A survey of year-end holiday advertising efforts and accompanying media coverage could convince anyone that PC gaming is dead and consoles rule the kingdom.

Merchants were marketing consoles, their game titles and their increasingly sophisticated peripherals hard this season — not just to kids but to whole families, many of whom were pooling their gift dollars to buy one big item everyone in the house could enjoy..

At the centre of the media storm was the popular Nintendo Wii, which seemed doomed to product shortages back around the beginning of December.

But… As Justin Kemppainen of Examiner.com reports, PC gaming is far from beaten:

“No, not at all. Despite what some people say, PC gaming is still quite strong. You just have to look at the recently released [popular game publisher] VALVe sales figures to see that there is still at least some life in the industry.”

According to Kemppainen, its all a matter of perception. He suggests that the intense media hype over consoles and the undeniable growth in their popularity has mainly created new console users, not converted existing PC gamers.

“PC gaming very likely has more players now than ever before. … So, really, PC gaming is about the same as where it was ten years ago. It’s a form of entertainment that is popular enough to sustain itself with moderate growth, but not exactly popular enough to be considered mainstream.”