With no one else to do so, Valve has stood up for the PC at a presentation to prove that PC gaming isn’t just alive, but an intuitive and innovative canvas.
Gabe Newell blamed the thought of PC gaming’s death on perception. Where the 360, Wii, and PS3 all have great champions, the PC does not. "…there’s no equivalent on the PC, and the people who are traditionally driving these messages, like Microsoft or Intel or Apple are, for various reasons, not very effective champions," Newell stated.
He also stated that PC gaming dwarfs console gaming, brining up Garner Group data indicating that the PC is home to 260 million online gamers and that Steam, one of but many online game distributing systems, serves 15 million gamers and has a 191% year-over-year growth.
This brought him to his next, and quite possibly his smartest, remark. While retail sales have relatively remained level since 2001, online transactions have risen dramatically. This proves what has been know before; what the NPD says is not always true, since it does not track online purchases. If every purchase from now on for the PC were made online, NPD would say that the PC was officially dead when really there’d be billions of customers.
For the PC, it’s great to be defended by a large gaming developer. However, if people listen to NPD numbers and not common sense, it may very well lead them to end PC gaming on their part. As more and more people follow suit, there’s a very real possibility that the PC will be in actual danger. What can PC gamers do to counteract this? Speak the truth.
I’m glad that the champion problem may not be an ailment for the PC anymore. The PC may have finally found its own (official) champion: Valve.
[Via Gamasutra]
