Gears Of War 2 Staying Away From PC, Blame Pirates
In an interview with Total Video Games, Lead Game Designer Cliff Bleszinski revealed the reason PC owners won't be joining in the fight against the Locust Horde:
The PC right now is a fair amount different to what it was back in the day, with all the badly integrated video chips. Here's the problem right now; the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software. Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC.
Whichever side of the piracy debate you call home, this news is a major blow to PC gaming. While the original Gears of War was first released on the 360 its PC port featured exclusive content geared (no pun intended) towards PC gamers. Now these same gamers are left in the cold. While I am keen to side with CliffyB on this one and invoke shame upon pirates there has been previous evidence that Bleszinski was starting to pull away from PC such as this interview with the MTV Multiplayer Blog back in February:
"I think people would rather make a game that sells 4.5 million copies than a million and Gears is at 4.5 million right now on the 360. I think the PC is just in disarray... what's driving the PC right now is 'Sims'-type games and WoW and a lot of stuff that's in a web-based interface. You just click on it and play it. That's the direction PC is evolving into, so for me the PC is kind of the secondary part of what we're doing. It's important for us, but right now making AAA games on consoles is where we're at."
What is your take on this development? Is piracy ruining the PC biz or are gamers just looking for a different type of experience? Certainly the success of games like The Sims and WoW are proof that the PC games are still moneymakers in the hands of the right developers.
Gears Of War 2 - Cliff Bleszinski Q&A Feature [TVG]
TheDoctor
Posted to Video Games on 29 September 2008
· Comments (3)
Other stuff like this: cliff bleszinski, gears of war 2, pc, pirates
"Certainly the success of games like The Sims and WoW are proof that the PC games are still moneymakers in the hands of the right developers."
that isn't right. the sims is the best-selling pc game-franchise in the world. and it's certainly not aimed at hardcore gamers who know how to apply a crack and bypass the disc check.
wow and other mmo's, on the other hand, are moneymakers because they cannot be pirated, AND they require a monthly fee, too.
single player games, especially very hardware-hungry ones are destined to be pirated - while the same titles on consoles only require a console (lower price than a high-end videocard).
if it was your money and work... which platform would you choose?
That may all be good points. But Gears 1 was originally promoted XBox only too. Then (way) later ported to the PC. The XBox only first, later Games for Windows on the PC thing hat probably more to do with other strategies then with anti-piracy concerns.
So I think, they just want to give Gears 2 the same XBox only touch for the start and will definitely port it to the PC later, same as for Gears 1. But why not bash some Pirates while at it when it comes for free.
I've been finding the piracy argument pretty tough to swallow these days, I know it exists, and piracy exists on the 360 anyways (heck, searching for a used game on craigslist I get a lot more 'backup' advertisements then actual games now)
For me personally I find it more of a quality/service issue with pc gaming today. With a console game I go, buy it, pop it in and I'm playing in 5 minutes (this includes the walking into the home, unwrapping, powering up, blah blah blah). With a PC... tack onto those 5 minutes is anywhere from 10-30 minutes install time, then the wretched hell that is the CD key, which these days just has been getting worse. Then if I LOSE the cd key oh sweet merciful god... The console is just an easier experience, you know it'll run, it'll look great, no cd key issues, easy online play, and if you get it used no worry that someone else still has the cd key out there, no DRM stuff, the list just goes on and on. It's kind of like they burned and salted the once sweet fertile PC ground and then wonder why nothing grows anymore =p