Gaming PCs the 'last bastions' of profit

High-end gaming PCs are profitable and popular, in marked contrast to the rest of the PC industry, according to nVidia.

Delegates at the System Builder Summit in Monaco were told that, while margins may be shrinking in the mainstream PC business, there are still profitable areas such as the gaming market, the size of which has been seriously underestimated, according to the company.

"The market for gaming PCs is much larger than we all think," said Bernhard Gleisser, director of business sales for nVidia in Europe.

"We had anticipated selling about 100,000 high-end graphics systems to gamers, but instead have sold 600,000. That number of enthusiasts is growing day by day."

Gleisser pointed out that gamers are one of the few sets of computer users who will pay more than €3,000 for a PC. High specification hardware gives a small but recognisable advantage in many games, and hardcore players are willing to pay more for high-performance PCs.

But analysts disagree, suggesting that the market is too small to generate enough sales to make it anything other than an adjunct to the corporate PC market.

"At the end of the day it's a niche," said Ranjit Atwal, senior analyst at Gartner.

"Compared to 70 or 80 million PCs sold around the world, the gaming market is tiny. Each vendor cannot invest everything in trying to get that part of the market."

Atwal added that, while gamers are willing to spend for the fastest hardware, the number of people willing to buy such systems is very limited.