Ian Frazier, lead designer of the upcoming Big Huge Games developed RPG Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, says it’s very hard and unpractical to develop an exclusive PC title due to the rampant piracy on the system. MMOs, however, can be profitable.
When asked by IncGamer if a game as huge and expensive as Reckoning could ever be a PC exclusive, Frazier said: “No, probably not. A game this big is very expensive, to be blunt about it.”
“The PC, with piracy being as rampant as it is, is really hard to make money from,” he continued. “My first game was Titan Quest, a hack ‘n’ slash RPG, which was PC only but the amount that it was pirated was the difference between us staying in business and going out of business.
“It’s really, really hard to be profitable by concentrating only on PC. Unless you’re an MMO.”
Well, it’s true that PC games get pirated a lot. Recently, we found out that The Witcher 2 has been pirated over 4.5 million times. Other games like Crysis 2 (pirated 3.9 million times), Modern Warfare 3 (pirated 3.65 million times), Battlefield 3 (pirated 3.5 million times), FIFA 12 (pirated 3.39 million times) and Portal 2 (pirated 3.24 million times) are also huge victims of this.
Well, at least they’re not dealing with it as crappily as Ubisoft does. Valve, on the other hand, believes piracy won’t be an issue at all, as long as you provide customers with good services.
We believe Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning might just turn out to be better than its direct competitor, Skyrim. We’ve given 6 reasons about the same through here, so be sure to read the feature.
Big Huge Games has been hyping Reckoning a lot lately, comparing it to all the big RPGS and action games- from God of War and Fable to Skyrim itself- saying that while they’re all good games, Reckoning’s combat sets it apart from all of them. Ken Rolston even thinks that Reckoning has the best combat you’ll ever see in an RPG.
In its first official review, Reckoning got a 9 by Xbox 360 Magazine Italy, who said it’s a must-have game, even for those who’re not big RPG fans.
The demo for Reckoning is out on Xbox Live, Origin and PS3. It may have a lot of bugs, but don’t worry,they won’t be there in the final game in the slightest.
The game releases on February 7 for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.