Friday, February 24th 2017
NVIDIA Stock Tumbles Amidst Analyst Talk of Gaming's Decline
NVIDIA Corp. stock fell a record 10% in one day amidst a move to bearish ratings by two prominent Wall Street stock analysts.
Analysts Romit Shah and Ambrish Srivastava both downgraded NVIDIA's stock rating (from "buy" to "reduce" and "perform" to "underperform" respectively) citing concerns over "valuation and a tempered outlook for gaming."
It is worth noting that NVIDIA stock has tripled in value over the last year, so this may represent a return to reality more than a harbinger of doom for the company's outlook. Regardless, it is the biggest drop in NVIDIA's daily stock price since it went public in 1999, and to see its status downgraded due to "a tempered outlook for gaming" is not the kind of reason gaming enthusiasts like to hear.
Source:
Marketwatch
Analysts Romit Shah and Ambrish Srivastava both downgraded NVIDIA's stock rating (from "buy" to "reduce" and "perform" to "underperform" respectively) citing concerns over "valuation and a tempered outlook for gaming."
97 Comments on NVIDIA Stock Tumbles Amidst Analyst Talk of Gaming's Decline
You'll only see huge numbers of PC gamers playing most games soon after release (e.g. Skyrim) or after a major update (e.g. Skyrim Special Edition). Then it tapers off as people play something else in their library.
steamcharts.com/app/393100
All time peak on CoD MWR -> 6000 players. This was the peak. So your logic is wrong. For your logic to be right it should have a lot more peak players. 6000 compared to console numbers are a joke
You guys can write all kind of excuses you want. Stats say AAA gaming on PC is weaker than consoles, period.
There's nothing wrong with gaming on 1366x768. My newphew does that on an HD 5870. It's more than powerful enough to meet his needs (Euro Truck Simulator 2, American Truck Simulator, and Farming Simulator 15). Most casual gamers, like him, don't notice or even care about resolution which translates to low end GPUs being able to get acceptable framerates.
If on the next USA president elections, the first stats say that after 1 million inquiries, Trump leads by 2%, you can expect some margin error sure, when you count with 20 million. But don´t expect anything more than 5% to 7%, max.
So no one can assure you that if every one completed steam survey that high-end hardware would have more %. Why is that? lol makes no sense. Is a statistic, sure may not be 100% correct, but it isn´t also 50% incorrect. Simple Maths.
And a HD5870 is not on "high-end" GPU zone anymore.
You're also missing the point that most people, like my nephew, don't want nor demand the latest and greatest hardware. They're happy as long as it works.
84% of gamers aren't playing the competitive multiplayer games. On Steam, maybe, but hell, look at Witcher 3 where only like 17% of PC sales were the Steam version. Most were retail -> GOG. Everyone playing anything from GOG, uPlay, and Origin are completely excluded from Steam's numbers.
So you´re basically telling me that no one cares about cod, doom or titanfall 2 because they have more 2000 games to play, but 84% care about Dota 2, LoL and CS:GO even having other 2000 games to play.
Nice logic... but I will tell you what really happens. Dota2, LoL and CS GO doesn´t requite good hardware and are the best games for low spec machines, while most people play AAA more demadning titles on consoles, because most of the people DO NOT OWN good enough machine to play them on PC. You can go around the way you want, this is what really happens
Also you are talking like consoles have a tiny library of games. I reccomend you to visist PSN store on your web browser, you might get surprised. Sure isn´t nowehere big as pc library, but isn´t small enough to justify what you´re saying. Like everyone´s option on consoles is only playing 2 or 3 aaa games lol
PS4 has 1124 games and 61 million units sold in 3 years: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_4_games this is not counting with PS1, PS2 and Indie games.
But you say "console gamers have access to 10-15 games". Reasonable enough... ;)
Unlike console games, PC games have settings sliders so even the most demanding games can run on low end hardware. About the only thing that will prohibit a game from running is the graphics card/operating system not supporting a hardware feature level that the game requires (e.g. DX10 games won't run on DX9 cards). Those kinds of big shifts are what force upgrades.
I was talking about how many games a typical PC gamer has compared to a typical console gamer. It wasn't long ago that I played the original Thief and Thief 2 on my PC. That's two decades worth of playable games on one platform.
You are contradicting your self. If most of the PC gamers use low end machines and they can run those AAA titles anyway by "adjusting sliders" like you said, so why aren´t those games populated?
I don´t care how much games PC library has, that has nothing to do with the fact AAA gaming is weaker. If the community was well divided across all games I could agree with you, but is not the case. The community is clearly more on the low demanding games, is a massive difference. And by watching steamstats hardware surveys you can clearly see what´s happening.
Most players: low demanding hits like Dota 2, CS GO and LoL.
Most machines: low spec
Battlefield 1: forums.battlefield.com/en-us/discussion/19282/battlefield-1-minimum-pc-requirementsetc.
GTX 660, rings a bell don't it? Developers are targeting popular hardware as their minimum.
Simple fact they are comparing a FX6350 with a 6600k says enough about minimum requirements. For running Watch Dogs 2 with a gtx660 and a dual core you would be getting 30fps at 720p low details, that´s why this happens: steamcharts.com/app/447040
peak, 1000 players lol..... because most gamers don´t have hardware good enough... as I said :)
I think I can find 1000 console watch dogs 2 players in just my small city where I live. lol
I don't have Mafia 3 yet (because I bargain shop, backlog too long to pay full release price), I'll never buy Battlefield 1 because it doesn't interest me, and Watch_Dogs 2 is free to play which I haven't touched because those words scare me.
Watch_Dogs 2 is a uPlay title as far as I know. These are likely people that opt'd to play the game through Steam instead of uPlay.
"Once again, free-to-play leads the way." and "while the free-to-play and esports markets are expected to see continued healthy growth over the next three years, the "premium" PC games market is predicted to decline", where the facebook and f2p games lead the revenue numbers, AAA games decline.
You would burn down in your house in the middle of a firestorm while swearing the owner's manual that said your house was fireproof was correct.
"Premium game revenues on the PC hit $5.4 billion for the year, not too far off of the $6.6 billion earned across consoles. Overwatch led the way, earning $586 million, followed by CS:GO, Guild Wars 2, Minecraft, and Fallout 4. But the real money remains with free-to-play games: League of Legends once again tops that chart at $1.7 billion, followed by Dungeon Fighter Challenge, Crossfire, World of Tanks, and Dota 2, which brought in a relatively paltry $260 million. "
Two consoles (X1 + PS4) are required to top the sales revenue on PREMIUM games of the PC alone. How does that correlate with your Steam Survey now?
Could it be possible that the Steam Survey is really not worth anything when drawing conclusions on PC gaming? Could it??? Is it possible that the majority of ESPECIALLY triple A games are actually played outside of Steam, because people don't fancy stacking up two layers of DRM like Uplay / Origin + Steam? Boy... I don't know.
You really gotta let go of the tunnel vision buddy.
There is more though. The article also shines light on the relation between sales revenue and *actually played games*. Check this out:
"League of Legends once again tops that chart at $1.7 billion, followed by Dungeon Fighter Challenge, Crossfire, World of Tanks, and Dota 2, which brought in a relatively paltry $260 million. "
The top title of Steam Survey charts is only a sliver of the total revenue of F2P. Conclusion: there is no correlation between revenue and playtime.
Now for another source, to completely throw you off guard.
jonpeddie.com/publications/pc_gaming_hardware_market_report
Check that pie.
I'll leave you with one final thing to consider:
- the profit margin on PC gaming is lower than it is for the same game on a console
- consoles are a closely guarded ecosystem where ONE company has a 100% stake in its success, while every console game publisher is effectively also a stakeholder.
The reality is that good press on the success of consoles and the decline of PC gaming, is beneficial to the console ecosystems, while there is no single company behind PC gaming 'wagging the dog' in the media. This matters, as we've seen countless times in the past that news and media are far from neutral. Even game publishers would prefer you play their crappy triple A junk on a crappy console rather than they would have you play it on PC. It helps their profit margin and they won't have to worry as much about keysellers or piracy. Hell, they don't even have to consider DRM because Sony or MS builds the firmware.
On top of that, optimization for PC costs money too, but it simply still is a target audience they CANNOT ignore. Economy forces them to keep porting to PC, and they will only do this because the PC revenue is too important to lose. Based on last year, it represents more than 40% of the total revenue made on ANY multiplatform game. Another important question: why do you think the absolute AND relative number of console exclusives is so low compared to previous console generations? Yeah. That's right :)
Typical !