Epic Games, makers of such manly shooters as Unreal and Gears of War, claim piracy forced them to abandon the PC, and that Facebook based gaming may be the only viable future the platform has.
In an interview with a gaming rag, Epic Games president Mike Capps spoke about the reason the company abandoned the PC:
“If you walked into [Epic’s offices] six years ago, Epic was a PC company. We did one PS2 launch title, and everything else was PC. And now, people are saying ‘Why do you hate the PC? You’re a console-only company.’
We still do PC, we still love the PC, but we already saw the impact of piracy: it killed a lot of great independent developers and completely changed our business model.
And guess what? It’s because the money’s on console.
Although many will attempt to dismiss this as hyperbole, it may well be supported by the facts – traditional US PC gaming shrank from a $1.6 billion market in 2001 to a $538 million market in 2009, whilst console markets grew substantially in the same period.
He goes on to laud the successes of micropayment based Facebook game Farmville, the “biggest game of all right now”:
“So, maybe Facebook will save PC gaming, but it’s not going to look like Gears of War.”
that’s such a crock… piracy didn’t kill pc games, piracy was on the ps2 and it didn’t kill it, what did is either overpriced games, crap games or no games.
companies allways blame “piracy” for falling sales -.-
EDIT: Sorry if this is a double post.
1 platform says the state of PC gaming : Steam. If anyone knows what steam is, that is 100% proof Epic are BSing.
The only reason why PC gaming is shrinking is the direct result of consoles. It’s cheaper and more affordable because the systems are locked down. You don’t have to pay for upgrades.
Piracy has existed since the old amiga days on the PC. But yet it has flourished into a giant and then shrank. So why is that? It’s not because of piracy. When piracy has been on the PC platform since 1985 at least.
I don’t think anyone has to do the math to figure out Epic is full of BS. They went to consoles because people can afford consoles more then full gaming PC’s.
But PC gaming is still alive and well. All the sales reports don’t report on the UK, or any other country besides the US. Plus they don’t report on digital distribution. Which is the best way to release a PC title in today’s world. That’s to much trouble for Epic games. Look at steam. 2 million concurrent users daily. Battlefield Bad Company 2 has at least a million users online daily. That’s not even looking at direct 2 drive. EA downloader. Or any other form of Digital distribution.
So if at least 2 million concurrent users on one form of gaming is PC dieing. Then I guess it has been dead for years and will be dead for years.
Epic are just spewing it because they want more people to follow them into the console generation. But what people don’t realize, including developers and publishers, is that when PC gaming dies.
So does consoles. Who gives Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo the hardware for the consoles? PC hardware manufacturers like Intel, Amd, ATI, Nvidia. If PC gaming dies. That’s billions of dollars each year taken away from those manufacturers. Which means bye bye consoles.
TL:DR Epic games are full of BS. PC gaming is alive and well. Consoles are the only reason for PC gaming slowing down. Not piracy.
well, we can always play eroge and vn on pc. or maybe call of duty 2.
Facebook? What in the f♥♥k is that idiot smoking? Seriously dude STOP with the six paper joints, they’ve destroyed your brain.
No idea. Epic never made anything that attracted my attention. I must be not homo after all.