Epic have something of a complicated relationship with the PC as a gaming platform, Mark Rein batting-off talk of dire UT3 sales, CliffyB stating that something had gone amiss with the format, then seemingly making-up as Epic joined the PC Gaming Alliance. Now, Tim Sweeney's had a pop at the old beige box.

Speaking to TG Daily, the CEO stated his belief that the PC may no longer be good for games, while consoles offer the mass market game makers need.

"It is very important not to leave the masses behind. This is unfortunate, because PCs are more popular than ever. Everyone has a PC. Even those who did not have a PC in the past are now able to afford one and they use it for Facebook, MySpace, pirating music, or whatever," he railed.

"Yesterday's PCs were for people that were working and later playing games. Even if those games were lower-end ones, there will always be a market for casual games and online games like World of WarCraft. World of WarCraft has DirectX 7-class graphics and can run on any computer. But at the end of the day, consoles have definitely left PC games behind."

Sweeney believes that lots of PC's simply aren't up to the technical challenge of the latest games: "The biggest problem in this space right now is that you cannot go and design a game for a high end PC and downscale it to mainstream PCs. The performance difference between high-end and low-end PC is something like 100x."

Sweeney is hoping software rendering may make a return in PC games, in order to promote a revival of the format. With Epic now part of the PC Gaming Alliance, perhaps this change is a genuine possibility.

By Luke Guttridge

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