propanol

People keep swallowing this piracy FUD publishers keep putting out in regards to PC gaming going downhill. Yes, it's on a downward slope, but it's not because of piracy; it's more complicated than that. The market for PCs has become much more diverse than it was back in 2001 when PC gaming was at its peak. Back then, there wasn't much of a choice as to what components you'd get etc. depending on what you were going to use your PC for; you needed all the power you could get to have a decent experience - whether you'd be gaming or doing office work didn't matter as much. As a result of this, there were more gaming-capable PCs around, hence the emergence of the PC gaming market.

At this point, however, development has gotten to the point where there are decent OSes and applications that do what most normal users would want (surf the Internet etc.). The average Joe no longer sees a need to upgrade his PC. He might want to play games, but getting a new $2000 PC for that seems inconvenient to him when there are $400-500 consoles around that'll let him do the same.

Further evidence of this development is in the emergence of the market for low-end PCs (which now make up the bulk of stationary computer sales) as well as the laptop market ('people want smaller, not more powerful', making up about 50% of overall PC sales in 07).

At this point, only the hardcore game on PCs. It's shame, because it's the platform where most gameplay concepts have been conceived/developed.