Why the Future Looks Bright For PC Gaming

The guys over at TechRadar have kicked up a two-page article that offers an enthusiastic analysis of the current state of PC gaming.

It’s painfully easy to draw the worst conclusions from this: the PC is the Latin of the gaming world. The immediate response to such doomsaying is that, while NPD have been the go-to guys for game sales figures for years now, their numbers don’t include digital distribution. So, no Steam, no Gametap, no Metaboli, no Gamersgate, no Impulse, no EA Store, and no ongoing MMO subscriptions either, for that matter.

Any document of the state of PC gaming that doesn’t reference the crazy moneypot that is World of Warcraft’s 11 million-plus monthly global subscribers is hardly telling the real truth about the ol’ IBM Compatible’s health.

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Stardock’s Brad Wardell has a slightly different take. “We experienced a temporary change from the trend that had existed for many years prior. In the 1980s, consoles dominated and PCs were the exception. But then there was a meltdown in the console market that allowed PC games to dominate. What we’ve been seeing since has been the gradual reassertion of consoles and the PC gradually returning to its core strengths. Action games, sports games and other console-centric games were never the types of games that were the PC’s to lose.”

Stardock makes what you could call traditional PC games high-strategy, roleplaying, 4x to a casual observer, space RTS Sins of A Solar Empire might be living up to every stereotype of PC gaming, but it’s paying off it was the number one PC game at US retail earlier last year. And that’s despite a good chance that you’ve never heard of it.