Are PCs dying out?

[Kotti]

Reading some mobile-centric tech journals I frequently come across predictions of doom for the PC market, mostly saying stuff like "People will abandon PCs for smartphones" or that in the future all work is done on servers and all that is needed are thin clients whose only capabilities is accessing the internet and displaying content.
So I'm wondering, what are people thinking about this who are still actively using PCs. While I can witness that many less tech-savvy people indeed switch to mobile internet access, this isn't true at all for those who actually use their PCs for anything else but mere content consumption. So what's the opinion here among gamers about such stuff?

[Tapwave]

Abandoning PCs for smartphones? Smartphones have nowhere near the processing power of the PC, nor its ergonomics. There is a reason consoles have not supplanted PC and PC has not destroyed consoles even though PC hardware can be clearly superior. It's an issue of price, aesthetics, and handling preferences. There is no reason for PC to vanish in favor of a much weaker, smaller, peripheral-less platform that is bound by battery life and is rather fragile.

[Graf Zahl]

Yawn.

I had my share of discussions with these people in the past. They are just seeing a few numbers like:

1. "PC sales are shrinking"
2. "Smartphone installed base is increasing"
3. "Internet speed and capabilities are increasing"
4. "Mobile share of internet usage is increasing"

and then just cluelessly extrapolate a doomsday scenario from that.

Let's debunk that fallacies quickly:

Yes, the PC market is in decline. But digging deeper you'll also find numbers that suggest that this decline is solely driven by low end consumers who used to buy the cheapest devices available and only used them to run a web browser.
Yes, smartphone installed base are increasing. But what gets overlooked here that only part of that is replacing PCs. Most are customers who never owned a computer, others are by people who use both.
Yes, internet capabilities are increasing and an increasing number of tasks can be done in a web browser. However... in the whole process they forget one important thing: As long as a user needs to do ONE SINGLE task a web browser can't do they will continue to use a PC - even if that task is something as mundane as organizing a huge photo collection.
Yes, mobile share of internet use is increasing. That's because there's people out there who never owned a PC and now use a smartphone to access the internet. That's also because many users now divide their internet activities between smartphones and their PC.

[Trance]

Someone else brought this up a few years ago and the article they were reading was getting its data on PC sales from prebuilt retailers. Those are most certainly in decline, but the lifeblood of the PC market is parts. The "gaming rigs built from parts" market is stronger than ever, and shows no signs of stopping. There are even people you wouldn't call "enthusiasts" who are getting into building their own PCs out of parts.

[_mental_]

Game publishers won't abandon PC market for sure. Despite only ~10% revenue comes from it, profitability is about 30% and even more.
Console exclusive titles will appear regularly thanks to platform holders "sponsorship" (read lobbying) but majority of games will be released for PS4, XB1 and PC.
Quality of some PC ports is another topic although consoles are not free from buggy and below 30 FPS games.

[Nevander]

No. In fact, for me personally consoles are dying out as well as modern gaming. I'm done with that stuff. For good.

[Rachael]

No. In fact, for me personally consoles are dying out as well as modern gaming. I'm done with that stuff. For good.

I really wish others shared that sentiment.

My ex tried to get me hooked on her XBox 360. I was not even remotely interested. Interesting games? Sure. But they all had PC ports, and I'd really rather play those, no matter what extra content the XBox version may have.

[wildweasel]

No. In fact, for me personally consoles are dying out as well as modern gaming. I'm done with that stuff. For good.

I really wish others shared that sentiment.

My ex tried to get me hooked on her XBox 360. I was not even remotely interested. Interesting games? Sure. But they all had PC ports, and I'd really rather play those, no matter what extra content the XBox version may have.

Meanwhile, I'll always be a multi platform gamer as long as the games I want to play remain exclusive in some fashion to non PC platforms.

[Rachael]

I can't stand consoles for the same reason I can't stand mobile phone/tablets - there's always an element of vendor lock-in and the vendors of all such devices try to keep an extremely tight grip on what their devices run - which not only stifles innovation and creativity, but also makes the devices much more expensive (because money is the primary reason for clamping down with such control), and they encourage software authors to do the same thing. It makes using such devices extremely unpleasant to use knowing you are pretty much stuck with what they give you and you aren't "allowed" to hack it without some sort of time-consuming and complicated work-around that in the end really ends up being not worth the effort anyway.

I think in the end that's why the starting prices for computers and computer software tends to be a bit more on the uptake, but in the long run you really do save a lot of money.

[wildweasel]

I'm pretty much doing it out of desire to have the best experience with a given game. And for some games, the only experience. At least until we start getting PC versions of Fire Emblem and Yakuza.

[isaacpop23]

The number one reason that I will only stop using my desktop, is that I abhor all the other proposed control setups. For consoles it's not too bad, but still unpleasant, while touch-screens are the prime example of how to not do things. There are very few (<10) games that I have found to work better on all those setups combined. I will always love having a physical keyboard to type on, with my strange mouse sitting next to it, nothing any one else does will get me to give it up.

PC versions of Fire Emblem.

When (probably never) this happens my only real big push to buy a console will be gone. While there are plenty of other games out there for the consoles that seem all well and good, some of which I'll get and play around with for a while, Fire Emblem is the only one I really go back to consistently.

[Graf Zahl]

Someone else brought this up a few years ago and the article they were reading was getting its data on PC sales from prebuilt retailers. Those are most certainly in decline, but the lifeblood of the PC market is parts. The "gaming rigs built from parts" market is stronger than ever, and shows no signs of stopping. There are even people you wouldn't call "enthusiasts" who are getting into building their own PCs out of parts.

I said the same thing when seeing such discussions, nobody wanted to believe it.
And there's another thing here: Yes, sales of prebuilt systems are on decline but due to the longevity of PCs there's a high chance some parts will have to be replaced over its lifetime. I already replaced my HD with SSDs, next up is a new graphics card and sooner or later more RAM. There's no need to replace the rest of it, especially the CPU. There's just not enough speed gain in more modern ones.

[DoomRater]

LEt's see- I own four computers if we count my tablet and Pi 3, three of those devices have Windows on them, and there's at least two more computers in the house (one for each of the other people living here). All of us also have smartphones, with my fiance's dad being the last member to finally acquire one.

Smartphones make sales by making it hard to replace or repair individual components. PCs can't corner that market and were never designed for that purpose. A more honest question would be if Mac systems are in decline, since they have much of the same issues as smartphones.

Edit: My eye remains on pressure sensitive multitouch devices. You could overlay such a surface and it would give the tactile feedback buttons excel at... by literally putting buttons on the surface. Master this technology and it will compliment capacitive touch in an incredible fashion.

[Graf Zahl]

A more honest question would be if Mac systems are in decline, since they have much of the same issues as smartphones.

According to my former boss who is a die hard Apple fan, this has actually gotten a lot worse in recent product generations with increasingly more parts being soldered in and using more tightly integrated parts to make smaller devices.

BTW, many laptops also suffer from this to some degree.

[jpalomo]

BTW, many laptops also suffer from this to some degree.

The mid range laptop has mostly dissappeared from the market as far as i can tell. These days, you only see the super cheap notebooks that college students use, and the high end gaming laptops (which usually suffer from overheating).

As long as jobs require a dedicated desktop setup, I don't think PCs are going anywhere. Good luck trying to do CAD work solely on a smart phone