Valve remains a staunch defender of the PC, and refutes arguments that the decline of PC retail sales means the death of the platform, arguing that if you take alternative revenue streams into account, it's by far the healthiest market out there. "Sony and Microsoft both have armies of PR people whose job it is to cram that information down the throats of press and analysts every day," says Lombardi. "All those people do is say the PC's dying, the console's winning, and nobody on the PC side is championing that platform. And sales data tracks retail, and there's no doubt about it, PC sales at retail are declining.

"But World of Warcraft is making a whole lot of money outside of the retail channel, we're making a decent bit of cash off Steam, all the casual guys are not tracked - the PopCap games, Bejewelled, all that stuff doesn't show up. If you took WOW, Steam, PopCap and added it to the PC pool, all these huge revenues - just WOW by itself, right? If you took WOW's 2006's revenues and the 360's revenues and compared them, even then you would say I don't think the PC's really dead."

In fairness, Microsoft is showing increased faith in the PC platform these fays, with the Games for Windows and Live Anywhere initiatives tied in with the launch of DirectX 10 and Windows Vista seeming to put the PC on an equal footing with 360 in the company's plans. But Lombardi is doubtful of the Redmond giant's long-term commitment to strengthening the PC market.

"Right now it seems like it's part of the marketing push to help Vista. To really back a platform is a sustained effort over years and years, so we'll see if in two years Microsoft is still spending money to put Games for Windows sections in retail, and having PR people preach that message that we were just talking about, which is that the PC isn't dying, in fact it's actually bigger than all the consoles put together. You know, if it were to sign up for that, that's great. If it's going to use it to promote sales of Vista, that's really not good for the industry, it's good for Microsoft in the short term."