PC Developers Aiming Too High?

PC gaming may be alive and well, but Company of Heroes senior producer Tim Holman believes some developers are shooting themselves in the foot.

Holman thinks developers should make games with more accessible system requirements, instead of titles that run like a slideshow on all but the highest-end computer rigs. Indeed, most serious PC gamers are stuck pouring their hard-earned cash into yearly hardware upgrades that could instead be spent on buying new games. It's even worse when a solid gaming computer already costs well more than double the price of the latest gaming consoles.

"I think one of the things that hurt PC gaming is PC developers," said Holman, speaking to Edge. "If you make a game with such high-end requirements that only people with a $6,000 PC can play it at a decent framerate, of course your sales are going to drop."

Players are not going to want to invest in games until they are able to test them out to ensure they run decently on their machines, he said. This spurs them to pirate games, causing more problems for publishers. "I think PC developers shoot themselves in the foot to a large degree," he said. "A lot of companies are guilty of that."