Nvidia's Q1 Gaming revenue up 25 per cent
CEO looks to virtual reality as a platform for growth - "VR is going to be the future of gaming"
Nvidia's Gaming revenue increased by 25 per cent in the first quarter, and the GPU giant believes that the emergence of 4K and VR displays indicates even more growth to come.
The company's Q1 Gaming was $587 million, around half of the $1.15 billion it earned overall. And the 25 per cent growth in Gaming far outstripped the company's revenue growth as a whole, which rose by just 4 per cent.
Across the entire company, Nvidia made $134 million GAAP profit and $187 million non-GAAP profit, down 2 per cent and up 13 per cent respectively.
"Unless you have something along the lines of a GTX 980 or a TITAN at the moment, it's hard to enjoy great VR"
Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO
Nvidia made confident strides to build on that strength in gaming in Q1, using GDC as a platform to launch the GEForce GTX Titan X, which it claims is the world's fastest GPU, and Nvidia Shield, the company's first living-room entertainment device. These products, one for bleeding-edge PC graphics and the other for seamless, accessible cloud-streamed gaming, illustrate the breadth of Nvidia's ambitions.
In a call with investors following the publication of the company's results, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang put the size of the market for a device like the Shield console - that is, those who haven't had access to AAA console games - at 1 billion people.
"We believe that, long term, video games, like video, like movies, will become democratised," he said. "And it will be virtualised and put into the cloud like Netflix and for us to be able to enjoy it all over the world... We've got to go lay the foundation necessary to go bring that to the world."
One investor, however, questioned the long-term growth of PC gaming, suggesting that Nvidia's financial gains are more indicative of it winning market share from its rivals. As one might expect, Nvidia's CEO doesn't see it that way, and the emergence of VR is one of the principal reasons why.
"In order to enjoy great VR, you need 90 frames per second in stereo and two eyes," he said. "And so unless you have something along the lines of a GTX 980 or a TITAN at the moment, it's hard to enjoy great VR.
"You know how excited everybody is about VR. There's good reason for that. From John Carmack and Tim Sweeney and the leaders of the gaming industry, we all now recognize that VR is going to be the future of gaming."