PC gamer has revival after high prices and shortages in the pandemic

“In the middle of the pandemic, it was impossible to get a PC gamer”, says Samuel Lima, 21. Until recently, it was common to hear the same complaint made by the business student from others interested in games. In recent months, however, the scenario has changed.

Lima says that, during the pandemic, he would need to spend around R$ 8,000 to have a gamer setup. In early December, he got the same configuration for R$3,900.

During the health crisis, the sector faced a combination of high demand and low supply. The result was an explosion in prices, also driven by cryptocurrency mining – turbocharged equipment is also used for this task.

After the peak of the crisis, parts that were previously found for R$ 12,000 now cost a third of that, R$ 4,000.

While consolidating remote work and encouraging the purchase of PCs, the crisis has restricted the production of semiconductor chips in East Asia.

After the supply bottlenecks, comments on Facebook groups, specialized channels on YouTube and influencers show that enthusiasts are either buying a gaming PC for the first time or have already returned to updating their components.

“Due to the pandemic, many people were forced to enter this market, which raised prices. But, those who were already gamers before the crisis, waited for this boom to pass”, says Luiz Carlos Junior, director of content at Pichau, a of the main stores of the branch in the country.

Brazilian e-commerces are seeing a revival of PCs after the stabilization of component prices. Terabyte, for example, saw the number of sales on Black Friday this year almost double compared to that of 2020.

In the same period, Asian marketplaces like Shopee and AliExpress also gained traction among more experienced gamers. That’s because they offer lower prices despite longer delivery times and less customer support.

A gaming PC consists of a motherboard, processor, video card, RAM, storage, cooler, case and power supply. To play, you still need a mouse, keyboard, monitor and headphones.

The price depends on the type of needs of each user. Entry computers, which have performance equivalent to the PS4, Xbox One and Xbox Series S consoles, cost between R$ 2,000 to R$ 4,000.

On more powerful machines, these values ​​correspond to only one of the components. A top-of-the-line gamer PC, which surpasses the main devices of the current generation of video games, PS5 and Xbox Series X, can reach R$ 10,000, and there is always room for more modifications.

And that’s because prices have dropped. According to Pichau, during the pandemic, an entry-level video card (GPU), such as the NVidia GeForce GTX 1650, cost R$2,500. Now, it costs around R$1,200.

One of the best GPUs available on the Brazilian market, the RTX 3070, cost between R$12,000 and R$15,000. Today, it is sold for around R$ 4,000. And the reduction also occurred with processors and RAM memories.

According to the consultancy Newzoo, the games market should fall 4.3% in 2022 – the first time it expects a contraction in the sector since it began to monitor it annually. This is due to a self-correction after two years of Covid-led growth.

In the division by sectors, however, the PC games market is the only one that should grow this year. The estimate is for a growth of 0.5%, moving US$ 40.5 billion (R$ 211 billion).

What should drive the sector’s growth is the growth of 1.8% in the PC game download market, which represents US$ 38.2 billion (R$ 200 billion) of this US$ 40.5 billion. The market for consoles and mobile games (for mobile phones), on the other hand, should contract 4.2% and 6.4%, respectively.

This is because the segment’s revenues are not linked to major launches, as in the case of consoles, according to Tom Wijman, an analyst at Newzoo. For example, while the PS5 attracts players with infrequent exclusive titles such as “God of War: Ragnarok”, the PC is more used for games released a few years ago, such as “GTA V”, “Minecraft” and “Fortnite”.

In addition to games, the decision to buy a PC or a console, which in some cases have equivalent prices, is resolved based on the needs of each user.

“The ideal for the consumer is to see what will suit him. If he uses a PC just to play and does not have much purchasing power, the ideal would be for him to acquire a console. But, if he is going to use it to work, to edit, to streams, the PC gamer makes more sense, even if it loses a bit of image quality. But that depends from audience to audience”, explains Ivan Rapanos, marketing analyst at Terabyte.