While talking to TGR, VP of Marketing and Development at Valve Doug Lombardi touched on the PC market in general and what Valve thinks of the stories regarding the fate of PC gaming. Lombardi told us:

“We have really been outspoken lately about that. There is this broken story about the PC being on the decline, right? And that is one of these things like that we are really sort of being cranky about right now and being outspoken about and saying, it is not the PC market that is dying, it is the PC retail in the states that is dying.”

Doug backed up this claim with comments regarding the state of PC gaming in other countries. “If you look at the revenue that we are making from Steam and the revenue that Blizzard is making from World of Warcraft," he told us, "and you look at the sales of retail products in places like Germany and cyber café business in Korea, etc., there is more money now being made from PC business then ever before and it is actually dramatically increasing. I mean our Steam year over year revenues are up over 190%.”

Translation: with the increasing popularity of MMO games and the huge PC growth in Korea, PC gaming is here to stay for a long time yet. Any story claiming PC gaming is dead hasn’t researched the facts or, just looking at the sales chart in America.