GDC: Molyneux despairs at "tragic" state of PC gaming

Warcraft, The Sims "sucking the air out of PC market," says Lionhead boss

Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux has said that the PC gaming market is in a tragic state, with two blockbusters hogging sales and stagnation in the casual market.

Speaking in an interview to our sister site Eurogamer.net, to be published later this week, Molyneux was sharing his views on the current PC market following comments made by Epic's Cliff Bleszinski that it is in “disarray”.

"I think it's a huge tragedy. I mean, you might as well say PC gaming is World of Warcraft and The Sims... The weird thing is everyone's got a PC, they're just not buying software for it," commented Molyneux.

And while many developers are chasing the casual PC gaming market as the next big thing, Molyneux believes it's already suffering from repetition and a lack of imagination.

"There's an enormous amount of gaming happening with PopCap, Big Fish and Reflective.

"The fascinating thing is when they first started, all these games came out like Peggle and Mystery Files and Alice Greensleeves and Diner Dash, and it felt quite exciting. There was a lot of innovation going on. Okay, there weren't great graphics, but there was innovation.

"In my view, that has completely stopped. They're doing the same game over and over again with a different wrapper. It's like a mini-universe in itself which is emulating what's happening in our industry," he added.

"The second thing is, you've got The Sims and World of Warcraft sucking all the air out of the PC market. It's just incredible," he said.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=33298