id Software, known for PC classics like Doom and Quake, believes that PC gaming still has more life left in it. Todd Hollenshead, id Software President, told IGN that PC technology’s continuing drive forward past consoles and popularity of games like World of Warcraft will ensure that PC gaming remains a powerful part of the industry.
"Because of the great games you have coming out on the consoles, and for a period of time, the consoles were pretty competitive technically with the PC, it has receded in prominence," Hollenshead said during last week’s QuakeCon. “It's probably getting back to the point right now where technically on the PCs you're going to be able to start doing more and more things that you can't do on the consoles."
"It's also hard to say PC gaming is dying when the biggest game franchise, World of Warcraft, is a PC game."
Hollenshead agreed that PC’s time at retail stores has been waning, but say that’s not a sign of the platform’s death.
"If it's just boxed games at retail, it's certainly in third place behind the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 right now, but that doesn't mean it's doomed to continue to recede or can't come back," he explained. “These things happen over time and every time consoles come out, people proclaim the death of PC and then it may struggle for awhile and have its issues, but it tends to be resilient."
Tim Willits, id Software’s Creative Director also told IGN that software piracy remains a big problem for PC gaming.
"It's definitely changing. The biggest struggle that we have with PCs is, as everyone knows, is that piracy is out of control,” said Willits, noting that online and cloud-based services were the way of the future for PC gaming.
"The technology is awesome and the hardware is always awesome, but you see more and more games that are skewed towards these dedicated, client architectures and cloud gaming,” he said. "I can definitely see a shift in combating piracy, and working on games that are more social. Look at Facebook, there are more people playing that silly Farmville than play Call of Duty.
"PC gaming is not dead, but it is a bit different than it was in the past."
1 Comments
August 18, 2010
"They've" been saying PC is dead the past 10 years. Games will always look and play better on the PC. It's just as easy to pirate 360 games as it is PC games not only that but you can download a 360 game between 2-4 weeks before the title is even released which isn't as common for a PC game leaked that early, maybe a week before release. I will always buy good PC games.