As a longtime computer gamer – yours truly cut his teeth hacking CONFIG.SYS for Doom on his 386, while everyone else was learning basic addition – I believe I can speak with authority that there is an annoying, unyielding cycle in the videogame world that repeats itself every few years.

It goes like this: with every new generation of videogame consoles – the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii are the latest at this time – legions of gamers, both hardcore and casual, console or PC, make apocalyptic predictions about the supposed death of PC gaming. These predictions are backed up with all manner of examples, but usually consist of sales comparisons and examples of developers supposedly “jumping ship.” A year or two after that generation is out – but a couple of years before the next – PC capabilities slowly overtake their console brethren, and the doomsayers grow silent. Before you know it, the PC proponents (many of who are “converts” from consoles) are now the ones speaking ill about the consoles’ future. It’s an eternally tiresome, and wholly silly, little war between misfit camps.

With this iteration, arguments in favor of console gaming seem to touch heavily on the latest generation’s newfound strengths in online multiplayer (pioneered by Xbox Live), as well a number of developers who recently announced a console-specific or platform-neutral focus. (The accessibility of the Wii is a strong point as well.) Minor points include the ability to access your music library while gaming, thanks to the Xbox 360’s and Playstation 3’s dashboards, and an unexpectedly populist attitude towards level editors and minor game modifications (namely, Halo 3’s Forge and its ilk).

Indeed, I will concede one point: the traditional lines between PC and console gaming are fuzzier than ever.

But I believe we’re now at a point where the pendulum makes its return: with the latest generation of graphics cards and CPUs, the PC is once again the performance king. The dismal financial numbers of PC gaming’s recent past are turning around – starting with this report – and the platform as a whole is beginning its comeback. But let’s take a look, shall we?

PC gamers honestly have little to fear about the future of their pastime: the recently formed PC Gaming Alliance, an industry collective consisting of notable companies like Microsoft, Intel, NVIDIA, Epic Games, and Capcom, recently posted numbers that claimed industry revenues to be almost $11 billion. Money that the industry lost in brick-and-mortar game sales instead appears elsewhere: almost half of that figure – $4.8 billion – came from MMORPGs, and another $2 billion from online distribution networks like Steam or Stardock Central. An additional $800 million hails from “in-game and web advertising”; clearly, this is an industry that is more than agile enough to reinvent itself in light of a shifting market.

Of course, piracy is still a problem, and PC gaming’s advantages – while slowly being chipped away – are still present. The indie scene on Xbox Live Arcade is nowhere near what it could be, thanks to Microsoft’s middle finger towards indie developers and the general level of control it maintains over both pricing and the Xbox 360 itself. On the PC, however, indie developers thrive – even in spite of piracy! In terms of freedoms, how many console games have a thriving, legit mod community? Absent of that, will they ever experience the full glory of games like Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, Spore, Supreme Commander, Crysis, Sins of a Solar Empire or Alan Wake? Will they ever have a chance to play gems like Uplink: Hacker Elite, Masq, or MINERVA: Metastasis?

And let’s not forget the ten-ton-gorilla that is World of Warcraft: I’m quite sure a very large portion of that $4.8 billion comes from WoW alone. There doesn't seem to be any plans to port it to consoles, and frankly, the last Blizzard port I recall seeing was the Nintendo 64 version of Starcraft. MMOs are one of the PC's greatest strengths: what was the last hugely successful console MMORPG? Phantasy Star Online?

So rest assured, PC gamers, your hobby isn’t going anywhere. Your platform once again wears the technical crown – and while the landscape has certainly changed since the last cycle, PC gaming has enough feathers in its cap to keep going for the foreseeable future. Remember, however, that your platform has its place: the strengths it has in first person shooters, strategy games, and online connectivity, are countered by consoles’ might in ease-of-use, fighting games, and platformers.

For those who wish to continue arguing their sides, I suggest taking a step back – enjoy your hobby in all its forms. There are plenty of us who’ve watched this cycle repeat itself ad nauseam, and I can safely say that over the long term both forms of gaming are here to stay. We veterans grow weary of this holy war – so gently remind your fellow soldiers of its pointlessness, and then take ‘em to school with your Unreal Tournament version of choice.