Double Fine Could Fund Its Own PC Ports

Tim Schafer, the leader of development studio Double Fine, believes that the games he creates are not going to arrive on the PC anytime soon because of the lack of profit to be made for the publishers who make the decision about gaming platforms.

Writing on the official company website in a Question and Answer section that is filled with humor and irony Tim Schafer writes, “As a developer we do not have final say in the SKU plan for our games. That is the decision of the person investing the money, i.e. the publisher.”

He adds, “We have much of the technology in place to produce PC versions of all these games but there is still some more work required to make them shippable and that costs money. So far, our publishers have not elected to fund that work. Not because they hate PC gamers, but because they don’t see enough financial reward.”

Schafer says that Double Fine is always pitching PC versions of their title to the publishers they are working with and that they might even create ports themselves when they have the resources needed.

At the moment Double Fine is working with publisher THQ and seems to be focusing on downloadable titles that are launched on the Xbox Live Arcade service from Microsoft and on the PlayStation 3 Network from Sony.

Double Fine has unveiled its newest project, called Stacking, which will be launched at some point during the spring of 2011.

The game allows the player to go back to a version of the 1930's where Russian dolls or matryoschas can transmit special abilities to the player character that wears them, allowing them to solve puzzles and explore the world.

The idea sounds somewhat similar to the interchangeable costumes that were at the heart of Double Fine's previous video game, Costume Quest.