PC games revenue has now “surpassed” that of console games. MOBAs were involved

League of Legends dwarfs all other contenders for PC-gaming-by-usage, surprise surprise.

The PC games market is very big and complicated. There are lots of numbers to add up – and publishers won’t tell us what all of them are. But the analysts at DFC Intelligence reckon that PC games have now overtaken their console equivalents in terms of revenue.

“Among core gamers there is a heavy overlap with most console gamers also playing on a PC,” said DFC owner David Cole. “The big difference is that consoles are now the luxury item and PCs are the necessity.”

PCs have a “broader audience” than consoles where the reverse was true a few years ago, said Cole. DFC have just published their quarterly report on PC gaming revenues and usage.

The analysts predict that the PC gaming market will exceed $25 billion this year – and say that the growing popularity of MOBAs is helping.

“The MOBA games League of Legends and Dota 2 dominate everything else by an order of magnitude in terms of more usage than other products,” Cole told PCR Online. “In the first part of 2014 we saw some signs that may change with the introduction of new titles and some increased play of games outside the MOBA category.

“But MOBA is dominant. Beyond that it is a nice mix of MMO, strategy and first person shooter.”

Only three new games have cracked DFC’s top 20 list of PC games by usage this year – DayZ, Rust and Hearthstone.

“PC player hours have also been remarkably consistent,” Cole added. “We had expected hours to fall in 2013 because there were not any major new releases. However, hours were actually flat with 2012 which bodes very well for the market going forward as more triple-A titles are released.”

Free-to-play games in Europe particularly have also pushed PC games revenue ever higher. Remember: World of Tanks now has a whopping 80 million accounts. Is one of them yours?

Cheers, MCV.