Events over at Microsoft over the past several months have given some people reason to speculate that the company is not as enthusiastic about PC gaming as it once was. It shut down two of their highly successful PC game developers (Ensemble Studios for Age of Empires and ACES Studio for Microsoft Flight Simulator) and laid off the head of their Games For Windows Live division.

Gamesindustry.biz has a chat today with Microsoft VP Chris Lewis who says their upcoming OS refresh Windows 7 will actually be a boon for PC games. Lewis states, "Windows 7 will be great for games, undoubtedly. It's all good news - it's even more robust, it's quicker relatively, and the early testing cycles are proving very promising overall. I think it'll be nothing but good news for PC gamers, but we'll have more to say on that later on this year."

As for their Games For Windows efforts, Lewis states they know there is strong PC game industry and communty of players out there and even though they also have their Xbox 360 console business they are a "Windows and PC company at heart, and that's not going to change, and the development on both platforms will remain central and important. The business ebbs and flows, and there will be times when we do more on one platform than the other, but they do co-exist very nicely, and as a company we're in a pretty unique position that we have a strong legacy on PC."