There is no denying that console gaming in recent years has grown to far outstretch PC gaming, at least in a commercial sense. Seldom do PC games come anywhere close to their console counterparts in terms of sheer sales volumes. This has given rise to the now tired “Is PC gaming dying?” debate.
One of the grand daddies of PC gaming, id Software (Quake, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D), has shared its take on the situation, with studio president Todd Hollenshead telling IGN that he believes that thanks to the popularity of MMOs like World of Warcraft, and the fact that PC hardware continues to keep ahead of console hardware, PC gaming is not going anywhere anytime soon.
“Because of the great games you have coming out on the consoles, and for a period of time, the consoles were pretty competitive technically with the PC, it has receded in prominence,” said Hollenshead at Quakecon.
“It’s probably getting back to the point right now where technically on the PCs you’re going to be able to start doing more and more things that you can’t do on the consoles.”
“It’s also hard to say PC gaming is dying when the biggest game franchise, World of Warcraft, is a PC game.”
Hollenshead admits that PC gaming cannot keep pace with console gaming when it comes to retail sales. In a separate interview Id’s creative director Tim Willits told IGN that piracy continues to be the biggest thing holding PC gaming back.
“The biggest struggle that we have with PCs is, as everyone knows, that piracy is out of control,” said Willits, attributing this trend to the fact that many PC game developers are moving towards cloud based gaming, and “dedicated, client architectures.”
Recent releases such as StarCraft II, Splinter Cell: Conviction and others have required gamers to be connected to an external server to play even the single player component. Is this a future that PC gamers are going to have to get used to? Share your views in the forums.
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