Industry PC gaming advocacy group, The PC Gaming Alliance, reports a sunny outlook for PC gaming in 2011. No surprise there, of course, especially with continued excitement over free-to-play, and the multi-billion dollar IPOs raised by Zynga and Nexon for their F2P businesses, but that’s not the whole story: “While much of the growth in 2011 came from the growing F2P space, there were also some notable big budget game launches that enjoyed very strong sales, driven by the growing acceptance of digital distribution. These included the large subscription online games Rift, from Trion World Network, and Star Wars: The Old Republic from Electronic Arts… Sports games led by soccer titles from Electronic Arts and Konami also showed surprisingly strong sales on the PC.” More below.(more…)