I apologise if this point has been made already on this thread, as i have not yet read the entire of it, yet i feel a need to express my stupid opinion. For me, PC gaming is dying, in a sense. But at the same time, we are on the cusp of a rebirth. simply put, the consoles of this generation are so close to being PC's it's untrue. They are almost literaly PC's with proprietary OS's and and only able to read proprietary discs (and CD's etc).
The big problem with developing for PC's is the virtually limitless variations and combinations of hardware you have to program a game for. In contrast, for consoles you just have to develop for one standard system.
If this trend of consoles bearing more and more of a resembelance to PC's continue, then it is entirely possible that within a few console generations that consoles will be nothing more than glorified de facto PC's
Console gaming as we know it now, or of the last generation, could become more like the Wii, 'fun', casual gaming.

PC gaming is just a market. And it will be dead when there are no PC's left.
And can you really say that it's having problems? If major companies develop most of their games for consoles with the occasional buggy port - fine, it's their decision really. Someone will probably describe it as a part of some cycle in a few years.
I have no doubt that there are countless talented artists, programmers and entrepreneurs around the world that are ready to team up, and ship a game to a market where demand remains high and the supply is dwindling. In order to develop a PC game you don't need expensive SDKs, or whatever method Sony and MS use to squeeze the money from the developer before anything's even released. And with platforms like Steam you don't even need to spend much money on distribution.
Although personally I would much prefer this sort of new development teams to originate inside the same old companies, rather than be indies-matured-to-a-developer.
Also, I never understood the whole gamepad vs keyboard and mouse thing. What, there aren't any gamepads for PCs? Is it technically unfeasible or even difficult to make consoles support a mouse and a keyboard (I think there are keyboards for Wii and 360)? Input methods are really not the point in all these debates about what's better and where the world is coming to.

AWAKEN AWAKEN!!

So its been few years, time to check if the skeleton is still in the closet yes?

Whats the general opinion here atm, impeding death and doom of PC gaming hitting as in next two years or maybe decade?

Id be interested if anyone has good ideas or links to either short or long term speculation on this.

Couple interesting articles that i happened to come across and made me summon this thread:

Eight Things That Still Haven’t Killed PC Gaming, 2013, september

Will Piracy lead to the death of PC gaming?, 2014, february.

Especially the last one is full of interesting stuff concerning both PC's and consoles. Surely i am not the only one interested in this sort of stuff? :)

YOU FOOL! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!

Wow, that's some serious necromancy right there.

(in that spirit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxWhP-RM8v4)

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
http://i644.photobucket.com/albums/uu168/Caleb911SuB/This%20Thread/NecroThread.jpg

Necroing a 'Death of PC gaming', well done ;-)

Yay, necro!

=)

Fuck me, that's a necro to be proud of.

Anyway, I do get the sense of late that while a lot of PC gamers were moaning about the quality of games being tied to console lifecycles, they may yet come to regret that sentiment. It was the stagnation in the console market that helped PC by making a low-end system a viable gaming PC.

With a number of next-gen focused releases (Watch Dogs, Wolfenstein, Dead Rising 3), the minimum specs for games have risen drastically, meaning that it is now again rather expensive to match current-gen console performance. You're looking at $500 just for the mainboard, CPU and GPU to half-way match console performance (not counting the excessive PC OS overheads), upon which you have the cost of the tower, PSU and OS on top of that. Oh, and obviously keyboard, mouse and gamepad. Those can be as cheap as $50 together, but decent control hardware will set you back a good $100.

Which means that to get a decent gaming PC that offers real benefits over a console, you have some serious financial outlays.

The PC gaming market is going to have a struggle on its hands in the coming years, with the indie market in decline and AAA publishers reluctant to publish day-one on PC nowadays due to the Steam-sale mentality.

Actually, I think the IBM PC Compatible lineage of PCs may become too niche to support mainstream gaming in the next 10-15 years. Average people seem to be adopting tablet PCs as their primary computers. New development will surely follow their dollars. As Windows becomes less and less important, the platform erodes.

It's kind of sad. :(

You've changed your tune!
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/death_of_pc_gaming/post3
5 short years ago you were saying just the opposite - some consistency PLEASE Judas! :-D

List of Dead Consoles 1973- (no longer being manufactured officially and sold):
huge list

PC (still being manufactured officially and sold).

THE IBM COMPATIBLE MASTER RACE SOLDIERS ON ONCE AGAIN