Good post, but I think we should be careful not to be overly critical of the consoles. The downtick in console revenue is pretty recent and relatively minor. Most likely I think it simply has to do with the fact that all the current consoles are in the late stages of their life cycle. They have been around for ages and most people that have them probably buy fewer and fewer games every year.

The growth in PC gaming revenue is great, but I fear it might also be largely driven by stuff like Farmville and major major titles like WoW. Still, digital distribution through Steam and other stores has really been great for PC gaming. I also suspect a lot of console folks are migrating back to PC like I did because the consoles have grown so stagnant.

The irony is that consoles being stagnant has forced PC gaming to become stagnant as well since games are almost always designed with consoles in mind nowadays. There hasn't been a really big game to push PC hardware since Crysis.

Sales have been all around lower this generation than last generation. Probably because of the economy and also because higher price tags with the $600 launch price of the PS3 and $60 games. According to wikipedia, the PS2 sold 153 million consoles. The PS3 has sold 64 million, and the Xbox 360 has sold 67 million. Both the PS3 and 360 combined have sold less than the PS2.

well the wii is the wildcard this generation...you throw that in the mix and sales are still strong..(no proof but I did read that they are bringing more money a year in now than ever before because the average person buys more games a year now because they are older, and because of strong pre-order incentives)

not to jump both sides of the argument, but I will say that that chart showing pc sales is a little tricky though, since that is every type of game out there. We are talking facebook...steam....mmo...everything. You are talking thousands of "games" a year when you look overall pc sales..

Consoles on the other hand have a greater sales number per game. As mentioned above, the console versions do outsell the pc versions for the most part the last few years...and outside maybe 10 pc games, nothing compares to Call of Duty/Mario/Halo or the great many other console game big boys over the year...

Still the fact that pc games make up such a large group of the world, MUCH larger than all consoles combined...it would be more accurate I think to call console gamers a niche market (though that of course would be false as well)

I thought Valve has never released sales and dollar figures from Steam.

For what it's worth, even my older ~$350 GTX 570 can run games fine at native resolution 2560x1440 on my system. Definitely don't need to break the bank for high res PC gaming.

Geez, do you have a 30" monitor for that insane native resolution?

And @ calling your 570 GTX old. Its six generations newer than my Geforce 8800 GTX.

27". And I said older, as in not current generation.

Older GTX-570 VC @ $350.00
XBox 360 Gears 3 Edition w/Two Controllers @ $370.00

I'm not criticizing but just pointing out the "Money Sense" in play here.Of course in performance terms there's really no contest but we're living and playing in a time where both money and ease-of-use matters or at least to many.

The PC gming side has far more choices and flavors in terms of systems and one can taylor to their needs and budget. however with consoles everyone is on he same level playing field that pretty much is the same no matter what except in TV size. I actually feel that if you walked into Best Buy or Gamestop or wherever and they had PC Gaming setup much like you see 360, PS3 and Wi, there might be more people opting for it. Many people have never seen real PC Gaming in play and know what it can do. But they have seen consoles on 52" TV's and said wow.

To be fair though, despite the GTX 570 being "older" it is still a lot of overkill that only really hardcore gamers are going to want or need. Unless you want to play with every setting maxed out at a crazy high 2560x1440 resolution, you can certainly get by with an older card. My old 8800 GTX handles every modern game with ease on medium settings at 1440x900 res. You can probably get that card for like $20 now. The 8800 GTX, despite being ancient, is still quite a bit more powerful than the card in the Xbox360 or PS3.

Halo was good and I loved being able to commandeer vehicles. But I didn't play it near as much as I played Goldeneye (and Perfect Dark). I personally thought Half Life 2 had a better story, especially with the seamless meshing of cut-scenes and gameplay. And I've spent more hours playing Fallout 3 than all the above-mentioned games combined. I loved my Xbox and didn't own a PS2, but Halo never captured my interest like these other games.

That's nice I was never arguing that wasn't the case, just referring back to the idea of needing a $1000 video card or that being the norm.

But honestly, you could still build a computer for $500 that could run PC ports of the latest console games. The idea of constant upgrades as a necessity has been overstated for awhile.