If you are one of the lonely PC sports gamers out there still playing a game like MVP 05, then you probably have caught yourself pondering what happened to the good ol' days of PC gaming. You are also probably following rumors and leads as they relate to potential revivals on the PC sports scene. It seems like every couple of months there is a teaser that maybe a Madden game will make a return to the home computer, or that the release of something like NBA 2K9 on the PC will revive the glory days of the platform.

When game companies started to realize that producing sports titles for the PC was no longer a viable business venture and, thus, the production of them dropped off, it forced many die-hards to go to consoles for their fix. Now, that is not a coincidence since the big money is on the consoles. Still, there is a large community of PC players that put a lot of work into the remaining games via updates, Web sites, mods and anything else under the sun.

Looking back, I still remember being a part of the NHL community. It was a great bunch of guys that were dedicated to making the games as true to life as possible. In fact, a whole bunch of the features now available on the console NHL games were created first by these people. I am talking about things like "ditties," which are the songs that play in-game during goals, stoppages, etc. I am also talking about detailed goaltender equipment and arena ice textures, as well as real ads on the boards. I even remember playing a NHL game that had roster editors and face importing, plus programs that allowed you to add photo packs for whole teams.

If you think that was impressive, then what the MVP fans did went above and beyond that. Over the past few years, this classic baseball game, which came out nearly half a decade ago, has been overhauled to such a degree that fans have pretty much created a whole new game. They have cracked just about every code and rewritten things so that you can play a title that seems like it was produced today. From overlays to uniforms and everything in between, it is all updated.

A rare sight, a PC sports gaming box.

So what happened? Why have companies stopped putting out these titles? One reason is the price point; most PC sports titles have gone from $19.99 to $39.99 -- sans the recent 2K titles. When considering the small window of time that sports games get on store shelves before they are outdated, it can be argued that it is kind of hard to make money under those conditions.

Piracy would be another major killing point for the industry. It is a whole lot harder to mod a console to allow burned games to play, then it is to get away with pirating a PC game.

And, lastly, the other major thing that now holds PC sports titles back is the fact that most of them are ports from older versions of console games. For instance, if you played Madden during the end of its life cycle on the PC, the last installments looked nothing like what was being played on an Xbox 360 in the graphics department.

And, while computers are far more powerful than consoles in terms of what they can display, if you make a game that is to be run on a super computer -- with all the latest bells and whistles -- then you are likely limiting the amount of consumers that can even play the game.

But with all that has gone on, there is still always talk of reviving several PC sports titles. Would Madden and NCAA Football lead the way? New technologies and new ways of distributing titles could perhaps be the stimulus for such a revival.

Would things work better this time around? Maybe, because of innovations like buying a download of a game rather than a hard copy, which would make it easier to distribute titles to gamers -- it helps that EA now releases titles on Steam.

Whatever happens, I cannot help but root for a PC revival because, while consoles may always be king, never underestimate the passion and dedication of a computer-gaming sports fan.