Not really, If WoW is considered a HUGE success on the PC with somewhere around 11 million sales, and yet there are plenty of console games that sell at least 10 million.

If you really wanted to go against my point, you'd talk about the subscription thing, but those are even harder to track. Who knows how many of that 11 million just played for 1 month, or 1 year. So in truth, that 11 million could equal something like 15, or 20, or 30 million in "sales".

I was really comparing to just WoW, which I keep hearing is the most successful game on the PC ever. It's not only because of the subscriptions (though that helps immensly), it's the extreme popularity for a game with a subscription.

What we do know is that Consoles gaming usually grows the most in the beginning of every generation. Starting 2009 the console industry will barely grow, if at all. It already declined in 2009, and it could decline again in 2010.

As for PC, it has always grown every year. It grew 18% in 2008, and it maybe it grew even more in 2009.

While consoles will struggle to grow from now on, PC will keep growing and growing at a healthy and steady pace.

I was going to raise this point but you seemed to be talking solely sales so I didn't want to skew the discussion by talking about the subscription. But as you have raised it, 11 million accounts and growing, not to mention the sales of expansion packs.

And as you've already mentioned, all those people are also willing to pay for about 1-1.5 game's worth of cash every year in subscription, so revenue-wise it's a pretty decent earner and probably much more profitable than even the most popular console games.

Nope.

Got rid of some clutter above.

I don't know, I see WoW as more of an outlier anyways.

But yeah, I guess I did contradict myself -.- If I say there's no way to know since PC game sales aren't tracked, and then start making conclusions off of assumptions, it seems pretty ignorant of me (just had a discussion about the dangers of assuming too -.-). I do believe that console games sales far exceed PC games sales, but that could be wrong as well. It just seems to be the case that console games sell better, but we really don't know.

I'm totally just making assumptions, haha I'll stop now.

I always love how you ask for facts and then later make a response like that.

And if PC gaming isn't dying, then it's at least struggling to cling to life and has been for a while.  I have to admit, it's at least a survivor but it will never be what it once was.

Consoles may not have as good as graphics and people may pee themselves over the joy of mouse controls, but consoles are just so much easier that they will always stay on top of PC's.

I'd love to know how you can say that considering the only companies who make money are on the PC. All companies that make games for the consoels on the other hand are going down the shitter.

Lol, it happens. That's the biggest problem when debating PC sales, it's very difficult (currently) to track PC sales. We can estimate sales of one area (e.g. Steam) but it's only an estimation and only part of the overall equation. We really have no clue as to how well or badly a PC game might sell. It would be nice to have more sales data for PC and I do think it'll come in the future, but until then we have to keep making educated guesses.

One educated guess (a view common among PC gamers), and an explaination as to why console games seem to sell better, is that PC games are far less front-loaded than there console counter parts. Take a game like Starcraft for instance which has wracked up 10 million sales and continues to sell. However, it took nearly 10 yrs of sustained sales to get to that figure. That's the thing with PC games, they're pretty much always backwards compatible and now all available for digital download, so will always have a very long shelf-life.

I heard it was dying countless times, it's still alive. It has its cycles with ups and downs, it always had, and when a down happens at the same time of a consoles' up, PC gaming looks less healthy. But excluding the horrible period of the dreaded FMV PC games, console gaming had far worse crashes in the past, nevertheless it survived. PC gaming, not being subject to royalties and approvals, is precious for indie developers and startups and outsiders, id was one of them when it created the FPS.

What you call dying (or surviving) I call evolving. The old and traditional style PC games are moving to consoles and are being designed more with consoles in mind. However, if we look at some of the newest or sucessful console devs around now, you'll see a lot started their trade (in the West at least) on PCs. PC is full of games from smaller indie developers, and the sucessful ones expand to include higher budget and riskier console development. The core PC gamers have moved onto digital downloads meaning older and smaller lesser known titles are now far easier to purchase again helping to bring new blood into the industry. In many ways, console gaming needs PC gaming to survive.

Then of course there are the MMOs and the host of casual and browser titles that are expanding the audience beyond the typical gamer.