PC Is The Fastest Growing Games Platform

Here at Game Debate, we've always championed PC as a gaming platform. But now, it seems, the versatility and quality of PC gaming is reaching more and more gamers.

Research by The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE) shows that PC gaming – in the UK at least – is catching up with its main console competitors...

PC Gaming Can Offer A Truly High End Gaming Experience

UKIE's digital charts project have revealed that – in the first half of 2013 – the gaming market share for both boxed and digital PC titles rose by 5 per cent.

PC games titles accounted for 22 per cent of all purchases made between January and June 2013, almost equalling the PS3's 25 per cent market share.

The Xbox 360 still takes by far the biggest share of the market in the UK; accounting for 34 per cent on boxed purchases alone. The PS3 and Xbox 360 saw their sales rise by 3 per cent and 2 per cent respectively, eating up the share lost by Nintendo's disastrous sales year.

The UK download charts for Q2 revealed that SimCity was the top download game in Q2, scandalously managing to beat off the magnificent Bioshock Infiniteto second place. Simulation games as a whole were the most popular game genre, making up 23 per cent of PC sales this year.

As you might expect, 2014 has been a very poor year for Nintendo. Their market share plummeted from 26% in 2012 (which included the Wii, DS and 3DS) to just 16% this year. Oddly the UKIE research figures don't feature Nintendo's most recent console – the Wii U – at all. What with the console's extremely low sales figures, this could merely suggest that sales are too low to be significant. Publishing giant EA was the number one in terms of combined boxed sales and downloads, followed closely by 2K Games and Sega.

With both Sony and Microsoft's next generation platforms launching this month, it's unlikely the PC will retain quite such strong results for 2014. The next year could see a big shake-up of the way we play games. Not only do we have next-gen consoles to look forward to, but the number of people choosing downloads over hard copies of games shows no sign of slowing, whilst the Steam Machine could also shake up the way we perceive home consoles in the future.