Borkachev on 27 March 2008
Infact it's consoles that are losing even more exclusives than PC. Not only to themselves, but to PC also. Pretty much now only first-party games are exclusive on 360/PS3, while PC has Spore, Starcraft 2, Sins of a Solar Empire, Sam & Max, Empire: Total war, A Vampyre story, Storm of War: Battle of Britain, Dragon Age, Space Siege, Stalker: Clear Sky, etc.... are PC-exclusives.
Spore isn't PC-exclusive, although the PC version will be the definitive one. The only other big title on that list is Starcraft 2. You could come up with a more impressive list of upcoming exclusives than that for any console you want to name.
Now, PC gaming isn't dying. It's shrinking, though, and becoming even more specialized -- and it was already pretty damn specialized to begin with. The future of PC gaming is basically the 3 or 4 genres PCs really excel at, with occasional ports of things like Grand Theft Auto. There's always going to be a PC games market, and a lot of the people who play the "PC genres" are happy to keep doing so. In fact, I've noticed they're often violently opposed to anything else.
As for consoles dying (and I'm addressing the OP interview now), well, that's just ludicrous. I'd say "idiotic," but I'm not sure this Alex St. John guy actually believes what he's saying or if he's just trying to hype up his product. I'm calling it now: not only are consoles going to continue to thrive, but so will consoles with bleeding-edge technology. There's always going to be a huge demand for graphically-intense living room gaming, and as long as there is, there'll be products to meet it. Do you suppose all those $2000 TVs people are buying are for decor? Even if the bulk of the money from now on is in Wii-style gaming, the market can easily support a high-end competitor -- and probably two. (I'm not sure if it's possible for Sony to break even at this point, but they could easily have turned a profit this gen by investing in more cost-efficient technology. Their lack of profitability had little to do with the style of gaming they're pursuing).
And if it's about community, that puts the console out of business. Because why the hell does Wal-Mart want to sell a money-losing loss leader device, when all the valuable content will be tied to online services and subscriptions and downloadable stuff? So for all the talk about downloadable content on the console, the console depends on the retail channel for that market to be valuable, and the retailer, if they don't get a cut of that, is going to say why the hell am I trying to sell these consoles at a loss for?
Is this the crux of his argument? Because if it is, someone should probably tell him that retailers don't lose money on games consoles. The manufacturers do.
