PC Games Face Own 'Doom'

PC game sales are a good way to diversify revenue, said one fund manager who closely watches the video-game sector, but asked to remain anonymous.

Such sales "give more ooph to a franchise," the fund manager said.

That relative importance is what has some analysts worried about the decline in PC sales. If the decline is due largely or entirely to people giving up on PC games for console games, "that's pretty sad," Pachter said.

But other analysts are more sanguine about the decline. Sales of console and handheld games more than made up for the drop-off in PC titles last year.

And while PC games are declining in sales, that loss could well be replaced by games made for Nintendo's DS and Sony's PSP, not to mention the next-generation consoles, analysts say.

The declining PC game market is an "incremental negative," said Conley. But it's "cancelled out by the incremental positive of [having] a larger number of platforms."

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