The Last of the Independents?

[Loki]

Nachdem ja alle Welt schon vom Untergang des PCs redet und Konsolen ja soviel Potential haben, hier mal eine Gegenteilige Meinung:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/the-last-of-the-independents-

Q: EA seems to have really pushed PC at this event, but you do hear people saying "PC is dead"? How is developing for the PC these days?

Doug Lombardi: We've always been very PC-centric at Valve. You know Gabe [Newell] was the lead on the first three releases of Windows before he started Valve, so we're pretty deeply rooted in the PC.

But I think a lot of what's happening now in the public perception and the press perception is fuelled by thing like NPD releasing sales data from retail in the States that says "Oh, PC games were only 12 per cent of sales at the holiday" - or last year, or whenever it was - and everybody grabs hold of that and all of a sudden declares that PC gaming is on the way out and what-not.

But that ignores all the subscription revenue from World of Warcraft, which just by itself would change that number, that perception that's its only 12 per cent of the business. Just add that in and all of a sudden I'm guessing it's over 20 per cent of the business. Throw in things like Steam sales - that's going to move it again. Then there are different models, like the DICE guys are doing.

Meanwhile, the other reason why that is propagated so much is that Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony are spending millions of dollars setting armies of PR people on you guys to tell you how great their platforms are and nobody's doing that for the PC.

I think that there's this push from the console guys to glorify their position and a lack of data, so to speak, or a lack of knowledge of the other opportunities that are offered on the PC pretty much exclusively right now. And, you know, maybe we'll see those things spill over to the console the same way that multi-player stuff spilled over to the consoles as the consoles matured.

Das ganze Interview ist darüber hinaus lesenswert.

[Itchy]

Die Essenz:

"In the States, shelf space for PC games is dwindling from a bad place to a terrible place. [And then] you go to Germany, PC games are at the checkout counter at the freaking drug store. Literally."

"We basically had our feature list that we wanted. We wanted auto-updating, we wanted better anti-piracy, better anti-cheat, and selling the games over the wire was something we came up with later." (Steam)

"Orange Box sold really, really well on the PC and in some places it sold really well at retail and in some places it sold really, really well on Steam. And in some places it did pretty good in each one and together that was great. Orange Box is a success and Steam is selling over 300 games to 15 million accounts. So we feel like the company has never been stronger."

[Gray]

geil ist ja auch das gelaber von den crysis typen das pc einfach deshalb nicht lohnt wegen der piraterie. dann kommen ein paar hanebüchene zahlen, n bissl gewhine und die beleidigte ankündigung dass sie nur noch für konsole entwickeln. wenn sie meinen sie bekommen da mehr kohle...

spiele auf pc werden NIE sterben, es wird vielleicht zurückgehen, aber dafür ist der pc als plattform einfach zu attraktiv und hat mehr vorteile als ne konsole. egal was irgendwelche analysten vor sich hinblubbern...

[Baumstumpf]

jup, crytek ist einfach lächerlich. die haben ne gammelige performance abgeliefert, weswegen ddas game kaum einer gekauft hat und nun versuchen sie die schuld den raubkopierern zuzuschieben. und jetzt zur konsole zu wechseln ist mehr als lächerlich. was wollen die denn da bei ihrem nächsten game machen? n kabel mitliefern, um zwei konsolen zusammen zu schliessen, damit deren game einigermaßen spielbar läuft?