What defines a "PC" has become blurred in recent years. Today's consoles are as powerful as yesterday's PC's, and are basically the same. Tablets and laptops are also "PC's" with a different form factor. What is in decline are the high-end stand-alone CPU chips that require massive heating and massive power supplies.
What defines a "PC" has become blurred in recent years. Today's consoles are as powerful as yesterday's PC's, and are basically the same. Tablets and laptops are also "PC's" with a different form factor. What is in decline are the high-end stand-alone CPU chips that require massive heating and massive power supplies.
Well, consoles had custom hardware, custom peripherals.
But if you just take standard PC parts, put them in very small box with standard PC connections (USB today) is it still a console or is it PC?
What defines a "PC" has become blurred in recent years. Today's consoles are as powerful as yesterday's PC's, and are basically the same. Tablets and laptops are also "PC's" with a different form factor. What is in decline are the high-end stand-alone CPU chips that require massive heating and massive power supplies.
Well, consoles had custom hardware, custom peripherals.
But if you just take standard PC parts, put them in very small box with standard PC connections (USB today) is it still a console or is it PC?
Consoles are PC's. They have the same instruction set, memory, and graphics as a mid-range PC. The amount of custom logic is very small. Everything else is like a standard PC.
Like an all-in-one PC, their form factor is different than the regular desktop, but the insides are the same. The same is true of laptops. They are PC's just as much as desktops are. They have the same x86 instruction set, the same memory, the same software.
Tablets and phones that use ARM processors are arguably not PC's, but laptops, consoles, and desktops are PC's. Sales is declining for the high-end desktop based PC that has a high-end processor and requires lots of cooling.
I've been in the computer business since the 1970's. In 1980, I used to buy computers for a large high-tech company. Just for fun, I compared the costs:
1980 disk = 300mb storage module drive (SMD), cost $15,000 each in 1980 dollars and was the size of a washing machine.
Today my home PC has 3 terabytes of disk, that's 9,000 SMD's at a cost of $135 MILLION dollars!
What defines a "PC" has become blurred in recent years. Today's consoles are as powerful as yesterday's PC's, and are basically the same. Tablets and laptops are also "PC's" with a different form factor. What is in decline are the high-end stand-alone CPU chips that require massive heating and massive power supplies.
Well, consoles had custom hardware, custom peripherals.
But if you just take standard PC parts, put them in very small box with standard PC connections (USB today) is it still a console or is it PC?
Consoles are PC's. They have the same instruction set, memory, and graphics as a mid-range PC. The amount of custom logic is very small. Everything else is like a standard PC.
Like an all-in-one PC, their form factor is different than the regular desktop, but the insides are the same. The same is true of laptops. They are PC's just as much as desktops are. They have the same x86 instruction set, the same memory, the same software.
Tablets and phones that use ARM processors are arguably not PC's, but laptops, consoles, and desktops are PC's. Sales is declining for the high-end desktop based PC that has a high-end processor and requires lots of cooling.
Consoles are similar to PCs, and the next generation will probably be closer to PCs than the current, but they're not identical. There never has been and probably never will be a PC that uses GDDR5 for main system memory like the PlayStation 4 does. You can't get a PC with eight very weak CPU cores like both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 have outside of looking at server parts that were never intended for desktop use. Consoles integrate more things more tightly than PCs do, as they don't have to things like lots of USB ports and SATA ports and PCI Express lanes available in the chipset because they don't know how many a motherboard manufacturer will want to use.
If you are connecting pc sales to personal home sales ... forget about it, you are wrong.
PC is driven by business. Business purchase of pc's is what drives the industry. Video game players (outside of of video cards) are an insignificant market.
So what is stopping new pc purchases? Well some ideas:
1. Economy. It's shit ... around the world.
2. OS. We are in Windows 7 era on the business front. Win 10 is not adopted by the majority nor will be for some time. There is no hardware upgrade requirement from win 7 to win 10 therefore no need to purchase new pc's like there was for win XP to win 7. Win 8 is only used marginally on portable devices and IOS is now a solid competitor ... a shit one for enterprise on so many levels but users drive it's use for now until businesses smarten the fuck up. Good news is that the new MS portable devices with a real functional OS designed for enterprise is catching on big time for users but they are costly and slow to adopt.
3. Software. Costs to replace existing software is astronomical for businesses. They are still using old software they can get away with that works with win 7 after win xp migration. All the software they purchased newly for win 7 still works with win 10. There is no need to buy new pcs (outside of pushing evergreening to extreme limits) for hardware that still runs their software.
I see no new technology on the horizon that removes the pc from business use. How the pc is used however is key and software will drive this. Once a solid business need arises that spawns change we will see upswings in sales once again.
On the personal use front: I custom build my pc over 4 years ago now and it still runs every single game I play just fine. I may buy a new video card soon but that is it for now. I'll likely use it for another 2 years. Software is the hang up currently and not hardware. Extreme hardware is now back into the category of specialized and enthusiast interests which is a small percentile and won't drive sales.
If you are connecting pc sales to personal home sales ... forget about it, you are wrong.
PC is driven by business. Business purchase of pc's is what drives the industry. Video game players (outside of of video cards) are an insignificant market.
3. Software. Costs to replace existing software is astronomical for businesses. They are still using old software they can get away with that works with win 7 after win xp migration. All the software they purchased newly for win 7 still works with win 10. There is no need to buy new pcs (outside of pushing evergreening to extreme limits) for hardware that still runs their software.
This part is very real.
We have several computers that have software licenses (not Windows, 3rd party software) that are tied to the hardware. Licenses that run in the tens of thousands of dollars per installation.
And then even if we wanted to pay for the software re-license, some of it is so old it won't run on anything more modern. Short of having the entire software re-written as a custom job, it's pretty much stuck on whatever it's running on now.
So while the cost of actual hardware may be pretty cheap, the all-in cost of upgrading when you look at licensing is extremely expensive. The cost of Windows and even the computer itself are pretty insignificant in comparison.
As a result, we have several machines that are more or less stuck on WinXP, Win2K, and even some old DOS installs.
My basic needs are met when I can have fast internet, can play HD movies and can play a few games. I have no intention to upgrade. I think most people feel the same way.
No surprise...for the past few years, most PC Games are sold as an Alpha or BETA and you have to pay to be part of such suffering...I mean testing, which usually involves all kinds of cash grabs, and then you find out the game you signed up and paid for has been changed 100% , or just plain sux, and in some cases never gets released until we are old men and retired.
As others have mentioned business needs are either met or in stasis due to legacy enterprise software. How much PC capability do most people actually need for workplace computing?
Beyond that, the home market has also dwindled. People don't need stand-alone computers for most things. If I weren't a PC gamer, I wouldn't bother with a computer outside of work. Phones and tablets are basically the new computers, and despite their limitations, they offer all the features I need for non-work/non-gaming life. Not only that, but for most media consumption I actually prefer a tablet.
As others have mentioned business needs are either met or in stasis due to legacy enterprise software. How much PC capability do most people actually need for workplace computing?
Beyond that, the home market has also dwindled. People don't need stand-alone computers for most things. If I weren't a PC gamer, I wouldn't bother with a computer outside of work. Phones and tablets are basically the new computers, and despite their limitations, they offer all the features I need for non-work/non-gaming life. Not only that, but for most media consumption I actually prefer a tablet.
I'm with you there. If the games I wanted to play were available on my iPad Pro, I wouldn't bother owning a desktop or a laptop. Gaming is the only thing I DON'T do on my iPad. It's one of the reasons I'm crossing my fingers for Albion Online.
I think it might also be that it's cheaper and easier to upgrade to the next iPhone or Galaxy Tablet than your computer. Frankly, I'm starting to feel a bit of Moore's Law burnout on top of everything else.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Hell the problem is everyone builds their own systems now, even the tech challenged like my wife. She just bought herself a new computer over the holiday sales, one part at a time. She is deservedly proud of herself as she put it all together without any help from me by watching youtube videos. She even went so far as to take her new case to a local printer and have a custom skin she designed put on case. Kinda makes me feel useless, all I am good for now is cooking dinner, washing dishes, and cutting the grass.
Hell the problem is everyone builds their own systems now, even the tech challenged like my wife. She just bought herself a new computer over the holiday sales, one part at a time. She is deservedly proud of herself as she put it all together without any help from me by watching youtube videos. She even went so far as to take her new case to a local printer and have a custom skin she designed put on case. Kinda makes me feel useless, all I am good for now is cooking dinner, washing dishes, and cutting the grass.
Haven't read all the posts so if this was discussed already, please forgive.
As long as PC's keep being sold with 6 gigs of RAM instead of 8 or 16, or Hybrid Drives instead of SSD's, or on board graphics/ Crap GPU, instead of a good GPU, or crap tons of bloatware, etc etc, the increasingly tech savy population are going to build their own.
Not that everyone needs a great gaming rig, but when you can build a great gaming rig for the same price as buying something... less than (which is what the "New PC market" consists of) PC sales are going to take a hit.
Not to mention the increasingly mobile world and all that entails.
See the world and all within it. Live a lifetime in every minute.
"Sales of personal computers fell in the final quarter of 2015 to their
lowest level since 2007, the year Apple Inc. introduced the iPhone,
according to data released Tuesday by industry researcher International
Data Corp."
Ferrari has large revenues but a tiny user market.
They're saying revenue of F2P MMO and games like League of Legends is up, maybe because many play it...or because whales are spending insane amounts of money in F2P games.
Maybe the PC gamer userbase grew or maybe it shrank, revenue tells you nothing about that.
-moore's law is coming to an end (some argue, including Intel, that it's already ended), no more massive easy gains in GPU/CPU, less reason to upgrade
-mobile, many people feel an iPhone and a tablet serves them fine (I don't, but I realize that for many mobile is good enough)
-diminishing returns in daily use, I don't need 10Gbit/s internet, I don't need 16 cores, I don't need 4k...we are at a point where PC are great...the way they are...sure I like advancements...but I'm not running out to buy a 4k monitor that looks like a 1080p one with some minor minor difference
While Moore's Law will come to an end eventually, we're not there just yet. Unless you're the sort who argues that a full node per 30 months instead of 24 constitutes the end of Moore's Law. We're in the process of jumping to 14/16 nm finfet process nodes, and that's going to be quite a lift.
"The sort of people who think a phone and/or a tablet is all they need today is the sort of people who wouldn't have had a PC of any sort 20 years ago."
You're right about diminishing returns, though. At some point, things are good enough and you don't need the next upgrade. Sound cards got there years ago, for example. But that's hardly new; keyboards were plenty good enough decades ago.
Your middle statement is absolutely incorrect. I can use my father as an example. He never stops telling me how all he really needs is his phone now. And he definitely had a PC 20 years ago.
But in any case they are all just PC's of a different sort anyway. I actually think more people are gaming on mobile PC and phone than are gaming on desktops.
The numbers in the OP make sense in context to what I see in the real world.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
Jean-Luc_Picard said: But year, PC is dying. Whatever you say. Maybe this website should restrict this hardware forum to those who really need help and advice, and move that kind of gossip to the "off topic" forum where it belongs along with the latest color of Madonna's underwear.
So true....
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
Well, there is a bit of a difference between PC and Gaming PC.
Gaming that runs on ANY PC is doing quite well. LoL pretty well proves that. The biggest competition here is mobile. And the PC is ahead there, for now.
But gaming that ~requires~ a Gaming PC - that is what consoles are competing against really. If I look at the top 2015 revenue list that was linked, and I only see 1 game out of 10 that requires a discrete GPU made in the past 5 years to play. And it looks almost identical for 2014. And 2013.
So if you want to go ahead and say because of some F2P and 10+ year old titles PC gaming is swell - sure go ahead. You may as well roll Facebook's ~$1B in Desktop gaming annual revenue into the same list, Facebook would fall in somewhere around 4 and 5 if you include it's revenue as a single entity, and that is not including mobile.
But I don't think it's quite as good as the revenue charts lead you to believe. Gaming PCs aren't nearly that big of a market, and are a very small subset of the "PC" market that those revenue charts encompass.
Comments
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2025: 48 years on the Net.
But if you just take standard PC parts, put them in very small box with standard PC connections (USB today) is it still a console or is it PC?
Consoles are PC's. They have the same instruction set, memory, and graphics as a mid-range PC. The amount of custom logic is very small. Everything else is like a standard PC.
Like an all-in-one PC, their form factor is different than the regular desktop, but the insides are the same. The same is true of laptops. They are PC's just as much as desktops are. They have the same x86 instruction set, the same memory, the same software.
Tablets and phones that use ARM processors are arguably not PC's, but laptops, consoles, and desktops are PC's. Sales is declining for the high-end desktop based PC that has a high-end processor and requires lots of cooling.
------------
2025: 48 years on the Net.
1980 disk = 300mb storage module drive (SMD), cost $15,000 each in 1980 dollars and was the size of a washing machine.
Today my home PC has 3 terabytes of disk, that's 9,000 SMD's at a cost of $135 MILLION dollars!
------------
2025: 48 years on the Net.
PC is driven by business. Business purchase of pc's is what drives the industry. Video game players (outside of of video cards) are an insignificant market.
So what is stopping new pc purchases? Well some ideas:
1. Economy. It's shit ... around the world.
2. OS. We are in Windows 7 era on the business front. Win 10 is not adopted by the majority nor will be for some time. There is no hardware upgrade requirement from win 7 to win 10 therefore no need to purchase new pc's like there was for win XP to win 7. Win 8 is only used marginally on portable devices and IOS is now a solid competitor ... a shit one for enterprise on so many levels but users drive it's use for now until businesses smarten the fuck up. Good news is that the new MS portable devices with a real functional OS designed for enterprise is catching on big time for users but they are costly and slow to adopt.
3. Software. Costs to replace existing software is astronomical for businesses. They are still using old software they can get away with that works with win 7 after win xp migration. All the software they purchased newly for win 7 still works with win 10. There is no need to buy new pcs (outside of pushing evergreening to extreme limits) for hardware that still runs their software.
I see no new technology on the horizon that removes the pc from business use. How the pc is used however is key and software will drive this. Once a solid business need arises that spawns change we will see upswings in sales once again.
On the personal use front: I custom build my pc over 4 years ago now and it still runs every single game I play just fine. I may buy a new video card soon but that is it for now. I'll likely use it for another 2 years. Software is the hang up currently and not hardware. Extreme hardware is now back into the category of specialized and enthusiast interests which is a small percentile and won't drive sales.
You stay sassy!
We have several computers that have software licenses (not Windows, 3rd party software) that are tied to the hardware. Licenses that run in the tens of thousands of dollars per installation.
And then even if we wanted to pay for the software re-license, some of it is so old it won't run on anything more modern. Short of having the entire software re-written as a custom job, it's pretty much stuck on whatever it's running on now.
So while the cost of actual hardware may be pretty cheap, the all-in cost of upgrading when you look at licensing is extremely expensive. The cost of Windows and even the computer itself are pretty insignificant in comparison.
As a result, we have several machines that are more or less stuck on WinXP, Win2K, and even some old DOS installs.
Beyond that, the home market has also dwindled. People don't need stand-alone computers for most things. If I weren't a PC gamer, I wouldn't bother with a computer outside of work. Phones and tablets are basically the new computers, and despite their limitations, they offer all the features I need for non-work/non-gaming life. Not only that, but for most media consumption I actually prefer a tablet.
~~ postlarval ~~
So basically, people now have:
-internet on smartphones
-internet on tablets
-internet on TV
-internet'ish stuff in cars
In the past, the only way to access internet was through a PC.
I watched it more times than I care to admit.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Donno anyone who has bought a "pc"
Does target still sells pc's ?
As long as PC's keep being sold with 6 gigs of RAM instead of 8 or 16, or Hybrid Drives instead of SSD's, or on board graphics/ Crap GPU, instead of a good GPU, or crap tons of bloatware, etc etc, the increasingly tech savy population are going to build their own.
Not that everyone needs a great gaming rig, but when you can build a great gaming rig for the same price as buying something... less than (which is what the "New PC market" consists of) PC sales are going to take a hit.
Not to mention the increasingly mobile world and all that entails.
See the world and all within it.
Live a lifetime in every minute.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/01/27/pc-dominated-worldwide-game-revenue-in-2015
Ferrari has large revenues but a tiny user market.
They're saying revenue of F2P MMO and games like League of Legends is up, maybe because many play it...or because whales are spending insane amounts of money in F2P games.
Maybe the PC gamer userbase grew or maybe it shrank, revenue tells you nothing about that.
But in any case they are all just PC's of a different sort anyway. I actually think more people are gaming on mobile PC and phone than are gaming on desktops.
The numbers in the OP make sense in context to what I see in the real world.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
Gaming that runs on ANY PC is doing quite well. LoL pretty well proves that. The biggest competition here is mobile. And the PC is ahead there, for now.
But gaming that ~requires~ a Gaming PC - that is what consoles are competing against really. If I look at the top 2015 revenue list that was linked, and I only see 1 game out of 10 that requires a discrete GPU made in the past 5 years to play. And it looks almost identical for 2014. And 2013.
So if you want to go ahead and say because of some F2P and 10+ year old titles PC gaming is swell - sure go ahead. You may as well roll Facebook's ~$1B in Desktop gaming annual revenue into the same list, Facebook would fall in somewhere around 4 and 5 if you include it's revenue as a single entity, and that is not including mobile.
But I don't think it's quite as good as the revenue charts lead you to believe. Gaming PCs aren't nearly that big of a market, and are a very small subset of the "PC" market that those revenue charts encompass.