Gaming is the most popular modern entertainment type, beating movies and music combined in revenue – in 2021 alone, gaming generated $180B, about five times more than the latter two. Out of the entire group of gamers, the ones considering themselves hardcore or actual gamers are usually focused on either PC or consoles gaming. How many of them are PC purists or console devotees, and which console dominates among them? Is there a thing like a “console zealot”? How many gamers are choosing the console not because of the device, but rather their attachment to the brand? The specialists at G2A.COM decided to ask their users and find out.
The first question they asked their customers is the most relevant one here – whether they are PC or console players. The majority of the respondents (nearly 64%) referred to themselves as PC gamers, and the remaining nearly 36% focused on consoles. The fact that over a third of people using the G2A.COM marketplace are console users is pretty enlightening – video games on consoles can usually be purchased either directly on a console via the in-built store, or boxed in a store. Purchasing a console title via an activation code is quite a novel form, and seeing that over 33% users make use of this form shows that consoles can actually be open for digital commerce.
The second question, naturally resulting from the previous one considering the topic of the survey, considered the console the respondents own. The most popular device among console gamers is PlayStation with over 60% of people pointing it as their console of choice, which considering the fact that the biggest part of the respondents was from the USA, seems to show that Microsoft’s console continues to lose in popularity with their biggest opponent. After it there is Xbox with nearly 50% of respondents owning it, and the third one is the newest Nintendo console, Switch, with 35.9% respondents owning it. It’s worth to point out that this question was a multiple choice one, in which the users could select more than one position. Many people can own more than one console, after all. What’s interesting, there was also the “Other” category, in which people mostly put in other, older consoles from Nintendo, like Gameboys, DS and 3DS, and Wii U, with only a handful of people pointing towards the newest solutions, which can be considered consoles by definition, like VR headsets and the Steam Deck. This question was complemented by another one, which tried to pinpoint specifically which console is the people’s favorite, in order to get gamers’ preferences. This question showed pretty much the same trends, with PlayStation being the most popular one (49.5%), followed by Xbox (33.3%) and Switch (12.2%).
Probably the most interesting questions were left at the end, where G2A.COM experts asked their respondents first what makes them favor the console they specified most, and later on what would make them change their mind and choose a different device. The most common reason in the first question given by the respondents was console exclusives (all according to the console producers’ plan), with over 47% people selecting it. Other options were – in order – being attached to the company behind the console (42.1%), friends and/or family also using this specific console (36.8%), good online gaming solutions (31.3%), portability (14.8%), and console exclusivity in their specific country (8.9%), meaning that this specific console dominates in their country of residence and it’s difficult to find games and/or players on different consoles.
The last question was about the possibility to change their favorite device. The answers here pretty much mirrored the ones from the previous one, with a very good exclusive being the most popular (33.2%). What’s really interesting could be found in the “Other” category, where the biggest group of repeating answers was “nothing” – meaning that nearly 2% of console fans technically fit in the definition of a zealot, which is interesting to think about in terms of gaming console wars.
You can of course find the visualization of all of the above and more on the infographics below.
