John Carmack on PC Gaming….

With everyone and their grand-mother passing judgment on PC games and gaming, how can the legendary programmer and the man behind DOOM/Wolf3D be left behind? In an interview with Tom’s Hardware, Mr.Carmack took a good amount of shots at PC Gaming, though he was smart enough to present them in a polite way while making some good points across the board. According to Carmack:

Well, it’s hard to second guess exactly what the reasons are. You can say piracy. You can say user migration. But the ground truth is just that the sales numbers on the PC are not what they used to be and are not what they are on the consoles.

That gets a big “No shit”. Comparing 3 platforms to a single one (One that is often orphaned and left to dry) is hardly smart. But anyway, the good news is id Software will continue to release games on PCs and support the platform, though with their uber-cynical rantings, one has to assume the clock is ticking before id goes full consoles and tells the PC platform to fuck-off like so many other devs have.

Final Fantasy XIII Coming to PCs?

Square Enix is loving PCs, during an E3 2008 press conference, the producers have said to moved to PC developmental platform and the game, Final Fantasy XII, is being developed primarily for the PC platform. With the PS3/X360 ports following afterwards.

The content will be the same on all platforms,” said Kitase. “However, we have yet to determine how many discs will be required for the 360 version. We’ll have to consider the differences between formats. Currently the game is being built on PC, where it’s actually functional. We’re still focusing on making it work on PS3, so it’s difficult to know how long the process of taking it to 360 will take.”

Thanks to the new PC development platform, Kitase added, “Now that we’re developing on a PC base, the pace is going a bit faster,” Kitase said. “We haven’t introduced new footage of the game, but we should be able to show something new in the near future.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Tops PC Sales Charts

Funcom’s MMO is doing really well in sales, infact, Age of Conan is now No.1 best selling title on the PC platform in Germany, UK, Australia, Italy, Sweden, Norway and Spain. Impressive.

Funcom is proud to announce that Age of Conan rises to number 1 on the PC charts, and the game even competes very well on the all-format lists. The normal edition is now sold out in many outlets due to the initial success of the game, and Funcom aims to resupply new boxes as fast as possible. With more than half a million customers, Age of Conan is already one of the biggest ever western MMO games, and this happens just a week after launch.

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Gran Turismo 5 coming to PCs?

Sony’s latest racing simulator may drift off to PCs too. With an interview with Aussie newspaper Der Standard, Polyphony Digital’s Kazunori Yamauchi said that GT5 may get released on PC platform as well. You can read up the interview here.

Alex St. John: “Consoles as We Know Them are Gone”

It’s a bit late to report on this, but here it goes anyway. CEO of WildTagnent, Alex John satdown with ExtremeTech to talk about a handful of things, interestingly, instead of just crapping on the PC platform like so many else have, he defended it and said that consoles are sure to be failures! Check out the interview here

BioWare Talks Sex, Games and Piracy

BioWare corp, the developer behind great RPGs such as Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights, sat down with Rob Wright of Tom’s Games to discuss their upcoming PC port of Mass Effect, the FOX news lesbian scene controversry, as well as what they think about the PC platform in general. Here’s a snip:

TG: So what’s going to happen with Mass Effect 2? Are we going to see the next title anytime soon, and will the trilogy be for the Xbox 360 life cycle?

Greg Zeschuk: That’s certainly the hope. Of course part of that is dependent on Microsoft and what their timing is for that lifecycle.

Ray Muzyka: I think it’s good if the console life cycles increase because it allows the artist to really craft the game and use the technology they’ve to its potential, instead of having to rebuild a movie camera every time you shoot a movie. It’s a lot of work to make a new engine every time a new platform comes along.

Full interview after the break. Read more