TheCalvinator

Nice! Stylish AND bulletproof!

As touched upon in previous posts, it seems like the decline is mainly due to the increase in more readily available, alternative and cheaper products ordinary people can use for casual and unspecialized purposes. This sums it up well: "There was a time when if a family wanted to be online, provide their kids with somewhere to do their homework, and have access to email, etc, they had to have a PC [...] But now a tablet can do much the same. With the exception of a useful way of doing word processing, the family PC – that so often morphed itself into a gaming PC – has been much usurped by other smaller, often cheaper devices. If you want to check emails, you’ll most likely do it on your phone, rather than boot up the giant wheezing box in another room, or even bother opening up the laptop. And while I think common sense dictates that a full size keyboard, separate mouse, nice big detached monitor (or two), and a device properly designed to cope with multitasking still remains a very preferable solution, there’s no point in denying it’s not winning that battle." http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/11/as-pc-gaming-popularity-keeps-climbing-hardware-sales-down/ It's also reasonable to assume that this isn't affecting the PC gaming market since PC game sales are on the rise and markets for PC gaming are expanding: "[...]there are more than a billion PC gamers around the globe who spent $20 billion on their hobby last year. Both figures figure are set to continue rising, especially with the booming Chinese market where the economy is expanding and consoles are hard to come by. China represented $6.8 billion of the $20 billion revenue, an on-year boost of 9%, making it the fastest growing market for PC games [...] Further highlighting PC gaming's strength, the PCGA noted that the market has grown 90% since the group's first report in 2008."http://www.techspot.com/news/52070-pc-game-sales-hit-20-billion-last-year-no-signs-of-slowing.html I wonder if we are witnessing the beginnings of a shift in the PC industry from a broader domestic market to a "smaller", more specialized one that will mainly cater to gamers and professionals such as digital content creators, engineers etc.. And if so, imagine how that would change the industry! :o

"Many people believe mobile gaming will overthrow console gaming. The purists of the mobile community believe it will overthrow PC's as we know it" *Le facepalm*

Hiya folks! Nifty place ya got here! Big thanks to Linus and his team for all the great, insightful content they've produced and I'm really glad to finally jump in and join this community! See you all in the forums! :D