Where have all the PC games gone?
t’s late in November, and Christmas is over in terms of game releases. If it’s not out by now chances are it’ll be delayed until next year. The inner PC user in me wants to attribute the delays to Windows Vista, however in reality Vista’s changes to the PC gaming landscape will mean very little for some time to come, and certainly does not provide a financial imperative to not release games for Christmas.
It is most likely the US launch of the PS3 and Wii keeping focus away from the PC market, which is a shame considering one of the by-products of Vista’s pretty desktop looks is that it gets gaming hardware into a lot more people’s hands. This means they can buy a game, fire it up and enjoy it, rather than try to run it only to discover that Intel has a whole other definition of ‘Extreme’ when it comes to integrated graphics.
This has left us PC gamers with a smattering of titles, some good, most average. We’ve seen stellar moments like Company of Heroes, competent ones like Dark Messiah of Might and Magic and ummm, to put it this way, asking around the office here the response was a sarcastic “That new football manager game” and “Oh, yeah, Jaws, that was good”.
Unfortunately having the most sharks ever in a game does not make it jawdropping (pun intended). The real answer is that there has been very little, in fact after asking more the only other title of note in recent months was Warhammer 40K: Dark Crusade, which is made by the same people as Company of Heroes. Hats off to Relic Entertainment for flying the PC flag while our former champions like Epic Entertainment go all console on us.
Looking forward to Christmas it looks like Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Rainbow Six: Vegas and *breathes deep* Lord of The Rings: The Battle For Middle Earth II: The Rise of The Witch King (LoTRTBFME2TRoTWK for short) are the only titles of note due to hit the PC.
As far as Christmas for PC users goes it looks like Santa Claus was mugged while trying to pay a homeless man to queue to buy him a PS3.
Redemption will come next year when some potentially groundbreaking titles emerge from development. High on our wishlist are games like Bioshock, Supreme Commander, Hellgate: London, Crysis and Command and Conquer 3. There will also be a swathe of massively multiplayer titles launched, attempting to knock World of Warcraft from its throne of incumbency, while WoW delivers a significant amount of newly minted addictive content in the form of The Burning Crusade expansion pack.
Despite the generally bleak outlook for PC gaming this Christmas, each and every one of the aforementioned titles stand out, and are laden with potential. While this year it looks like PC gamers will have to cope with concept’s like ‘sunshine’ and ‘fresh air’ by this time next year we should be happily ensconced in our darkened rooms working through a pile of highly anticipated releases.
