[Saxon]

There was an interview with a veteran game designer in either PC Gamer of PC Gameplay a month or so back. I forget his name, sorry. They asked him about the death of the PC game at the hands of consoles, especially in light of Halo moving over to the Xbox. He laughed and said it is a cyclical trend. As a new generation of consoles come out, designers drift over to them and more games come out in that area. Then, as that technology ages, more and more designers move back over to the PC, which is where the cutting edge games (technologically) are being made. The PC specs move forward continuously, while the consoles move in steps. Further, many designers want to work on the next Great Game, not “Generic RTS” which will never be famous.

He also pointed out that the control system on consoles limits them to what type of game they can have, “dumbing them down” as Richard notes. Peter Molyneux, who is noted for cutting edge games, talked in a different interview about PC’s vs consoles . He points out that the mouse is a much better tool than your average game pad. He also noted that the installed base of PC’s is very high and that with the rise of the internet, a lot more people see the PC as an entertainment device than in the past. His feeling is that PC games have a bright future, as more and more people are using PC’s. Buying a game to try out on the PC you are using for the internet costs $50, while buying a console and then a $50 game costs a lot more. The market is growing, which makes more room for niche developers and quality products appreciated by only a small audience.

I guess I am trying to say that PC games are actually in great shape. I remember when only one store in my town had PC games and there were only three or four on the shelf. Now that same town has dozens of places to buy games and mail order internet is amazing. Hell, Nairobi has a second hand PC games shop and I have had to discipline staff for playing games during working hours. PC games are everywhere and are being bought left and right. I won’t say it is easy for a developer to make money or that all the games coming out are great, but for the consumer, the roses are blooming. Further, for the specialist developer, the market is just big enough that if you do things right, you can do ok.

Way back when I joined this board, I remember someone asking Richard if Shrapnel was going to go broke due to some event, something about sales of SEIV. I think he replied that he couldn’t release numbers, but that sales were doing quite well and were competitive against a certain Category of the big developers. Perhaps Richard could refresh my memory, but I remember sitting back and saying “Wow, these little guys are doing pretty well with this internet business model”.

The market might be as cutthroat as hell, but the number, quality and choice of games has been rising for the fifteen years I have been playing. Sure, the Playstation has more games than my PC, but Atari also had more than my Vic20. We might be coming up to a consolidation of some companies and we have already seen the bankruptcy of others (Looking Glass comes to mind as a quality company going bust), but if you look at the number of games in development and expected to release this year, it is hard to be pessimistic, at least as a consumer.