World Of Warcraft lead Tom “Kalgan” Chilton has been talking to PC Gamer about the recent decline in World Of Warcraft subs, which are down to 11.4m worldwide compared to a 12m high. What is interesting, however, is his citing of “complexity” as a reason why PCs might be “re-emerging” as a platform, suggesting he sees a shift in developer attention back keyboard-baring beast.
“In a lot of ways I see the PC as potentially a re-emerging sort of platform,” said Chilton. “I think that the PC has always offered ways to approach games that you can’t necessarily approach on console, even if it’s just because of UI restraints. Keyboard and mouse opens up options that you can’t get replicate as easily with a controller in RTS games like Starcraft 2. If you look at the way we do an MMO like World of Warcraft, our communication method and all that kind of stuff, it kind of implies a level of UI complexity that would be really hard to pull off on console.” Chilton’s focus on the PC has been continuous, of course, but it’s interesting to see so many developers now expressing this sentiment. (Basically: Devs are so hot for hotkeys.)