In a panel discussion at the 2007 Games Developer Conference aptly called "PC Gaming in an Age of Connected Consoles," Obsidian Entertainment's Chris Avellone, Epic Games' Michael Capps, Electronic Arts' Richard Hilleman and Firaxis Games' Soren Johnson came to the conclusion that PC gaming has been a consistent losing streak, with approximately US$ 500 million in revenue lost every year.

Face it. This is the age of the next-generation consoles. Even with DirectX 10 features and Vista's Gaming for Windows initiative, the PC is standing at a crossroads as far as gaming is concerned.

Rampant piracy, the pricey hardware, and the inability of the industry to adapt measures to making great games rather than just visually great games, could spell the PC gaming industry's inevitable doom.

Since 2001, the annual revenues of the PC games industry keeps dropping by half a billion dollars. But that doesn't include the MMO games industry and the casual gaming industry. Will the PC market be a viable option for gaming in the near future? Well that depends. The PC may be pricier than a next-gen console and console FPS revenue may be folds more profitable than the PC, but the PC is capable of everything the console is capable of, plus a whole lot more.

Control: it's one bane of the PC gaming industry. There is no control over piracy, but the lack of control also grants a blessing for the longevity of the PC game. Games with communities will always generate custom user content. Consoles establish control in their closed gaming networks so that custom user content don't go overboard or cause controversy. It's no surprise that the panel suggest taking advantage of this issue, to encourage more user content keep gamers interested in the games.

Cross-platform multiplayer, as set out by Microsoft, is also a mixed bag of goodies. Although Microsoft offered certification measures to ensure the games will work over Xbox Live, PC games will always be more power hungry than their Xbox 360 counterparts. Newer video cards keep coming out all the time, which makes for the peace pipe session between the PC and the console a thing for dreams.