Heavily posted and commented New York Times reports the once moribund PC gaming sector on the rise.

"Anita Frazier, an industry analyst for the NPD Group, a market research firm, noted that in the first two months of 2007, domestic retail sales of PC games reached $203 million, a 48 percent increase over the $136.8 million in the period a year earlier."

It's hard to gauge a full year on the results of just two months. The lack of a strong retail title in such a short period could account for the much of the difference.

Historically PC games have accounted for a smaller and smaller slice of the gaming market pie. In 2006 PC games in the US dropped 14% from $1.1 billion to $953 million in only two years according to NPD. NPD which tracks point of sale data admits that MMOs, games distributed electronically through Direct2Drive and Steam and alternative business model PC games are not included in the calculation.

No one really knows how much this is but everyone thinks it is a lot. Valve is privately held and does not release it's numbers. Blizzard at least is part of a publicly traded company. Going over Vivendi's annual report I came up with a back of the envelope guess that World of Warcraft is pulling in about $500-600 million a year.

Buying a boxed PC game in a brick and mortar store may not be the future. Heck, go to your local game specialty store and check out how much shelf space PC games take up. PC games are also seriously hampered by rampant piracy and a non-standardized hardware platform. Will PC gaming go away? The New York Times doesn't think so ... and ... they are never wrong.

So PC Games Don't Die Anymore? Let's wait for the next ground-breaking, earth-shaking news...

This just in... a newspaper tried to install a Windows XP game on his Windows ME machine and it didn't work... so PC games are dead again!

Heck, it hasn't even been my past. I've bought maybe 5% of my games at physical retail outlets since 1999, and that's been the few instances where local prices beat the ones online. The rest have been mail ordered or digital distribution downloads.

Will this lead to another console/PC flame war? Because God I love those...

Aye. We PC Geeks haven't picked a fight with the Console Losers in awhile now...

To fuel said flame, CONSOLES SUCK!! ;)

This is great news...I think...

Well... Seems that no console people are around. They probably have all died out. Or braindead from those crappy games.

Console Gaming Dying Out?

Console Gaming May Damage Brain Cells?

Let's await the next round in this exciting ping pong game.