Gaming PCs and those capable of playing games brought into over $12bn in revenue between January and October this year.
That's according to market tracker GfK's strategic insights manager Pavlin Lazarov, who wrote that in the first ten months of this year gaming units accounted for 19 per cent of total PC sales. That's a 31 per cent increase year-on-year, lower than the rise from 2016 to 2017, which was 55 per cent. The share of gaming PC sales grew to 12 per cent. However, turnover decreased one per cent fo seven per cent year-on-year.
For the first ten months of 2018, the average price of a gaming notebook rose four per cent to $1,100, while a desktop cost $1,200 on average.
However, gaming-capable desktops - including self-builds - rose from $680 in 2018 to $750 due to price fluctuations. This is likely driven primarily by the cryptocurrency market, which saw a huge increase in the cost of GPUs. That market has now dipped.
GfK also looked at the accessory ecosystem that exists in the PC space. Monitor revenue rose 44 per cent year-on-year, while displays with a refresh rate of 100Hz or more almost doubled in value with a 92 per cent increase. Sales of mice rose 13 per cent in 2018, while keyboards increased eight per cent. Headphones - both for PC and console - rose 50 per cent.
"Gaming is not only limited to PCs, since consumers choose between different devices and are often active on several platforms (PC & console or cell phone & console)," Lazarov wrote, speaking about the PC games sector's future.
"Thanks to the multi-platform availability of games, consumers have more flexibility regarding when, where and on which device they would like to play. This means that PCs are increasingly competing with cell phones and consoles for the attention of players, which is often use-case driven. Simultaneously, there is increasing talk about cloud gaming, which leaves the performance of the PC in the background. It remains to be seen to what extent this kind of gaming will establish itself, though one thing is certain: consumers will continue to demand fascinating and spectacular visual (gaming) experiences."
