Publishers Hate the PC

Titan Quest developer highlights the general lack of interest in PC development.

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By John Gillooly on 28 January, 2009

I spent last week visiting my parents and coping with gaming on their PC. It is a powerful machine for the web surfing and the surprisingly hardcore playing of the very casual Hoyles Card Games that my Mum engages in. But the PC is an absolute dog when it comes to most modern games. A lot of this is down to the combination of Windows Vista and 2GB of RAM, but a myriad of other factors like Norton 360 also come into play.

Having cut my gaming teeth on similarly non-gaming focused PCs, it really brought home how many factors like integrated graphics and massive operating system resource use have pretty much destroyed the PC as an introductory path to gaming. You need gaming-specific hardware of some sort in order to play most titles at anything approaching an enjoyable framerate.

This was reinforced by an article that appeared on Edge a few days ago, talking with the developers of Titan Quest about the demise of their former studio, Iron Lore. Titan Quest was one of the few successful PC-only titles of recent years, but it wasn’t enough to interest publishers in more PC-focused action. Instead, Iron Lore folded and its founders regrouped as Crate Entertainment.

As Crate, the company has continued to develop Iron Lore’s uncompleted Black Legion, a console focused action RPG. Depressingly, the company has had to step away from the PC completely, stating that publishers just aren’t interested in PC games at the moment. When asked for reasons, Crate’s Arthur Bruno does the unusual and attributes it to more than piracy.

The most obvious factor people talk about is higher piracy rates on PC. Another possible factor is the number of titles PC gamers buy each year compared to the average console gamer. I suspect PC gamers buy significantly less games per year and this limits the number of different titles the market can support. I could go on speculating about different factors but the ultimate reality for us is that publishers seem to be primarily interested in console development opportunities right now and that dictates what we can sell them on.

This disparity in sales is indicative of the generally poor attention the PC gets when it comes to game releases. With a mere handful of PC-exclusive titles appearing outside of the MMO space, insult is often added by delaying the PC release until months after the console one. Even then the port is usually half-arsed, as games like Grand Theft Auto IV and Saints Row 2 have so clearly demonstrated in recent months.

Silver linings are still there. One of the more refreshing parts of Warner Interactive announcing that F.E.A.R. 2 has gone gold is that the PC will see the game at the same time as consoles (much like the PC demo hit simultaneously with the console demo of the game). It is sad that this is becoming a rarity, yet it is one PC-born franchise that has made the console jump without the giant fuck you to its origins. Maybe there is hope for the PC yet.

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