Nvidia has just announced its Q3 financial results and in its earnings call, as expected, there was scant talk of gaming but a whole heap of AI talk. In fact, Jen-Hsun explicitly says, “We are a data center-scale AI infrastructure company”. Still, scant talk isn’t no talk, and the little we did gleam about the gaming side of Nvidia’s business is promising.
First and foremost, as the company’s earnings report points out, revenue is up, big time: “Third-quarter Gaming revenue was $3.3 billion, up 14% from the previous quarter and up 15% from a year ago”. That’s certainly a good number given we’re nearing the end of a GPU generation.
On the other hand, in the earnings call (transcript), Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress says that “although sell-through was strong in Q3, we expect fourth-quarter revenue to decline sequentially due to supply constraints”.
But, when asked about this, she clarifies: “Not to worry, I think we’ll be back on track with more supply as we turn the corner into the new calendar year. We’re just going to be tight for this quarter.”
So, great quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year gaming revenue, anticipated declining revenue over Q4, but not to worry because 2025 should be fine.
I think we all know what “more supply” in the new calendar year might mean: lovely, shiny, powerful new Nvidia 50-series graphics cards, possibly announced during Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang’s keynote at CES in January.
This new generation of what will likely constitute the best graphics cards on the market also explains why Nvidia’s expecting lower Q4 revenue: because 40-series stock’s drying up in preparation for its replacement stock. We knew this already, though, as a couple of weeks ago we heard that Nvidia killed production of most RTX 40-series GPUs—although the latest rumours are that one 40-series GPU, the RTX 4050 mobile, will remain in supply even after its replacement launches.
The only remaining question, then, is why gaming revenue is so high compared to last quarter and last year. Admittedly we’ve known for at least a couple of months that the GPU market is doing well, but 15% year-on-year gaming revenue is stellar.
Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD.
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest.
There are a couple of reasons for this that I can think of. The first is—duh—GPUs being used for AI. But as this is gaming revenue and there are plenty of non-gaming AI-centric machines and GPUs out there, I figure this can’t account for all of the increase.
Instead, what seems more likely to me is that a lot of people have been buying RTX 40-series laptops and gaming PCs as prices have dropped. While discrete graphics card prices haven’t dropped much, we’ve seen some great gaming PC deals over the past few months.
As Nvidia’s been killing off RTX 40-series stock and as companies have been preparing for 50-series systems, prices have dropped and many gamers have likely pounced on the opportunity to get the goings while the goings are good, knowing that the next generation of systems will likely be expensive to begin with, especially as Nvidia pretty much always launches the high-end cards first.
Whatever the reasons, Nvidia’s increased revenue and the happily looming spectre of RTX 50-series graphics cards is great news for us, even if it does only seem to be a small thing for Nvidia given its even bigger AI profits.
