Earlier today I stumbled across a web interview with Chris Beatrice of Titled Mill (Children of the Nile, Caesar, SimCity Societies, etc.) that included his thoughts on the future of the PC gaming industry. While I think the whole interview is worth a read (see the link), I've copied some of the more pertinent quotes below:
"Fighting for shelf space in tiny boutiques is absolutely not the way PC games are going to hit their sweet spot - imagine if that single shelf of best sellers at the airport magazine stand was the only book store in town! Thankfully, there are many different ways to distribute games independently now. "
"The PC has so many advantages as a gaming platform, but big budget polygon-crunching games that can only be played by a select few, with the skills and gaming system capable of doing so, do not capitalize on what makes the PC unique and wonderful for games. So I’ll come out and admit it -- we’re going to turn things down a notch in terms of budget and technology, and turn things up four or five notches in terms of originality, gameplay, fun, and connection to the people we all serve, namely, the gaming consumer. "
"My feeling is the PC gaming industry shot itself in the foot by trying to be something it’s not. The PC as a gaming platform and its audience has some interesting and unique characteristics (just as consoles do) and the trick is to capitalize on those, and to seek out and work with other groups that also get that - since this platform and overall 'crowd' is who we are, what we love, and what we’re good at.
People want to play all sorts of games. Far, far more people own PCs than any other gaming platform, and most people are not so impressed by killer graphics technology when there’s no underlying gameplay. That characterizes us and many others as developers as well - we want to make all different kinds of games, we want to innovate, we want to focus on the game in there, not what it looks like.
We’d rather make five games in a year than one game every five years. Of course we still want our games to look great, but let’s be honest, the last five to eight years or so have really shown the diminishing returns in chasing the screenshot, if you know what I mean.
In PC games there’s a ton of opportunity, potential for originality and innovation. And I think there’s also plenty of money in the "middle" - that is, in games that sell 30,000 to 300,000 copies, rather than millions."
