Long Live PC Gaming!
It's one of the oldest songs in the catalogue but somehow it never seems to go out of style. You know the one I mean. It's the one that goes something like, "PC gaming is dead." Year after year we hear doomsayers proclaim the coming apocalypse of PC gaming and yet here we are. News of PC gaming's ever-present demise always seems to hit an apex around the launch of a new console but with the Xbox 360, the Playstation 3 and Nintendo's Wii still dominating the sales charts perhaps now is the time to seriously consider that our past time may be in trouble.
Enter the PC Gaming Alliance: a collection of individuals representing the biggest companies in PC gaming who've charged themselves with promoting the PC as a platform to rival any console. Members of the PCGA include representatives from Intel, AMD, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Dell, Acer, Activision and Epic Games. Their press release states that the "PCGA and its member companies will work to accelerate innovation, improve the gaming experience for consumers and serve as a collective source of market information and expertise on PC gaming."
So does PC gaming need saving? The PCGA doesn't think so. Citing statistics from leading research firm DFC Intelligence PCGA President Randy Stude - who is also the Director of Gaming Strategy at Intel - evangelized the business of PC gaming. Stude's figures stated that PC gaming revenue was worth approximately $2.76 billion in 2007, a 12% increase year-over-year from 2006. The forecast for 2008 is an estimated 14% increase over the 2007 revenue. From the look of the numbers the PC gaming business is growing not shrinking, and the 263 million PC gamers online at the end of 2007 will only grow substantially through 2008.
PCGA President Randy Stude uses figures on PC game sales and player-base to show that PC gaming is growing.
In order to make PC gaming a more attractive platform for both publishers and consumers the PCGA plans to focus on getting hardware and software requirements under control, act as a single unified voice on the market size and provide guidance to help resolve industry-wide challenges such as piracy, cheating and security. Obviously piracy is of the most concern to publishers who may start to view PC gaming as too much of a risk. After all why waste time and money on a PC version of a game that will end up being stolen in large quantities when you can focus resources on the console version where piracy is very low?
I was able to catch up with Mark Rein, Vice President of Epic Games, after the briefing to ask some questions about his choice to join the PCGA.
Tom's Games: Mark I know why Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Dell and those guys are here but what do you care about PC gaming? Can't you make console games and do just as well?
Mark Rein: Why can't we make them all? Gears of War aside because Microsoft is the publisher, why are we making UT for two consoles and PC? We want to maximize the revenue potential for our games. We want as many people to play our games as possible. We want as many Playstation players to play our games, we want as many Xbox 360 players to play our games and we want as many PC players as possible to play our games. The PC is certainly an area that has no one defender and if we can join a group that all gets together to defend and help make the PC market flourish I think that's a noble goal and we should do our best.
TG: Why do you think people got nervous when Crysis only sold 87,000 copies and UT3 only sold 34,000 copies in those first few weeks?
MR: NPD numbers are an estimate. We don't know what they are exactly but if you sell 80,000 a month for 10 months that's a multi-million seller worldwide. Who's going to complain about that? We're in the internet age and people react to numbers they don't understand. It's funny, after that I spent a lot of time going through long-term NPD numbers. I actually went and looked all the way back to 1995 and I dissected all the shooters. The path we're on right now isn't going to make it the fastest selling game but PC games have a potentially much longer tail than console games. There's a good chance to sell that game for a much longer period of time than the more hit-oriented console games.
TG: But then you have Cliffy B come out and say that PC gaming is in disarray and...
MR: Oh he's an idiot [laughing]. No, he's a great guy. Cliff makes console games though, right? He's on a console team that makes what is primarily a console game.
TG: There's a fear that companies will look at the sales numbers and say, "Our PC version sold badly compared to the console version. Why don't we just make the console version and save the added expense of the PC version?"
MR: And that is a reasonable fear and part of the reason why we're here. That is definitely part of the reason for this group. [The PCGA] tries to be very careful not to be PC vs. console because they know the realities of the business but that's the reason why we're here and doing this because we want to make sure that day doesn't come.
Join our discussion on this topic
Click here for more Game Developer Conference News
