First of all, PC games are not dead and certainly not killed by consoles. Consoles are for action/sport games etc where as PC games are more for RTS/MMORPG and other more indepth games for grown ups.

Secondly the reason Micro$oft left the PC gaming world is because they cannot control the platform (the hardware) so they cannot win the "war" against piracy. So they gave up and created the XBox where they have full control of the platform.

I started playing PC games just a couple years after I started on NES as a kid.  I have no idea why some people try to generalize the gaming population like that either.  It is silly.

While PC Gaming is by no means dead, or even dying, per se, it is in a decline.  And like people have said, this is a slump that will eventually pick back up.  Market trends.

But supporting Blizzard is supporting PC Gaming, albeit indirectly.  But no more so than supporting any single Developer/Publisher.  Well, less so now that they're owned by Activision...  (Which I abhorrently oppose btw, but what're ya gonna do?)

But if you really think that buying any PC game produced by EA is supporting the market, then you really, really, REALLY need to take a damn good look at how many games EA publishes that aren't direct-ports of console games, or simul-released on both Consoles and PC's.  They don't sink any real money into PC games, they make Console games, and then spend a little extra to port them for near exponential profit, provided they move enough copies.  Yes, I'm biased against EA.  But I've become biased based on objective reasoning and observation, not just because I disapprove of their business practices.  (Which is another reason in and of itself, but not really on-topic.)

Which is the lesser evil...?  There's a lesser evil between IPhone's and any product M$ produces?  Ehh, I guess I'd have to go with XBox...  The ORIGINAL XBox, clunky controller and all.  Speaking of...

I think the bet was to see who could piss off the PC market more, via destroying the market.  Jobs got the one-up on Gates here though, by choosing to avoid the bet entirely, and cause Gates to destroy a market he's currently out-pacing Jobs in anyway.  Unfortunately for Jobs, he underestimated the incompetence of M$, forgetting that anything they release will be broken 9 times out of 10...  XBox360...  Neither one of them is winning the bet.  =P

And it's not as if there haven't been duds consoles. I mean when a console is released that is a dud, that's almost a generation of dead weight for Nintendo, Sony or MS to deal with for awhile. PC's might have duds once in awhile, but if we get a generation of meh video card, we can just wait until the next year, or if the OS is crap, stick with the old one for while. I remember when everyone was suggesting that Nintendo was dead in the water, dying, old school, lost to an ever ending decline because of one of their releases and yet... they picked up again didn't they? It's never a sure thing.

Your biased opinion means nothing. The Wii is a success. It made Nintendo a lot of money and they are not dead despite the hostility from people who think themselves to be some kind of elitist in the gaming community. The point is, you can't count on any of these companies to be out for the count or at the top just because you wish, really, really hard.

I think it's kind of a downward spiral in terms of new game creativity. PC games lose market share, which causes stores to dedicate less space to pc game titles. Less space for titles means only the big blockbusters can get wide exposure. This makes it hard for the non mainstream titles to sell. Which of course can hurt sales even more and cause shelf space to go down even more.

The good news is that there is plenty of PC game creativity from independent developers, and the rise of direct download may mean that stores may eventually no longer make or break games by deciding how much space to give them.

Fixed.

[quote who="Savyg" reply="67" id="2814753"]True.
[/quote]

Well I guess that just makes a difference between us. There are plenty of things in this world I don't care for, but I don't label them as crap just because I don't like it.

Microsoft hasn't done any thing to destroy the pc industry, the industry has more or less done this to itself over the past few years. 2k has repeatidly shot themselves in the foot by putting terrible drm like games for windows live in their games. Then of course there is the fact that there really hasnt been a lot of worth while titles on the pc lately. The indie game community is about the only thing that has been keeping the pc industry afloat. With the exception of a few noteworthy pc developers that have gone the extra mile for their pc customers, almost all of them have been shoveling out terrible pc versions which dont sell because they ultimately suck. Great games some of them may be, but it doesnt matter if the game is poorly optimized and terrilbly unstable.

Anyway, Nintendo is pretty much the only company in the gaming/tech world I have such disdain for.  They've done some unique things in hardware, but pretty much everything they release is a remake of something they did twenty years ago and they aren't even competing outside of that.

I can't respect a company whose claim to fame is riding a popularity wave....for twenty freaking years.  The hardware thing is interesting, but how long can they keep it up if their competitors are on the ball?

Maybe the Wiis success will revitalize the company and I'll see something worthwhile come out of it.  But so far it's just more of the same.

I don't care what they do with old series as long as they're still introducing new ones.

And because it has Mario in the title I have no interest whatsoever in playing it.  If the gameplay is SPECTACULAR but I couldn't care less about the game world, what's the point?