I think they man that the money is on HD consoles.

Epic is developing themselves into a corner.

If alot dont own a High End PC, how can piracy be a problem? Why would pirates download to so many games that it shuts down an industry, yet non have a computer to play the game?

And a lot more to do with UE3 basically being a console first engine.  Way more console devs seem to use UE then PC.

Eh.  Maybe 1% of Epics money actually comes from developing.

Leasing out the Unreal Engine for PS360 games... THAT is their moneymaker.  That's why they're quick to "defend the shield" when it comes to the HD consoles.

As far as I know... UE3 isn't NEARLY as popular on PC then as it is on console.  You see this with Epic in pretty much every statement they make... they want their customers to develop themselves in a corner so they buy the UE3 engine.  Since they don't have a Wii engine and most PC devs are oldschool.

Agreed. Go through all of the trouble and financial hardship of making a game that pushes the PC to insane levels and for what? Minimal sales due to rampant piracy? I can't blame Epic.

But just for this reason piracy should hit them less and leasing their engine for PC games, even if smaller than for PS360, should still be an appealing business for them.

I'm sure Crytek and others will be more than happy to lease their engines to PC developers "orphans" of Epic.

BTW, PC, with its HW power growing continuously instead of by steps like consoles generations, towards the end of a gen (and at the beginning of the next, when new console HW isn't maxed out yet) becomes more and more a good showcase for developers and game engines. On PC a well designed and scalable engine can also show improvements of a same given version as PC power grows.

And all this even without considering that it looks like MS is pushing PC gaming again to help Win 7 sales: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=109329

...Because those that do own a higher end PC know more about PCs in general, and how to pirate?

And why would pirates get so many games for free, that it'd shut down an industry? Because pirates don't care. They do not care about the industry, they care about playing their games.

I can't help but notice that the most successful PC developers (Blizzard, Valve) don't push their customers into buying expensive new graphics cards to run their games. They build their games to run well on a mid-spec PC and let the graphic options slide to accommodate people with 3 year old machines and over-engineered super-rigs.

I think Epic, and many other PC developers, simply overshot the PC market. They tried to sell to people who willingly shell out $200+ for a new graphics card instead of trying to sell to the many millions more people who have crummy integrated graphics.

So Epic has to go to HD consoles, where the expense of a fancy GPU is offset by bulk purchases and hardware subsidies. The PC profits are left to those with more humble production values, such as Valve, Blizzard, Pop-cap and Zynga, simply because more potential customers can run their games.

well as a bussines man i would hope he knows ware the money is. besides it's making ubsoftes (actions as of late on PC 's look) bad.

^^
I can agree that most probably he's doing the current best thing for his company, maybe focusing on consoles made their engine less competitive on PC so it was less and less rewarding to keep on developing it, but when he's the N-th person that through the centuries tries to persuade us that PC gaming is dead, he's a lot less credible.