Consoles can’t keep up with high-end gaming PCs running 4K resolution at acceptable frame rates, says new report from Jon Peddie Research.

New data from Jon Peddie Research says the PC gaming market continues to hold its long-time lead over console gaming, giving a lift to the otherwise declining PC market. JPR defines the PC Gaming Hardware Market as personal computers, upgrades, and peripherals used for gaming.

Ted Pollak, Senior Gaming Analyst at JPR notes the $21.5 billion market is over twice the size of the console gaming hardware market. “We continue to see a shift in casual console customers moving to mobile. While this is also occurring in the lower end PC gaming world, more money is being directed to mid and high range PC builds and upgrades by gamers. Committed PC gamers are generally not interested in pure content consumption platforms. They are power users and pay thousands for the ability to play games at very high settings and then do business, video/photo editing, content creation and other tasks with maximum horsepower at their disposal in a desktop ergonomic environment.”

Gaming has become one of the cornerstones of the entire home and personal PC market. As major companies evaluate their marketing and R&D budgets, JPR is seeing more investment in gaming oriented designs, and more money spent advertising to this group of consumers.

Jon Peddie, president of JPR, notes, “Nvidia, Intel, and AMD have enthusiast CPUs and GPUs that are so powerful, when combined with SSD’s and fast memory, they absolutely trounce the computing power and gaming capabilities of the newest console generation. Being able to drive 3840 × 2160 (4K) at acceptable frame rates is already a reality for the highest-end configurations and the mass market is now able to push 2560 × 1440. PC Gamers with good displays are able to enjoy millions and millions of pixels more than console gamers get on HDTVs. This translates into being able to see more and a better gaming experience.”

PC gaming market landscape in 2017 by segment

The PC Gaming Hardware Market is very diverse amongst its different segments. The high end Enthusiast segment is very performance and style oriented much like sports car owners. By contrast, the low end just wants to play games on something and this is why the segment is under threat from cheaper gaming solutions.

The report contains the following content:

• After-Market AIB: Discussion and estimates of after-market graphics cards sales as upgrades and for home builds
• System Configured PCs: Discussion and estimates of PC sales influenced by gaming from companies that either sell pre-configured or custom configured builds. Estimates are broken into notebooks and desktop segments.
• Accessories and DIY: Discussion and estimates of accessory sales and the Do-It-Yourself builds
• Charts, graphics, tables and more. Included with this report is an Excel workbook. It contains the data we used to create the charts in this report. The workbook has the charts and supplemental information broken out by platform.

Pricing and availability

The Worldwide PC Gaming Hardware Market report series by Jon Peddie Research which covers 33 countries, notebooks, desktops, DIY, and accessories, comes in three versions: Enthusiast, Performance, and Mainstream, with each version selling for $7,500 and the set of three for $15,000. In addition, with the set is a summary report of the Total PC Gaming Hardware Market worldwide and subscription discounts.