PC gaming has never felt more alive! According to The PC Gaming Alliance 's Horizons Research 2011 report, we spent a record-breaking $18.6 billion on PC games last year. That's 15% more than 2010's figures. We are best.
If the report is anything to go by, PC gaming might literally take over the world in the near future. "No geographical market segments tracked showed a decline in 2011 in overall PC game revenue, while China continues to grow at nearly twice the rate of the overall global market for PC games with growth of 27% resulting in record 2011 revenue of $6 billion," states the report. "Additionally, the mature game markets of Korea, Japan, US, UK, and Germany demonstrated significant growth in 2011, together recording increased revenue of 11% in 2011 to $8 billion."
Everyone loves playing games on PC, basically.
The recent boom in free-to-play games has a lot to do with it. Zynga managed to almost double their revenues in 2011 to a staggering $1.1 billion. That's a lot of turnip seeds sold (or whatever).
Tencent's launch of Riot Game's League of Legends in China was also a massive success, raking in over 11 million active players. The figures haven't been counted up yet, but it's expected that Riot are making more money from PC games than anyone else, including Activision Blizzard.
Subscription MMOs such as Rift and The Old Republic, along with a few AAA bombshells like Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3 and Skyrim also pulled in a lot of cash.
Matt Ployhar, PCGA president and Intel analyst seemed enthused by the news: “The PC Gaming juggernaut continues unabated, across the industry and geographic boundaries," he says.
"While reports of Gaming sales at Retail show signs of struggle, the impact hasn't been as great for PC Gaming which had an earlier adoption of newer formats, business-models & delivery with: Digital Distribution, Free to Play, and Subscriptions fueling PC Gaming's strong global growth."
Take that recession. PC gaming FTW!
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