14 DAY TRIAL // A lot has been made about the death of PC gaming over the years, with publishers and analysts saying that the platform was declining because of piracy, hardware variety and lack of blockbuster releases, but one of the leaders of Epic Games believes that the platform is in the middle of a rebirth.
Speaking to CVG Mike Gamble, who is the leader of the European division of Epic Games, has said, “There’s a massively thriving community of hardcore gamers on the PC still.”
He added, “The way they get their games is different where it’s nearly all online delivery, so you’ve got the likes of Paradox, who do a variety of niche content but it’s all massively hardcore and serves that audience. You’ve got the World Of Tanks guys who have something like a million concurrent users or something stupid like that.”
This is seen by Gamble as being evidence of a changed platform, one that can support much more variety than before and one that is more dynamic than the one offered by home gaming consoles.
But the developer is aware that the market for the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii is more attractive to publishers because of the bigger unified player base and because of the momentum that the market now has.
Gamble says that at the moment Epic Games is not interested in creating game exclusively on the PC but sees a possibility for change in the future.
The Epic Games executive talked a bit about the Samaritan tech demo that Epic showed earlier in the year, saying that everything seen there was already possible on a very expensive and powerful PC.
The company commented that Samaritan was designed as a sort of challenge to console developers, pushing them to create new platforms that could deliver that kind of experience to the players at a moderated price point.