PC gaming spend on the rise despite release drought - report

Western PC gamers spent more in 2013 than in 2012, a new report from DFC Intelligence claims.

In an extract from an upcoming brief published on GamesIndustry, DFC Intelligence reported global PC gamer spending increased year-over-year in 2013.

The analyst firm expects this trend to continue in 2014, and is forecasting spend of $25 billion.

"Core gamers seem to be willing to spend more money than ever," DFC's Jeremy Miller said.

"We thought with the lack of major new releases that overall usage would be down. However, the top titles of 2012 continued to do well in 2013 and new titles like Battlefield 4 and Total War: Rome 2 had solid performances."

League of Legends was the top PC title of 2013, followed by Dota 2, which was itself the fastest-growing PC game of the year. MOBA is "far and away the largest [genre] because of those two games", DFC said.

Although free-to-play games are a major contributor to total PC spend, DFC noted that upfront payments are proving surprisingly robust.

"Dota 2 charged a $30 beta fee before going free-to-play and a great deal of people took advantage of that. So really we see a hybrid business model working where you can call it F2P but still charge upfront," DFC's David Cole said.

"Also the traditional model where you charge a one-time fee is also very attractive - but again there is now a greater ability to upsell consumers after the initial purchase. We think this is a major driver of growth versus the pure free-to-play games."

DFC believes PC spend will continue to rise, not in spite of next-gen consoles, but partially because of them; ther eis an increaisng overlap betwene PC and console gamers, especially with major games like Titanfall and The Elder Scrolls Online developed for both platforms simultaneously.

"2013 was a slow year for releases on the PC in large part because developers were gearing up for new console systems. We actually think the launch of the new console systems will help lift the PC game business because there is large overlap between console and PC gamers and it becomes another platform for developers," Cole said.

Thanks, games.on.net. Image via The Escapist's Zero Punctuation.