It’s simple: The PC gaming market is “scavenging” Microsoft’s own console market. Why buy a console when another $100 can get a PC that would play games about as well, and still be a general purpose computer? Don’t get me wrong, I love my Playstation for not being a general purpose PC. I love the ability to just put it to sleep and then fire it up again and continue from where I was. I love never having to deal with flaky drivers, constant updates, or cheaters. But I “get” that most people in the market for a single “computing device” that can play AAA games would opt for a PC.
Additionally, I think it’s another subtle data point that proves my hypothesis that more and more people are choosing Apple hardware when it’s their money, and therefore not spending in the Microsoft ecosystem. Microsoft loves to tout how, decade after decade, Windows accounts for a crazy-high percentage of the market, but personal experience proves that this doesn’t hold up with people. For years, I’ve argued that if you could subtract corporate purchases from the equation, the situation would look very, very different. Finally, from Extremetech, which draws from this archived article from the Seattle Times, I’ve stumbled on a report that proves my theory.
This chart says it all: From 2004 to 2012, Microsoft’s share of the consumer computing market has plummeted from 95% to 20%. For 20 years, Microsoft enjoyed an almost complete monopoly of consumer computing — and yet today, it is a minority stake holder, languishing behind Google’s 42% and Apple’s 24%. This report at CNET says gaming PC’s are selling at about parity with consoles, and we know that Xbox sales are 1/5th of Playstation, so the bottom line is that the AAA-gaming world is coming down to gaming PC’s and… Playstation.