In his latest blog post Peter Moore has expressed his take on the decline of sports games on the PC, touching on high definition consoles, investment and piracy.
Despite knowing that some fans will again label him the ”devil incarnate,” Moore posted what he sees as the ”core issues”. Has the PC sports genre dried up for good?
”The PC as a platform for authentic, fully-licensed, simulation sports games has declined radically in the past three years as the next generation consoles, with their high definition graphics and 5.1 sound capabilities have attracted millions of consumers to eschew the “lean in” PC sports gaming experience for the “lean back” full room console experience,” writes Moore.
”Businesses have to make hard trade offs for where to invest for the best return, thus creating capital to make even more games. They have to take expensive risks in our hits and misses industry with new intellectual property to keep the games available to gamers fresh, innovative and pushing the technical boundaries of the hardware platforms.”
The announcements that EA Sports will be essentially scaling back PC sports titles, especially ones that were born on the platform, angered a lot of gamers. The truth is that consoles are better suited to most sports games with controllers offering easier use and they open up the games more for multiplayer, either online or with friends in the room.
”Piracy is an issue. Sorry, I know many of you disagree with me on this, but the numbers don’t lie. Companies spend millions developing content, and deserve to see a return on investment for their risk,” he continued. ”The employees developing the game design, writing code and creating art deserve to get paid for their work. Period.”
”In order to make fundamental shifts in an ecosystem, you sometimes have to hit the reset button. That’s what we have done this year at EA SPORTS as regards some of our franchises on the PC. That does not mean that we aren’t coming back next year with new, innovative, maybe even less-expensive ways to play all of our franchises on the PC, but for right now we are assessing all of the options open to us to shift the current paradigm for our games on this platform.”
Recently Blizzard has complained about the lack of more vocal support for the PC, even firing a small volley at corporate giant Microsoft for flagrant bias to their next-gen console. Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime even declared that reports of declines within the PC games market are ”just completely dead wrong”. PC sports games - is this one genre that slipped the net and would many actually miss it?
Click here to read Peter Moore’s Official Blog.
Source: Eurogamer
