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Velvet Assassin Dev: PC Game Market 'Not Healthy'
by Aaron Linde, May 21, 2008 5:00pm PDTReplay Studios founder Marc Moehring said that the company is sticking with console-only development after the completion of Velvet Assassin (PS3, X360) due to concerns with the PC gaming industry.
"Germany's famous for its PC market," Moehring told Gamasutra. "but we're planning on going to consoles more in the future. Our in-house technology works on Xbox 360, but it's not possible to port it to PS3, so we'll have to change things. We don't want to hire a whole team just for technology."
"We also have the Crytek technology in Germany, but it also hasn't moved to consoles at the moment, so it'll have to be Unreal," he added.
The developer went on to suggest that Replay Studios' small workforce does not lend itself well towards success in the current PC gaming market.
"[The PC gaming industry] is not healthy. The problem is that we are not a huge team, and there are already a lot of good multiplayer games out there, so we're not looking to copy them," Moehring said. "For a very story-heavy PC and Xbox 360 game, we think Velvet Assassin will work. For the future, I don't know, but we will go for online for sure."
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Hehe - That's pretty much it in a nutshell. The devs have noticed they can cream more money by releasing on consoles (I'm an FPS fan, so don't use consoles simply because using a crappy joypad isn't an option). Here in the UK you can blow £40 on a console game, but the same thing (only better on the PC) will cost £18.
Ultimately - if you produce something that has good content, people will pay for it. There are so many garbage games on the market now, over the past 5 years it's become saturated with all kinds of junk. Look at the games available on the Wii, 95% of them are TERRIBLE.
However, it's not all doom and gloom - there are some superb games out, enjoy :)
Apart from that, the response is silly: no reason why it is not healthy (Isn't it?. Really?), not even the usual quotes about piracy.
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So yeah, this game will be a hit on the consoles.
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Heres the thing - there's heavy fragmentation in the market. Heavy. Tastes have changed, and its not easy on console devs either, games now must occupy any of a range of inches rather then like the last generation where you had one megaplatform (the PS2) and could rely on your game being easily available to a whole wide range of consumers.
The PC is becoming its own niche as well, and while the casual side of things on the PC has already found a way to utilize the platform for great profit, the hardcore side is just discovering the business plans required to make the platform work as a profitable venture.
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