Anyone who has been playing games on the PC for a while has likely gotten used to regular, overblown pronouncements that computer gaming is on the verge of dying in the face of cheaper, easier-to-use console competition. Gamers weary of rebuffing those charges should take heart from recent statements from DFC Intelligence analyst David Cole that PC gaming is far from dying—and it's actually outperforming the console sector overall these days.

In statements reported by UK tech site PCR, Cole said that PC games were bringing in more revenue than console games on a global basis, though he added that the recent launch of new game consoles could change things in the near future. "Among core gamers there is a heavy overlap with most console gamers also playing on a PC," Cole said. "The big difference is that consoles are now the luxury item and PCs are the necessity. Just a few years ago the reverse was true. This means PCs have the broader audience."

 

We sampled public data to estimate sales and gameplay info for every Steam game.

The growth in PC spending is being driven heavily by the explosive growth in MOBAs like League of Legends andDota 2, Cole said. That certainly gels with what we found inour recent Steam Gauge analysis, which shows Dota 2dominating in a number of gameplay statistics.

 

Outside of that, the PC market is supported by "a nice mix of MMO, strategy, and first-person shooter" games, Cole said. The PC gaming market is also dominated by older titles; Cole said there wasn't a single title released in 2013 that made the top 20 list of most played games for that year, though 2014 releases like DayZ, Rust, andHearthstone have managed to crack the popularity lists. PC gaming revenue growth has been especially strong in Europe and among free-to-play titles, Cole said.

 

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