PC is the real future of gaming
According to veteran developer and head of Gas Powered Games Chris Taylor, the future of gaming lies with PC rather than in consoles, which will eventually become a closed and obsolete avenue for development.
According to veteran developer and head of Gas Powered Games Chris Taylor, the future of gaming lies with PC rather than in consoles, which will eventually become a closed and obsolete avenue for development. “Anytime you have a propriety system it’s like a benevolent dictatorship – there are some short term benefits to it, but they fall down in the long run,” Taylor told Total PC Gaming magazine in a recent interview. “That’s been the way it’s been over and over again in the history of technology and even the history of the world.”
While he’s happy creating multi-platform titles and his current project Supreme Commander 2 will be released on Xbox 360 as well as PC, Taylor was echoing a sentiment recently expressed by Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada. Wada intimated that his company is prepared for the death of physical, disc-based console games, which he predicts will happen within ten years, warning the industry to prepare for change.
Going one step further Taylor went on to explain just why PC gaming is insulated from that sort of fate, claiming it’s primarily because of it’s early focus on digital distribution and open nature – which means it isn’t dominated by any of the major players. “So I think the PC is an open platform, and digital distribution means the ability for people to create strong (independent) publishing and distribution platforms- none of which is possible on consoles,” he said. Developers, he believes, will eventually gravitate towards PC as a result. “I could really go down the rabbit hole with this, but I see the PC as the only logical place to carry forward for everyone who wants to compete- it’s the open market place.”
Taylor and Gas Powered Games are currently finalising Supreme Commander 2 which will be released on PC on March 5th in the UK.
You can read our entire interview with Chris Taylor in Issue 30 of Total PC Gaming on sale the 18th of February.
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I love PC gaming but I just can’t stand the upgrading hardware all the time BS. When I buy a console, it’s guaranteed to be relevant for a good few years.
He could very well be right. But I’ll be prepared! xD
But I don’t want a future of indie Tower Defence Flash games, and that was about all we had for most of last year.
LOL, future of gaming? That’s the most ridiculous thing i’ve ever heard, PC was the PAST of gaming. Once the PS2 ushered in the new era consoles effectively killed PC gaming, all the real gamers play on consoles now and many game devs can’t even afford to make PC exclusives anymore because of rampant piracy.
Tell me……when Modern Warfare 2, the biggest selling entertainment launch in history, sells 95% of it’s total sales on consoles, how does that make PC the future? LOL…….what garbage.
The only argument PC owners had was that they had the better graphics and even that’s gone now because Uncharted 2 blows Crysis out of the water visually. PC gaming has nothing left to offer, consoles are the present AND the future of gaming, get over it.
Lets face it, most games are made on PC no matter what system they come out on, without PC there is no games industry.
Meanwhile Supreme Commander 2 is yet another game ‘streamlined and more action based’ for the console market, pushing even more people to retro PC gaming.
It’s all very well, some sort of nirvana in 3-5 years time, but look at what’s happening nOW!
5 million plus DOSBox downloads, over 1 million VMScumm emulator downloads, the huge success of GOG.com and the fact that when Daggerfall became a free download it almost crashed the Bethesda servers and had over 150,000 downloads in the first week all are an indictment on modern PC gaming.
Even so-called Action-RPG’s like Bioshock and Mess Effect are moving more to the action end of the spectrum for the console market rather than the roleplaying end for the PC market.
So I have little hope that PC gaming will still have the coherence in 3 years plus to be what Chris Taylor says.
I say this as someone who worked in the gaming industry throughout the late 80′s to late 90′s, in retail, distribution and publishing and who has kept a close look on PC gaming for 15 years, never having owned or played on console in that time.
I’d like to see IW make the next Modern Warfare without letting any of the production team use PC software.
The current generation of consoles are currently holding back the games industry. The Xbox 360 is based on a DX9.0c PC system that 2005 technology, yet people still insist on calling it a next-gen gaming platform. Developers should be aiming to move there industry forward, utilizing the best technology available to them.
@David Macphail:
You really have no idea what percentage of MW2 copies were sold on the PC, since Steam doesn’t disclose sales numbers and NPDs don’t take digital sales into account, the only way for you to know for sure is if Activision chooses to relate that information to the public, which they haven’t to my knowledge.
Having said that, MW2 has remained the #1 seller on Steam since they started taking pre-orders, with the exception of it being displaced by a few big Steam sales. You can be sure MW2 sold pretty well on the PC, if I had to guess, I would put sales close to or above a million. That’s no small number for a PC game, so you can be sure MW3 will be on the PC as well, because a lower sales number on the PC doesn’t mean it wasn’t profitable, it just means it was a lower sales number.
Then please Chris, stop dumbing down Supreme Commander for the 360.
Balbor, I go the other way. This is the chance to move back to gameplay without the need for powerful PC’s!
David Macphail said:
LOL, future of gaming? That’s the most ridiculous thing i’ve ever heard, PC was the PAST of gaming. Once the PS2 ushered in the new era consoles effectively killed PC gaming, all the real gamers play on consoles now and many game devs can’t even afford to make PC exclusives anymore because of rampant piracy.
Tell me……when Modern Warfare 2, the biggest selling entertainment launch in history, sells 95% of it’s total sales on consoles, how does that make PC the future? LOL…….what garbage.
The only argument PC owners had was that they had the better graphics and even that’s gone now because Uncharted 2 blows Crysis out of the water visually. PC gaming has nothing left to offer, consoles are the present AND the future of gaming, get over it.
# 19 January 2010 at 7:23 pm lol i think what he means is 50 years from now pc will be here were as your 360 will be long gone. all around system(pc)is future!
i dont care if the pc gaming is the future or not. all i know that i love playing on my pc, and that’s all i care about.
Lets leave out all the graphic, sound, speed, and playability of how well the PC works, and let’s get to the mods. COD World At War players on Xbox 360 and PS3 have 4 zombie levels……… PC has over 150, FOR FREE!!!! any questions?
UK_John, Its not limiting just graphics.
Its stuff like AI, Physics, Destruction etc and with the release of DX11 it has the power to create better looking games that use LESS processing power and take the same/less time to make.
We’ve heard countless theories that the pc will be dead and also the consoles, so I wouldn’t take any one theory more seriously than the next one. I do, however, understand what he’s saying, and it’s not about graphics or better controls or whatnot. Even if pc gaming gets less and less ‘blockbuster’ games, it will still be the only place where small-time developers can create and share their work. In that sense the pc will never die. It’s not about sales, as some above failed to notice, it’s about creativity, growth of games as a medium. Frankly, even if none of today’s big-budget titles came to pc it would still be alive and kicking. Hell, I could play bubble-spinner all day
I would argue that PC gamers are getting more ‘blockbuster’ games than before. There was a time when big console titles never came out on PC or when they did they did they were very late and often pour conversions. As consoles have moved closer and closer to PCs we start getting games that 5 years ago would probably of never made it to PC. Batman, Assassin’s Creed and Devil May Cry 4 is a good example of this. The only problem is that as PC hardware advances into the next generations multi formate developed games start to look old on PC.
How can PC gaming be the future, when Piracy is driving developers to make console-only games? Besides that, DRM is driving legit PC gamers to consoles. Ubisoft’s new DRM is the worst one of all. A constant internet connection is needed for a SINGLE PLAYER game? That is an outrage to legit PC gamers. How many people will buy Assassin’s Creed 2 for PC? Not many, I wager. I will get it on PS3 when I find time.
I used to believe the same, but its not the case at all.
PC gaming is dying, it shouldn’t be but it is.
go into any bestbuy on a games launch day and you’ll find 300 copies of it for console and 45 for pc.
some companies dont’ even bother making games for pc anymore, halo 3? force unleashed?
console market is bigger, because so many people out there don’t understand their own computers, requirements etc. Rather than trying to learn its easier to just buy a console
bigger market = top tier.
unfortunate but true.
There are many more PC players aswell, people don’t realise but it’s true.
The are around 70 million ps3 and 360s sold so far total.
There have been over 100 million setup wow subscriptions.
I know only about 11million of them are active but that’s just one game and testament to the huge number of people in the world who are playing pc games.
What's your opinion?
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