Epic Blames Pirates For Console-First Development

Epic, and its series of Unreal Tournament games, used to be known as a PC-centric developer. These days, consoles come first, something that rankles PC gamers no end.

If you were wondering why Epic made that switch, you only need to look to company president Mike Capps, who tells Edge magazine, “If you walked into [Epic’s Offices] six years ago, Epic was a PC company. We did one PS2 launch title, and everything else was PC. And now, people are saying ‘Why do you hate the PC? You’re a console-only company.'”

“And guess what?” says Capps, “It’s because the money’s on console.”

“We still do PC, we still love the PC, but we already saw the impact of piracy: it killed a lot of great independent developers and completely changed our business model.”

“So, maybe Facebook will save PC gaming, but it’s not going to look like Gears of War.”

Interesting words, given the fact EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Capcom, Lucasarts, Take-Two and THQ all have little issue publishing quality, AAA games – albeit multiplatform ones – on the PC.

Epic President: “The Money’s On Console” [The SixthAxis, via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]