They are the professional analysts whose job it is to research, keep track of, advise their clients, and opine to the media about the gaming business. Analyze This cuts right to the chase: Rather than reporting on a subject, and throwing in quotes by analysts to support or refute a point, Gamasutra offers up a timely question pertaining to the business side of the video game industry and simply lets the analysts offer their thoughts directly to you.

Each person's opinion is his or her own and will (probably) not necessarily agree with their fellow colleagues' This month's 'Analyze This' column discusses the state of the PC game market with Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter, Screen Digest's Ed Barton, and DFC Intelligence's David Cole.

Question: What is your general take on the PC games market? Is it healthy, in trouble, becoming irrelevant to the bigger picture of the gaming industry, or flat-out confused right now? For example, there seems to be growing interest by PC game developers for online content distribution (a la Valve's Steam) and MMOs -- essentially leaning away from selling a boxed product.

There has been recent hubbub by some PC game developers that one of the reasons why they are interested in developing for the consoles is to stave losses from piracy. Is piracy truly a big problem for growth in the PC gaming sector?

Valve's Half-Life 2: Episode One, the first part of a downloadable sequel trilogy.

What do you make of Microsoft's move to emphasize more the gaming aspects of Windows Vista? Is it just a cynical ploy to keep gamers from ever completely switching to Mac or Linux? Or does the PC games market really need Microsoft's support now?