League of Legends, World of Tanks help PC spending surpass console gaming worldwide, proclaims analyst

League of Legends made a couple hundred million dollars last year. That is just one of a number of games that one analyst claims are leading the resurgence of the PC as the dominant gaming platform in terms of spending.

The growth of free-to-play games on PC as well as the continued success of digital platforms like Steam have pushed PC spending beyond consoles worldwide, according to industry analyst David Cole of DFC Intelligence. In an interview with PCR, Cole explained that while premium-priced triple-A games continue to make quite a bit of money on PC, free-to-play releases like World of Tanks, League of Legends, and Dota 2 are still growing to new heights. In 2013, 10 online PC games made more than $100 million in microtransaction sales. One of those was World of Warcraft, which made that money on top of the millions it generates from subscriptions. Those kinds of PC games are especially lucrative in Asia. The Chinese PC gaming market generated $8.7 billion on its own.