Alex St. John, CEO of WildTangent and one of the creators of DirectX, has spoken out in support of PC gaming, dismissing the idea put forward by developers like Tim Sweeney that console gaming is the future.
In a recent interview with ExtremeTech St. John claimed that Tim Sweeney of Epic, who has been vocal in his on-going support for consoles despite being a member of the PC Gaming Alliance, was wrong when he said that consoles are surpassing PCs. St. John believes that the PC will always have more power than any console.
Speaking about the future of the platform, St. John (pictured) said that he believes digital distribution is the future for the industry and that retail stores are doomed to fail if they continue to rely on pre-orders as a way of generating cash.
Remembering a recent trip to his local computer game store, St. John said that he saw entire shelves labeled "Coming soon!" and trying to entice preorders. St. John described this as "selling futures on unreleased games."
"You can think of it as walking into a grocery store and saying, "Hey, I'm a customer for some chocolate, do you guys have any chocolate?" And the grocery store says, "Yeah, we have 50 pound barrels of it over there. They're a thousand bucks a barrel." You say, "Well I like chocolate, but not that much." The store says, "Well go to hell, that's all we've got. A thousand bucks or no chocolate for you." That's how retail games are sold. And it's an extremely inefficient business model. It's very crude."
Ugh - please St. John, don't mention chocolate again so soon after Easter. We feel sick enough as it is.
Do you think consoles are the future, or are you resting your hopes on PCs and handhelds? Let us know what you think in the forums.
In a recent interview with ExtremeTech St. John claimed that Tim Sweeney of Epic, who has been vocal in his on-going support for consoles despite being a member of the PC Gaming Alliance, was wrong when he said that consoles are surpassing PCs. St. John believes that the PC will always have more power than any console.
Speaking about the future of the platform, St. John (pictured) said that he believes digital distribution is the future for the industry and that retail stores are doomed to fail if they continue to rely on pre-orders as a way of generating cash.
Remembering a recent trip to his local computer game store, St. John said that he saw entire shelves labeled "Coming soon!" and trying to entice preorders. St. John described this as "selling futures on unreleased games."
"You can think of it as walking into a grocery store and saying, "Hey, I'm a customer for some chocolate, do you guys have any chocolate?" And the grocery store says, "Yeah, we have 50 pound barrels of it over there. They're a thousand bucks a barrel." You say, "Well I like chocolate, but not that much." The store says, "Well go to hell, that's all we've got. A thousand bucks or no chocolate for you." That's how retail games are sold. And it's an extremely inefficient business model. It's very crude."
Ugh - please St. John, don't mention chocolate again so soon after Easter. We feel sick enough as it is.
Do you think consoles are the future, or are you resting your hopes on PCs and handhelds? Let us know what you think in the forums.
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