Despite flagging sales and rampant piracy, PC game companies say the platform is thriving, much like consoles, given the success of several MMO games.
"PC gaming is not only not in decline, it's alive and well and growing," said Roy Taylor, CTO of the PC Gaming Alliance, which was ironically formed to help boost PC game sales.
Along with Microsoft and Dell, Taylor points to the recent success of Age of Conan and the crack-like loyalty of World of Warcraft players as confirmation. Indeed, both games, which are MMORPGs, and other online flash game portals have done very well.
The same cannot be said of retail, however, and popular console genres like shooters, sports games, and adventure titles.
"I wouldn't be surprised to see [PC gaming] retail continue to decline over time... But that should be more than offset by new revenue from online fantasy buffs and networked Scrabble addicts," says Kevin Unangst, director of Windows gaming at Microsoft. "When you take those in aggregate, we see nothing but growth."
Information from The Boston Globe was used in this report.
