Load the Game

Nvidia says that the Glory Days of Consoles are over, PC is king

• Galea Razvan
• November 10th, 2014

Nvidia recently had an earnings call event in which the company boasted some record numbers and officials shared their thoughts on future prospects. One of them happened to be the CEO of Nvidia, Jen-Hsung. The Nvidia head talked about different gaming platforms and said that the “glory days of consoles are now over.” According to Hsung, the PC is now the largest gaming platform out there and consoles are not regarded anymore as the main gaming solution sought by players worldwide. “My sense is that the game console platform is not likely to enjoy the hay days when it was really unambiguously the only and the best game platform to enjoy games. It’s just not true anymore. There are just too many other ways to enjoy games,” Nvidia CEO said.

This is rather interesting coming from Nvidia’s boss, considering that the PC was always the main gaming platform for all players, myself included. The first ones to break this trend were the PlayStation One and the original Xbox, two gaming consoles which brought something new and interesting to the table. I personally prefer console over PC, but I’m sure that everyone agrees that the first games we all played were on PC. Continuing with Nvidia’s boss statements, Jen-Hsung further shares his opinion:

“The PC has become the world’s largest game platform. China, the developing countries around the world, PC is a piece of platform they already own. They can upgrade it two, three, four times without having to change the basic platform. So the total of cost of ownership of a game PC is quite attractive.”

Focusing on the CEO’s take on PC popularity in China, this is debatable. PC is the main gaming platform in China mainly because of the 14 year ban on foreign gaming consoles which has been recently lifted by the Chinese government. Would have the PC taken over as the main gaming platform without the console ban in place? Probably. All we know is that the balance will not shift anytime soon, even if Sony decides to follow Microsoft and bring its PS4 console over there, which is very sure to happen soon.

Jen-Hsung concludes: “And so I think that there’s too many other ways to enjoy games now, for the game console to enjoy the hay days of the past. But we’ll see. The thing that I do know is this, without any question is that the PC is continuing to expand the number of titles. Great titles are coming to the PC. It’s is continuing to grow and the quality of titles is growing up ever so fast.”

This all might be true, but I refuse to imagine a market without gaming consoles, and as far as I’m concerned, these are just opinions at the end of the day and I highly doubt they will materialize.