Sins of a Solar Empire publisher Stardock believes that a fear of being sued has held Microsoft back from making more advancements in the PC gaming market.

Former Microsoft games man Peter Moore said in 2006 that his company had been "derelict in its duty" to the PC gaming market. The owner of the Windows platform hasn't done enough to support the games that appear on the OS or the overall experience, he said.

But ardent PC backer Stardock, the developer behind Galactic Civilizations, publisher of Sins of a Solar Empire and creator of the newly-released digital distribution service Impulse, said that Microsoft shouldn't be wholly blamed for any perceived lack of progress in the PC gaming sector.

"It's not Microsoft's fault," believes Wardell. "Yes, PC gaming needs a champion. That's one of the things that drove us to do Impulse. ... But we've seen what happens when Microsoft tries to implement useful things in their operating system. They get sued."

He elaborates, "... The reason why Microsoft can't do as much as they should is because we're talking about a company that gets sued if they bundle a media player with their OS."

Wardell is referring to a case beginning in 2003 when the European Union fined Microsoft and ordered the software giant to offer a version of Windows with Windows Media Player, because the EU said the program's inclusion with the OS hindered competition from other companies offering media solutions for Windows.

The EU has fined Microsoft a total of around $2 billion over the Media Player case.

In Wardell's opinion, Microsoft could simply be afraid of getting sued again if the company decided to bundle, say, a digital distribution client for PC games in Windows Vista.

"It's really up to the third parties to come in," he said.

In an effort to improve PC retail sales, Microsoft launched its Games for Windows initiative about a year ago, which plasters uniform branding on PC game packaging. Games for Windows titles also have to follow certain standards put forth by Microsoft.

Microsoft is also working on Games for Windows--Live, a system that is supposed to eventually streamline online PC multiplayer gaming.

The PC gaming software market has seen a slight year-on-year decline at U.S. retail, dropping to $910.7 million in sales in 2007 from $970 million in 2006. PC advocates argue that those declines are more than made up for in online revenues from digital distribution and subscriptions.

"I always hear about how PC gaming's dead," adds Wardell. "I wonder, where this is coming from? I also hear the piracy thing, and how bad it is. I've sold 300,000 copies of Sins of a Solar Empire with just tiny bits of marketing. It has no copy protection whatsoever. There's a game that'd be super-easy to pirate.

"...You have to appeal to people who buy games, not the people who just play games no matter what."

The piracy issue reared its ugly head recently when developer Crytek said that it wouldn't be creating any more PC exclusives, due to the mass pirating of its latest PC work, Crysis.

"[Piracy] is not why [Crysis] didn't sell as many as they wanted," argued Wardell. "Everybody knows why Crysis didn't sell more copies. I couldn't run Crysis. ... I have a $6,000 Alienware box that's obscene, the most powerful setup. And it doesn't run Crysis great. People say I can run it at a lower resolution, but I say look, I have a 24" monitor. I want to run it in its native resolution. If it runs chunky at that resolution, that's not a good experience."

Despite Crytek's piracy concerns, Electronic Arts-published Crysis was able to sell 1 million units worldwide.

Stardock's titles aren't such big blockbusters, but Wardell says that they don't have to be in order to be a success on PC. This year's Sins of a Solar Empire, a hardcore 4X real-time strategy game (that was a Games for Windows title), has sold 300,000 copies so far.

"Sure 300,000 isn't much when compared to a console title that's gone off and sold a million copies, but at the same time, we didn't spend $7 million or $10 million on Sins. It was more like $1 million to make," said Wardell.

He added that Sins hit break-even at about 100,000 units sold, and "everything after that is just gravy."