14 DAY TRIAL // It's hard being a PC gamer these days, but most of the stalwarts who cannot imagine completely moving their hobby to consoles and handhelds any time soon have learned to live with things like delayed release dates, mostly motivated by the threat of piracy, and with missing downloadable content, motivated by lack of revenue versus porting costs.
But what we should never learn to live with is the kind of false statements and misdirection that two companies, Microsoft and Lionhead, have been deploying in order to disguise their broken promises when it comes to the lack of a launched PC version of Fable III.
Initial news coming out said that Microsoft was really interested in getting back into the PC gaming area and that Fable III launching on Windows-powered computers was a good way of building some connection with the community, and getting some good will that could power the launch of a new Games for Windows Live and other actions.
But soon after Microsoft changed its tune, saying that Fable III would arrive on the PC after a while, without mentioning any date and then the company stopped talking about the version of showing it.
And now, just after Lionhead says that they wished they could talk about PC-based Fable III, Microsoft has shown Fable III running on the PC at CES.
In less than a year, this game, a rather high profile one, went from simultaneous release to indefinitely delayed and now to playable but not released.
This is no proof that Microsoft is serious about PC gaming, but a sign that the company is happy to focus on the Xbox 360 and treat Windows-based gaming as a sideshow where potential customer can be deceived indefinitely without any penalty.
The only way to make up for this is to give us Gears of War 3 on the PC at the same time as on the Xbox 360 and with some extra content.
Surely, that will not happen, but at least Microsoft could have the decency to abandon the PC totally and let the market chart its own path.