14 DAY TRIAL // Developers are beginning to slowly back away from the PC as their favorite design platform. Their main motivation is the fact that piracy is getting bigger and bigger for this platform, although it affects the Xbox 360 as well. The huge number of different PC configurations makes the development process very troublesome in comparison with creating a game for a single console.
But don’t worry PC gamers out there as efforts are being made to salve the popular platform. One of these initiatives is the much debated PC Gaming Alliance comprised of various big hardware manufacturers, like Intel or AMD-ATI, and several gaming studios and publishers like Activision or Epic Games. They militate for bringing successful console only games to the PC because, in most cases, the configuration is superior to that of a console.
One of the heads of the PC Gaming Alliance, Randy Stude from Intel, has just announced some charges towards LucasArts for not bringing their very successful title Star Wars: The Force Unleashed to the PC. The game which appeared on all the three major consoles out there, the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii, has enjoyed record sales and Stude is certain that it would have been the same if the company had brought it to the PC. LucasArts cited that the limitations imposed by lower end PCs would have ruined an enjoyable Star Wars experience for all of the audience.
“In the last several years there have been at least 100 million PCs sold that have the capabilities or better of an Xbox 360. It's ridiculous to say that there's not enough audience for that game potentially and that it falls into this enthusiast extreme category when ported over to the PC. That's an uneducated response,” said Stude about LucasArts’ reasoning.
He added that the experiences on the three consoles could have measured up to the relative PC configurations. “I think you probably got plenty of feedback and opinions from your readers and my personal opinion is if they're making games for the Wii, Xbox and PS3 they're scaling their experience to meet all three of those platforms. They're good on the Wii, better on the Xbox 360 and the best on the PS3. There's no argument that they could give not to be able to support good, better and best on the PC.”