Blizzard: PC Gaming Is NOT Dying!

17 Aug 2009 at 08:01:01 by Gunnar Petzall

Talking to IncGamers, Blizzard's VP of game design Rob Pardo disagrees strongly with the notion PC gaming is in decline.

"We all know? I disagree!" Pardo replied to an insinuation of PC decline, saying "the PC is still a very strong platform" with a penetration rate that "got to dwarf all the consoles combined. Everyone's got a computer on their desk and some people now have multiple computers on their desk so it's always going to be a great platform."

Pardo feels Blizzard is "privileged to be one of the few developers who are still doing big PC products."

He admitted that some companies struggle to properly monetise their products, and especially games with only a single player mode suffer from piracy to a greater extent as well, but is not at all worried for Blizzard, or other PC games developers like Valve. "We feel the types of games we make in the model that we have, we can dominate on the PC and it's a great platform for us. I think other companies out there, like Valve out there who are also awesome on the PC."

The reason for "the whole myth [about] the PC game industry dying" is simply lack of ways to show the proper sales stats from PC games. Console is simple, since almost everything goes though retail, but PCs got digital distribution, subscription models and micro-payment models so "there's nothing out there that accurately describes how much revenue is coming in through PC gaming. I guarantee you that anything that the NPD [Group] or anyone else shows out there is at best 50 percent of it."

You can read the whole interview here, and also check out our big upcoming StarCraft II Single Player Hands-On Preview, new single player screenshots as well as new single player gameplay video footage.

Comment