Ubisoft Shanghai creative director Michael de Plater reffering to the delayed PC release of EndWar compared to the consoles:
“To be honest, if PC wasn’t pirated to hell and back, there’d probably be a PC version coming out the same day as the other two, But at the moment, if you release the PC version, essentially what you’re doing is letting people have a free version that they rip off instead of a purchased version. Piracy’s basically killing PC.”
It saddens me to hear publishers talking like that. The problem is that it is a legitimate concern. Time and time again, publishers have attempted to prevent piracy and so far it has almost always been unsucessful. Spore is the perfect example. Spore showed that determined pirates will crack even the most restrictive DRM.
As more and more publisers are becoming weary of publishing games on the PC, Could this spell the end of PC gaming?

Fallout 3 got pirated before release. The version on the torrents is for the xbox360. That pretty much sets the future.
From my perspective. There is more immediate money to be had on consoles.
Since they have standard hardware, people can expect a decent experience. Even though you don't need to upgrade your PC every other week, it has sadly gotten that reputation.
Oh, and the games cost more at release, at least here in Australia, don't know about ROW.
PC gaming is always said will die soon. But there are too many genres and PCs around the world for it to happen. But I do expect the trend of console exclusive titles to continue :(

I don't think it will completely die out... There are certain genres that really only work well on computers such as RTS and diablo style hack and slash games. Also MMO's are really computer only as well due to the need for a fully functional keyboard for communication

Game makers want to justify their desire to move to platforms that allow them to maximize profits, e.g, do what they've been doing without major retooling. So they proclaim that "the PC is dying" and move to the Xbox.
Consoles have been protected from large-scale piracy until now because consoles have traditionally been inflexible and locked down, with limited connectivity.
The problem is, people are demanding connectivity and flexibility in their consoles as well. Nowadays we have networked consoles with all kinds of connectivity options. They're getting more flexible. User created software on consoles is the new thing.
Consoles will also see these levels of piracy eventually, until the industry sits down and tries to cure the disease by figuring out what consumers want and giving it to them, instead of just trying to prevent the symptoms.
DRM isn't the answer because it doesn't address the causes of piracy, just tries to prevent the act. DRM does nothing but increase piracy, in my opinion.

I think Microsoft saved PC games from being shut out of game stores like Gamestop with its 'Games for Windows'. Its still bad enough to go into a gamestop and get weird looks or outright scorn when asking about PC games. Which is why I don't shop there anymore, but at least Microsoft has require game stores have shelf space for PC games.

How long has PC gaming been 'dying' for now? Never trust a medium that bleeds for years and doesn't die, as my father never said to me.
Most publishers really don't understand the problems they face on PC. E.g. delayed release - only means more people will pirate it. Some are getting the idea, getting rid of DRM and so on, but most don't realise the problem is that their game is shit, or they didn't market it properly/at all, or that its DRM-plated, or the requirements are so high that they're only selling to a small percentage of the market. They honestly think its piracy, or they know it isn't but use piracy as a whipping boy anyway, so they don't have to admit that their game is an unoriginal, derivative, buggy piece of shit.
I hope the big publishers do push off, making room for devs to sell games directly to us (World of Goo, Multiwinia, etc).
Consoles are by no means immune, and console piracy is a different issue. Piracy on the PlayStation and PS2 was much more common than on other consoles, and the PS and PS2 were much more popular than their competitors.

I think the publishers assume that if a console owner can get one of their games on PC for free, they will. I'm not sure this is the case, if this was true, there would be little reason to buy a console and the console market wouldn't be so large.
The point is that people buy consoles solely to play games. It doesn't make sense to buy a console only to pirate games for your PC. The idea that PC piracy affects console games sales is sketchy at best.

As long as there are PCs there will be games to play on them.

This is STUPID nonsense! PS1, to name one, was the most successful console THANKS to the damn "piracy"... the problem of PC isn't piracy, it's the lack of a strong PR propaganda like the ones Microsoft, Sony and Wii do to promote their platforms.
PC isn't a "gaming platform", it's... PC. So there can be these stupid ass holes saying any sort of thing to justify their inability to offer complete, quality products like the ones (well, at least for the most part) available on consoles.
So stop mumbling of "dying art" of PC gaming. Gaming is not an art, it's.... gaming. And PCs are technologically WAY AHEAD on Xbox 360 and PS3. Why would you buy all that GeForce and Radeon cards and new Intel hardware (Larrabee anyone?) if not to play games? I only hope that the ones to going die are the idiotic CEOs of software houses, they really do not understand any more what are videogames and gamers...

That seems like a bad cop-out more than anything, delaying the game won't help its sales any.
Is it really a legitimate concern, if there's nothing that can be done to stop piracy (short of intrusive DRM that ends up inconveniencing the paying customer)? I mean, it's the people who do buy your game that count, not the ones who don't. Give people a reason to buy your game, and they will.
As others, I just see it as publishers moving to consoles due to higher profits and lower expectations. To illustrate the latter point: the likes of Gears of War become GotY material on consoles, on PC they get scoffed at as a mediocre shooter.
If anything's killing PC gaming (more specifically, interesting and unique games in general), it's the "let's make a game that appeals to billions of people" mentality, leading to homogenizations of games. They say it's due to increasing development costs. When that's mostly a result of higher graphical demands, maybe it's time to reexamine whether those graphical demands are actually real. The success of the DS and Wii would lead me to believe you don't need to have Crysis-level graphics.
So, why exactly are publishers afraid to undertake niche ("niche" nowadays could mean anything that's not an FPS, unfortunately) projects on a smaller budget? That's always an option, even if we assume that multi-million dollar projects are only viable on consoles.

Crytek says that Crysis has sold 1 million copies so far, and the estimates say that the same number of copies have been pirated... it's 50/50!! Imagine what another million sold copies would mean for Crytek! So I totally understand why publishers and developers are sick and tired of people pirating their products. But as we all know, making their copy-protection more and more restrictive just doesn't work. The games will be cracked anyway, it's a pain in the ass for the legit customers and as a result more will just pirate the damn thing. They should just accept that some morons will always pirate. I'm certain that if they offered a carrot instead of a stick, less people would pirate their games.
Also the PC will never die out as a gaming platform. The worst that might happen is that fewer AAA titles are developed for the PC, but there will always be new games made for the PC.

What they were expecting is irrelevant
Even though, that doesn't mean Crytek's claim that they could have made more money, had there not been pirated so many copies, is less valid, now does it?
That can't be known. It is afterall an estimate.

I've heard a lot about this issue since I got to Champlain College for Game Design.
The problem with DRM and other similar things is that it raises the development costs for games... which then get cracked and pirated and they lose even more money, so DRM isn't the way to go. They really need to find a better strategy, perhaps an incentive for registering a legit copy or something.

Indeed. I'm sick of the companies (whereas it is musical or gaming) saying this.