SOE President on Decline of PC Gaming

It is “ridiculous and foolish” to say PC Gaming is in decline, according to SOE president John Smedley (Smedley?).

“I would argue greatly and disagree with his statements. In my opinion, PC gaming is at its brightest point ever. If you look at the number of people out there playing games like Runescape – 11 million active players or Webkinz or Club Penguin or WoW or EverQuest II… If you just start doing the math on all these games, there’s just a hell of a lot of people out there playing. What’s happening though is their playing habits are changing, and they’re going more towards a different business model. So the Webkinz or the Runescapes, where it’s free to play with sort of a velvet rope model, these are the new PC gamers that are playing this kind of stuff, or they’re playing on Pogo or Microsoft’s Gaming Zone… all these different things that are taking people’s attention. It’s not that dollar sales are down; it’s just that retail PC sales are the narrow focus that ignorant people are looking at.”

Spotted on Blue’s News.