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Valve: Games for Windows only to promote Vista, not PC games
Posted on Monday, 12 March 2007 by Speed, source: Gamesindustry.biz
Gamesindustry.biz sat down with Valve's Doug Lombardi who questions the goals Microsoft has with their "Games for Windows" initiative. In his opinion, they're more into promoting Vista than in actually backing PC Gaming
While Sony, Nintendo and (partially) Microsoft are doing all they can to convince people that console gaming is the future and the PC is near death, Lombardi does make a couple of good points to proove that PC gaming is still very much alive:
PC 4 Evah!
"Right now it seems like it's part of the marketing push to help Vista," commented Doug Lombardi, marketing manager at Valve, in an exclusive interview for GamesIndustry.biz.
"To really back a platform is a sustained effort over years and years, so we'll see if in two years Microsoft is still spending money to put Games for Windows sections in retail, and having PR people preach that message that the PC isn't dying, it’s actually bigger than all the consoles put together."
"To really back a platform is a sustained effort over years and years, so we'll see if in two years Microsoft is still spending money to put Games for Windows sections in retail, and having PR people preach that message that the PC isn't dying, it’s actually bigger than all the consoles put together."
While Sony, Nintendo and (partially) Microsoft are doing all they can to convince people that console gaming is the future and the PC is near death, Lombardi does make a couple of good points to proove that PC gaming is still very much alive:
All those people do is say the PC's dying, the console's winning, and nobody on the PC side is championing that platform. And sales data tracks retail, and there's no doubt about it, PC sales at retail are declining."
Lombardi points out that, "World of Warcraft is making a whole lot of money outside of the retail channel, we're making a decent bit of cash off Steam, all the casual guys are not tracked - the PopCap games, Bejewelled, all that stuff doesn't show up."
"If you took World of Warcraft, Steam, PopCap and added it to the PC pool, all these huge revenues - just WOW by itself, right? If you took WOW's 2006 revenues and the 360's revenues and compared them, even then you would say I don't think the PC's really dead," he concluded
Lombardi points out that, "World of Warcraft is making a whole lot of money outside of the retail channel, we're making a decent bit of cash off Steam, all the casual guys are not tracked - the PopCap games, Bejewelled, all that stuff doesn't show up."
"If you took World of Warcraft, Steam, PopCap and added it to the PC pool, all these huge revenues - just WOW by itself, right? If you took WOW's 2006 revenues and the 360's revenues and compared them, even then you would say I don't think the PC's really dead," he concluded
PC 4 Evah!
In other news:
6 Comment(s)
derf26 (old)
If it happens I hope apple does it and not M$.
Maverick Hunter X(D.R)
derf26 (old)
I dunno, i've never used DX10 or any of the new consoles much really. But one thing is for sure, it's gonna be 10 times more expensive than any console. Especially if you buy a legal version of Vista.
Anonymous
derf26 (old)
XP?
It takes a boatload less resources (2 to 3 times less than Vista) and the only advantage Vista gives us is DX10, and with that advantage comes extremely expensive graphics cards.
derf26 (old)
Oh and for the record I had Vista installed on my PC at two different times (during Beta and when it came out) for a total of three weeks or so. In the end both times I reverted to XP, and i'll be getting a mac as soon as OSX Leopard comes out with an official version of boot camp (let's you run XP for games).
Pretty much every single "new" feature that's in Vista has been a ripoff from OS X which had them for years. The difference is mac doesn't have bugs while Vista is full of them, and Vista oversimplifies things to an extent whereby functionality is lost. So the only reason you would find Vista fun is if you haven't tried any macbooks before. Which i'm sure you haven't.
With boot camp I can combine all of the media, work and creativity advantages of the mac, with the gaming advantages of the XP. It'll be great :) I could even add Vista in a couple of years when some decent DX10 games come out, vista has at least some of it's bugs fixed, and when I decide to get a new gfx card when they're cheaper.