The Gaming Hardware Market
March 4, 2015, Game Developer Conference, San Francisco—Jon Peddie from Jon Peddie Research talked about the state of the gaming hardware markets. The company has been tracking various computer graphics markets for some time.
The CG industry paralleled the evolution of computers. The first CG terminal was developed for the DEW Line on the ’50’s and this graphics terminal also become one of the first gaming terminals. Now, mobile devices are chasing the console and PC markets for graphics performance, but will always trail since all the devices benefit from Moore’s law. The current definition of console quality in mobile devices is about even with a PS1.
The gaming industry obviously depends on software, and the software industry is moving too slowly. The various platforms all need better APIs, and the latest releases from Apple and Khronos with Vulkan are a step in the right direction. Even Direct X 12 is going to be a cross platform language.
This set of changes in APIs will help to reduce development costs, reduce the number of ports to support, and lower time to shipment. This change will enable more high-performance games to go onto a mobile platform due to the better APIs and higher commonality.
Last year, the gaming hardware markets sold $67 B. Most gamers have more than one type of game platform. The PC portion, a third of the total market, is divided into four components: integrated and discrete desktop, and integrated and discrete laptop devices. Enthusiast and performance hold about 1 and 3 percent respectively of the market. These top-end machines drive the technologies for the other PCs.
At lower levels of performance, the discrete GPPU desktop share is 7 percent and the integrated GPU34 percent. The high-end gaming notebooks outdo the desktop machines with a 5 percent share, and the discrete notebook GPU devices hold an 8 percent share. The integrated GPU notebooks capture the remainder of the market. As an aside, the game content development software amounted to $26 B on these types of platforms.
PC peripherals include mice, keyboards, controllers, headsets, gamepads, and head and motion tracking came in at $6 B with a 1.5 percent compound annual growth rate. The console market is also stable at $11 B and a 3 percent CAGR. Some increase will be seen in the small console like Shield, other Android platforms, and Valve. The dedicated hand-held Sony and Nintendo platforms are running at $2B and 2 percent CAGR.
Mobile devices, comprised of 11 tablets and 23 phones, are taking a cut of the handheld market. Half of all phone user play games on their phones, and almost 85 percent of the top 700 grossing apps were games. These numbers imply that the smart phone game market for software may be over $5 B on global basis.
One surprising area is arcade games, they are coming back. The $4 B market is seeing 2 percent growth driven by location-based machine like slot machines, twitch, and e-sports. The e-sport category is approaching $1 B al by itself.
New platforms are bringing in new players and the ability to create a game for many platforms through cross-platform APIs means that the game players will be able to play their games on any platform. The people will still be getting more machines over time.
