In their market analysis and guidance to investor, Canalys made a very interesting prediction just a few months away from Playstation 4 and Xbox One's pending launches. They think PC gaming will continue to grow and sales of PC gaming hardware are on the upside, even as the industry in general continues to go down.
First off, as expected, Canalys blames lowered PC sales to the rise of tablets. In fact, pretty much all the PC manufacturers have also entered the tablet market, and benefited from the 40 % growth in that segment, even as desktops are down 7 % and notebooks down 13.9 %. PC gaming hardware will shrink again by 3 % in this year, but is expected to grow again 6.5 % in 2014 al the way through 2016.
Sensibly, many analysts have seen that even as casual and everyday users move to tablets and smartphones, core gamers are sticking around, investing more, and are in it for the long haul. Ted Pollack cites Arma 3 as the kind of game that will make gamers want to upgrade. Subsequently, there are also higher expectations in the sales of PC gaming parts, particularly graphics cards.
As you can see, AMD and Nvidia are fighting for highly profitable ground in the PC gaming space, even as they have diverted their resources in other segments (mobile, consoles). There's a second battle ongoing this coming generation aside from the big console companies, and it is going to be no less exciting.
Image is of Nvidia's GeForce GTX Titan
Source: Techreport
