC game market is that hit titles released several years ago are still the mainstay of the market. For example, according to the 2023 revenue ranking published by Steam, only three of the top 11 titles were released in 2023, including “Baldur's Gate 3”. Other notable titles include “DOTA2 (released in 2013),” “PUBG (2017),” “Counter-Strike 2 (2012),” and other long-running titles.

PC games are characterized by the fact that many of them are managed multiplayer titles, and the more users a title already has, the easier it is to attract new users, making it easier for hit titles to maintain their popularity. In the consumer market, sell-out titles are still the mainstream, but in the PC game market, the key is how to create hit titles and sustain them over the long term.

Final Fantasy XIV” has been a hit PC game from a Japanese game company for many years. The game surpassed 30 million accounts worldwide at the end of 2023, and for “Final Fantasy XIV: The Golden Legacy,” which officially launched on July 2, 2024, it was announced that it had the largest number of concurrent users since its service launch in 2013.

This suggests that PC gaming is a market where popular titles (and carefully managed titles) continue to sell well over the long term.

One positive factor for the PC game market is that new consumer titles are gradually releasing PC versions at the same time. This will likely lead to a gradual shift in consumer game players to playing games on their PCs.

As mentioned earlier, today's PCs have sufficient specifications to play the latest games, and the reasons for purchasing dedicated hardware are becoming less and less each year.

Although PCs will continue to compete with consumer games for the next few years, there is a good possibility that they will grow to swallow the consumer market in the future. As a result, the gaming market may be split into two, with light games being played on mobile devices, and those that require more time and effort being played on PCs.

The Present and Future of PC Games

1. PC games have become a major hit in the past few years and are now on par with the consumer market.

2. The number of players, especially among the younger generation, is expected to continue to grow, as the hurdle to play PC games is lower than purchasing dedicated hardware.