Gamers Are Saving The PC Business

Now's a great time to be in the PC business—if you cater to hardcore gamers, that is.

Nvidia smashed Wall Street's expectations yesterday when it posted 51 percent revenue growth in the section of its business that develops graphics cards for PC gamers. (Nvidia also develops similar technology for academia and businesses.) Overall, the company saw 5 percent revenue growth in the three months ended July 26.

Wall Street, meanwhile, was expecting a decline of 8 percent. Not a bad way to end the quarter!

Despite the general malaise being experienced by the wider PC industry—overall sales have declined by nearly 12 percent in the past year, according to the latest estimates—analysts and the companies they cover are now catching on to the fact the PC gamers have money and are prepared to spend it.

"The near term story continues to be PC gaming," one analyst at Wedbush Securities, Betsy Van Hees, told Reuters. "That is the key driver for them and they continue to dominate in that area."

Nvidia's high-end graphics cards do not come cheap, with its latest card aimed at enthusiasts, the Geforce GTX 980 Ti (say that three times fast), launching a few weeks ago at $649. More expensive models are also available, to say nothing of the people who buy multiple cards to run their games at 4K or higher.

Even Intel is getting into the act of explicitly targeting hardcore PC gamers after years of focusing on goals like lowering power consumption and increasing battery life. The company's latest CPUs, known as Skylake, are designed with overclocking in mind, meaning that PC gamers can squeeze even more performance out them by making a few under-the-hood software tweaks. (Intel's broader struggle to keep pumping out faster and faster chips in a separate matter.)

Mobile may be eating the world, but hardcore gamers may prop up the PC business for a little while longer yet.