[geRV]

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/new...hp?story=18843

Gabe Newells take on pc gaming, some of the highlights:

According to Gartner Group data, there are over 260 million online PC gamers, with 255 million new PCs being sold in 2007. Steam alone has 15 million connected gamers, with 1.25 million peak connected gamers, and 191% year-over-year growth; Valve was quick to point out that Steam represents just one of many online distribution systems.

"This is a market that dwarfs the size of any of the proprietary closed platforms," Newell said. He noted that the vast difference in scale between PC and console platforms means that PC continues to be the platform with the most capital investment, allowing it to drive the innovation and technology development that eventually trickles down to consoles.

Newell then returned to his "perception problem" angle. "We don't really have a champion of the PC platform. If you write a story about the Xbox 360, there's just an army of people who are going to descend on you to make that picture look as polished and rosy as possible. Same things for the other consoles - but there's no equivalent on the PC, and the people who are traditionally driving these messages, like Microsoft or Intel or Apple are, for various reasons, not very effective champions."