Last month, prompted in part by the success of “WoW" and games like it, the NPD Group announced that it would start to track online game subscriptions.

“While we haven't yet publicly released our first quarterly data, I can tell you that non-retail sales related to PC games is bigger than what occurs at retail, so the PC games market is clearly still thriving,” NPD analyst Anita Frazier wrote in an e-mail.

Blizzard president and co-founder Mike Morhaime agrees that PC gaming is alive and well, but contends that his company isn’t the only one having success.

“If you look at the top 20 list, you’ll find that Blizzard is doing very well, but we’re certainly not the only companies that are doing well,” he says.

"Call of Duty 4," "Sins of a Solar Empire," "The Orange Box" and "Crysis" all make appearances on NPD's February list of top-selling PC titles. But the rest is dominated by "World of Warcraft-" related titles and some flavor of "The Sims."

In the old days, the best-seller lists were dominated by first-person shooters and adventure games. Now, those games have migrated to the consoles. It’s a paradigm shift that many PC gamers find hard to take.