For all the lip service that they pay to PC gaming, with the last week initiative of publishing an
open letter to gamers coming off
as particularly cheesy, Microsoft is not doing much to promote the PC as a viable gaming platform. And some of its key people seem to be openly favoring the Xbox 360 over the good old PC.
Peter Zetterberg, who is the head of the Microsoft Games Studio in Europe, said that "If we launch a game that is on 360 and PC simultaneously, we basically shoot ourselves in the foot". The statement was made in reference to the German market, where the
Xbox 360 is not very popular but a quick look at the launch schedule for the most important games published by Microsoft will confirm that this is true for all the markets.
Mass Effect, one of the most important games launched on the Microsoft made platform had to wait six months before a PC version was launched on any market. The original Gears of War title also had a significant wait period. The PC version of
GTA IV is not even announced, even though few doubt that the game will be making the format move at some point in the future.
Zetterberg tried to justify the scheduling by saying that "I would say that 90 per cent of the games that are pitched to us are on console. We're strongly perceived as a console publisher because we're the first-party publisher even though the Windows operating system is equally important to us".
Equally important it might be, but only statement wise. It might be true that the Xbox 360 sales will suffer in case games are launched simultaneously on the console and PCs, but if staggered releases are the only answer that Microsoft has to this situation, then it should re-examine the viability of the Xbox 360 and maybe even develop it altogether.
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