I did not know the PC gaming industry was doing bad. From what I gathered it was doing just fine. I do understand that console games have cut into them some. I use my computer for work related things now and just play games on PS2.
It's doing bad for the gaming industry, kind of like how the music industry is doing bad for the music industry. Still making gigantic piles of money that stretch as far as the eye can see, but they've been making a few less piles a year than they were before.
There has been a purge of PC gaming software producers. I strongly suspect it has more to do with Xbox, PS 2 and the like than anything else.
I've read somewhere the average PS 2 user is 28 years old.
You, me, and quite a few others it would seem. Trying to debug games on PC to the point you could play them just got old. You can blame a good portion on DirectX and it's buggy tendancies.
It's a lack of gaming goodness. That thing that kept you up all night for one more level, kill or conquest. There haven't been many Empire Deluxe, Civs, Ultimas up to 7, MOO's, X-Com's, Populous's, Doom-Quake-UT's, Might and Magic's, Fallouts, Diablo's, Baldur's Gates and such lately.
Maybe it just because good things can only be invented once and there is only so much to go around or maybe big multimedia doesn't want to take a chance anymore. Most of those great games of the past came out of garages or upstart indies. Once the big guys get hold of some of these franchises they suck them dry and make utter crap out of genius because they market but don't play and then wonder why they flop.
Gaming is about fun and forgetting. Even crap graphics and sounds don't matter if the game is good. I just got done playing another round of Angband and that uses ASCII or simple tilesets. I'm playing Diablo 2 again now because even though it could be called simple and mindless it's damn fun. That's what it's all about.