Mike Capps, president of Epic Games - the studio behind the Gears of War franchise - has blamed piracy for his studio"s recent preference for developing console-only games in an interview with Edge magazine. However, the developer believes that the market could begin to move back towards PC development in the near future.
Epic Games, who also developed the Unreal engine and Unreal Tournament franchise, released the first Gears of War on both the PC and Xbox 360 in 2007. However, the 2008 sequel Gears of War 2 was released exclusively on the Xbox 360. The third instalment in the series will also appear only on the Xbox 360 - something which the developer puts down to piracy on the PC.
As reported by CVG (via 1UP), in the interview Capps says that six years ago Epic "was a PC company and always had been," with just one PS2 title to its name - a port of Unreal Tournament. But now people complain on the company"s forums that they hate the PC. "And now, if you read our forums," he said, "people are saying: "Why do you hate the PC? You"re a console-only company." And guess what? It"s because the money"s on console."
"We still do PC, we love the PC," Capps says, before going on to say how the impact of piracy has "killed" many good developers, forcing them to change their business model.
Despite this, Capps believes a resurgence in the PC market may be coming. "There"s certainly a light for PC gaming," he said. According to Capps, publishers are starting to "think their money"s going to be shifting back to PC" due to people wanting to spend less time playing games due to the amount of media competing for their attention.
He concludes, "So maybe Facebook will save PC gaming - but it"s not going to look like Gears Of War."