In the MMORPG arena, World of Warcraft has become the dominant game title. The game has so completely dwarfed its competition and gained so much popularity that others in the industry are now wondering about the impact this is having on the rest of the industry. With so many subscribers and the amount of time that dedicated fans plan the game, some PC game developers believe that Blizzard’s success comes at the expense of other PC game titles. Wagner James Au at GigaOM investigated this trend to see World of Warcraft could be depressing PC game sales. Au cites Warren Spector with some anecdotal evidence:

“…it does seem logical to assume that a game that’s sucking up as much free time and available capital from so many people is going to cause a drop in game sales… I know several people… who play more WoW and less of everything else these days.”

Still, industry analysts disagree. The NPD Group, which tracks video game sales, indicates that the industry had been slumping prior to the release of World of Warcraft. Another analyst from DFC Intelligence also disagreed. Certainly Microsoft seems to believe that the issues plaguing PC game sales can’t be traced back to Blizzard.

Microsoft is seeking to simplify the process of buying a Windows game. They are also trying to unify the marketing of games for Windows under a single banner, much like console games are today. Mark Rein blames Intel’s integrated chipsets for killing the category, but one could just as easily point to the rapid growth of laptop sales versus desktop sales. While desktop users can pretty easily upgrade their hardware, for most laptop owners, this is next to impossible. While today’s high end laptop plays current games well, two years from now that same laptop may be at the low end of the scale. Frustrations with copy protection technology like Starforce can’t help matters either. There are many potential reasons why PC gaming may be losing marketshare; blaming one of the few successes in the field seems like an odd conclusion to make.