A three-year growth streak for gaming PCs and gaming monitors came to an end in 2022 as worldwide gaming PC shipments declined 6.4% while gaming monitors declined 7.1% compared to 2021, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Gaming Tracker. A total of 44.9 million gaming PCs and 17.3 million gaming monitors were shipped during the year, which was well above pre-pandemic levels in 2019. Looking ahead, IDC expects 2024 to be a year of recovery as 2023 will be marred with macroeconomic challenges, inventory issues, and lack of meaningful upgrades.

"Excess inventory carried over from 2022 is leading to discounting of older generation systems while also hampering re-orders of the latest generation of gaming PCs," said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC's Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers. "The vast supply of add-in boards in the secondary GPU market further compounds the issue as it helps prolong the life of existing gaming desktops and surpresses demand for new systems." "The excessive power requirements of the latest GPUs is hampering growth of both new gaming desktops and notebooks as it tips the scales of performance per dollar in favour of last year's models while the rise of mobile/handheld gaming is also affecting gamers' share of wallet," continued Ubrani.