Cliff Bleszinski Bashes PC Gaming Future

The age old debate. The big question. No, I am not talking about the meaning of life, or the existence of a higher power. I am talking about the question that gets gamers everywhere into a heated debate: PC or console?

The PC vs. console debate has been going ever since the golden age of the PC games. Titles like Doom took gamers by storm and had everyone raging about the benefits of PC gaming. Gaming on home computers grew; titles like Myst, Tomb Raider, The Sims, and countless others emerged as high selling heroes.

On the other side of the spectrum, console development saw the entrance of popular devices such as the Sega Genesis, the N64, and the PlayStation. Users had the option of buying one system, and the games they wanted for it, without worrying that their consoles would not support their games.

Recently, Cliff Bleszinski, lead designer of Epic games, announced that the world of PC gaming was going downhill fast. He reported that sales of console games are increasing much faster than PC games, and the only time people like to us a PC for gaming is for internet based games like World of Warcraft.

Is Bleszinski right? Is the future of PC gaming as bleak as it seems? I say yes. These days, buyers do not want to be upgrading their PCs everytime they want to play a newly released game. In most cases, though, this is what has to be done. PCs get dated very quickly, especially in regard to RAM and graphics cards.

Console users, on the other hand, do not have that problem. With the next-gen consoles like the Xbox 360, the PS3, and the Wii, users don't have to fret about their consoles being dated (until, of course, the next wave of consoles is released in a decade or so). It seems to me that buying a console for gaming is a much smarter investment than buying a PC for gaming.

As for whether or not the PC gaming world will be annihilated, I'm not as sure. Die hard fans will always exist, staking their claim that the PC is dominant and always will be. It is true that the PC generally has better control systems, due to a keyboard and mouse. Games like RPGs (role-playing games) are best suited for this type of control scheme.

Game developers are realizing this, though, and are beginning to design RPGs for both PC as well as console use. For example, highly acclaimed The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion was released on both systems. I own both and can say from experience that I much preferred the game on my console.

Ultimately, I see consoles taking over the vast majority of gamers. They are cheaper, more reliable, and more accessible to a greater number of buyers. With the introduction of Xbox Live and PlayStation Online, PC has very little to dangle over the heads of console gamers, and I believe they know it.