Newell and Yerli: Two dueling perspectives on the PC
The death of the PC as a gaming platform gets predicted every year. Soon we’ll all be gaming on consoles in our living rooms.
So, how do PC developers see it?
One opinion comes from Cevat Yerli of Crytek, developers of Far Cry and Crysis. (Yes, they have a theme going.)
The other critique outside Crytek was the fact that the PC industry is really, at the moment, I would say the most intensely pirated market ever. It’s crazy how the ratio between sales to piracy is probably 1 to 15 to 1 to 20 right now. For one sale there are 15 to 20 pirates and pirate versions, and that’s a big shame for the PC industry. I hope with Warhead I hope we improve the situation, but at the same time it may have an impact on [our] PC exclusivity in the future.
Twenty to one is a pretty bold claim, and Yerli doesn’t cite a source, but this is the perception he’s operating on. Admittedly, finding a concrete number for piracy is difficult, but Crysis’s punishing system requirements and so-so reciption probably were a significant contribution to Crytek’s disappointment in sales numbers.
Valve big man and all-around big man Gabe Newell doesn’t see it quite that way. Citing the success of Blizzard and World of Warcraft, he said:
Essentially, [Blizzard is] creating a new Iron Man every month, in terms of the gross revenue they’re generating as a studio. Any movie studio would be shouting about that from the rooftops… We think the number of connected PC gamers we are selling our products to dwarf the current generation of consoles put together… There are tremendous opportunities in figuring out how to reach out to those customers.
(I wish I could pick out a different quote, but the original Eurogamer article isn’t loading for me here.)
It’s true Blizzard is basically printing money now, and the release of Starcraft 2, is probably going to bankrupt South Korea. But nobody has any shot of dethroning Blizzard anytime soon, so their specific success might not be constructive in talking about the state of the platform.
Popularity: 6% [?]
I would not mind the end of the PC as a gaming platform, if for no other reason than console gaming has much simpler controls. Call me crazy if you must–eveyrone else does–but I LIKE my dual-analog sticks, and really don’t see the keyboard being useful as a huge fifty-plus-button controller. Oh, AND I’ve got to get my mouse involved too. If the console market could ever get its head around an MMO, it would at least LOOK like a WoW-Killer.
In terms of money, you’re right. In terms of innovation and working hard to secure the PC as a gaming platform, I’d place Valve above Blizzard. I think the biggest problem with PC game sales is ironically, not piracy but the DRM introduced to prevent piracy. It does little to nothing in terms of preventing piracy and only serves to hurt and frustrate valid customers, and by now - with BioShock and Mass Effect’s massive amounts of it - gamers are not buying the games because they’re fed up with it, yet the low sales are still blamed on piracy.
Also in regards to the above comment: console controls may work better for some games but for many more, including the ones I play most, PC controls are far superior.
Final Fantasy XI has been out on consoles for quite a while. The controls are pretty good, it’s just the game itself that hates you. As for console vs. PC, I’d also throw in that the PC has an advantage of being a wide open platform. The other consoles and even the iPhone are starting to come around to garage developers, but it’s still hard to get a license. There’s a lot of great games out there that just wouldn’t have gotten a start without some crazy shut-in being able to monkey around. Audiosurf, for instance, never would have made it on a console, but Steam provides a perfect venue for it.
I really don’t count FFXI–wasn’t it a PC port?
Nope, simultaneous release. Designed from the ground up for the PS2.