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PC gaming hardware is now worth over $21.5 billion (12.6bn) globally – over double the value of the console gaming market.

Analyst Jon Peddie Research (JPR) said in its PC Gaming Hardware Market report that personal computers, upgrades, and peripherals used for gaming were continuing to remain strong and healthy, despite an overall decline in the PC market.

Ted Pollak, senior gaming analyst at JPR, commented that while casual users were moving across to mobile devices, PC gamers were actually investing more in high-end machines.

We continue to see a shift in casual console customers moving to mobile,” said Pollak. While this is also occurring in the lower-end PC gaming world, more money is being directed to mid- and high-range builds and upgrades by gamers.

Committed PC gamers are generally not interested in pure content consumption platforms. They are power users and pay thousands for the ability to play games at very high settings and then do business, video/photo editing, content creation and other tasks with maximum horsepower at their disposal in a desktop ergonomic environment.”

According to JPR, the current $21.5 billion PC gaming hardware market is set to reach a total value of $23.2 billion (13.6bn) by 2017.

Jon Peddie, president of JPR, added that the continual increase in performance of gaming PC systems would keep the market alive, as consoles struggle to keep up.

Nvidia, Intel and AMD have enthusiast CPU and GPUs that are so powerful that, when combined with SSDs and fast memory, they absolutely trounce the computing power and gaming capabilities of the newest console generation,” he explained.

Being able to drive 38402160 (4K) is already a reality for the highest end configurations and the mass market is now able to push 25601440. PC gamers with good displays are able to enjoy millions and millions of pixels more than console gamers get on HDTVs. This translates into being able to see more and an overall better gaming experience.”