Stronger than ever: Despite AAA publishers’ occasional insistence that PC gaming is dead or on its way out, that couldn’t be further from the truth these days. Steam and the Epic Games Store have millions of users and continue to grow every year — even game devs themselves prefer the platform over consoles, according to a recent Game Developers Conference (GDC) survey.
While consoles remain a force to be reckoned with in the gaming sphere, the GDC’s latest State of the Game Industry report claims that a whopping 58 percent of polled devs find the PC to be the “most interesting” platform.
In this particular area, PC surged ahead of even the PS5, which garnered 44 percent interest. The Nintendo Switch followed closely at 38 percent, and the Xbox Series X/S came in last for consoles at 30 percent. Virtual reality platforms as a whole collectively sat at 27 percent developer interest.
Google’s Stadia platform, however, came in dead last. That’s not great news for Google’s streaming service, which hasn’t exactly been making headlines lately for its break-out success stories (that’s probably because there haven’t been many).
The GDC’s State of the Game Industry report does not specify what “developer interest” means, but it’s probably safe to assume it references platforms they’d most like to create content for; if given the freedom to choose.
3,000 developers were polled in total, and since the GDC is primarily a Western event, the survey’s respondents are mostly from North American and European countries. As such, there’s the possibility that some regional bias is influencing the results — Asian developers might prefer console development, for example.
Either way, this survey should act as further evidence that PC gaming is still going strong, and here to stay for a good long while. Cloud gaming might overtake it someday, but judging by the lack of developer interest in platforms like Stadia (currently), that day hasn’t arrived just yet.