Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
An account already exists for this email address, please log in.
Subscribe to our newsletter
According to games industry market research firm Newzoo (PC Gamer's official data partner), PC games revenue has trailed console software sales for over a decade. That, however, is changing. In its 2026 PC and Console report, Newzoo says that PC revenue growth outperformed consoles in 2025 as the industry began to emerge from its "post-2020 plateau."
That's a trend it predicts will continue in the years ahead. Newzoo forecasts that PC revenue will continue at a 6.6% annual growth rate between 2025 and 2028 compared with an expected 4.4% for consoles, projecting that continuing PC games revenue growth will outstrip console sales by 2028.
Newzoo's data, which incorporates sales metrics and user statistics from storefronts across PC and console platforms, indicates PC revenue growth in recent years is being driven by a growing player base—particularly in China, where the number of PC gamers grew 11.7% in 2025.
Article continues below
Newzoo also reports that younger generations are shifting to PC in growing numbers, as its data shows increasing shares of Gen Z and Gen Alpha players on PC. As a result of those regional and generational expansions, Newzoo predicts that the combined PC player base will exceed 1 billion players by 2028.
Consoles haven't exactly had an unchallenged dominance until now, of course: The audience for at least a few of the most popular multiplatform games is already bigger on PC. Minecraft had 15 million PC players in January, whereas PlayStation had 8.2 million and Xbox 5.5 million. Arc Raiders drew 4.5 million on PC, 2.9 million on PlayStation, and 2.3 million on Xbox.
That said, while my allegiance to the PC Gamer brand means I'm honorbound to accept these auguries with the mandated degree of enthusiasm, we shouldn't celebrate Newzoo's forecast without noting some pretty heavy asterisks.
For one, while the Chinese PC gaming market is expanding, it might not offer easily accessible revenue growth for developers and publishers elsewhere. As analyst Matthew Ball noted in his own recent industry report, 84% of Chinese player spend is directed towards Chinese-made games, indicating that it'll be a challenge for external interests to capitalize on the fastest-growing segment of the PC gaming market. Valve also shared today in a presentation that 66% of Steam users view Steam in a language other than English.
The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
And there's another, more dire complicating factor: Newzoo's predictions of continuing PC revenue growth could be rendered irrelevant by the growing memory and storage supply crisis, which threatens not only the PC hardware market but the entirety of consumer electronics as we currently know it.
While the fallout of the unprecedented manufacturing demands of AI investment won't be limited to just PC gaming—consoles need memory and storage, too, after all—the scale of turmoil unleashed by widespread shortages and skyrocketing prices could be so profound that the landscape of the gaming industry will be unrecognizable by 2028.
Ah, well. At least we have those pleasant growth figures to comfort us in the meantime.
Lincoln has been writing about games for 12 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
