Capcom joins PC Gaming Alliance

As reported by fellow PC journalism website Rock Paper Shotgun earlier this week, Capcom has officially joined the alliance. No, not that Alliance (for the horde!), but rather the PC Gaming Alliance – a non profit organization of hardware manufacturers, game developers and game publishers founded in 2008 with the official goal of ‘promoting and advancing the PC as a gaming platform’.

What does that mean to us gamers? Well, diddly-squat at the moment. While it is still relatively unclear exactly what end goals the PC Gaming Alliance has in store for PC Gamers, the alliance is backed by some big names in the computer industry and probably shouldn’t be taken too lightly.

“when you think of the PC platform, then Capcom probably isn’t a publisher that comes to mind right away.” says Christian Svensson, vice president of strategic planning at Capcom in the RPS interview, “Lost Planet was the first game to ship with DX10, and it had some of the code that became Steamworks in it. They had to peel out some of the code that we worked on for that game, to make what you see today on that platform. So we were forward thinking with all that kind of functionality. Since then we’ve released Devil May Cry 4 and Lost Planet Colonies. And MotoGP ‘08, NeoPets, Flock, Dark Void have all come, or are coming out, from the West. We also have Streetfighter 4 coming out from Japan on the near horizon, and Dead Rising 2 a bit further out. There’s more too, but we’ve not announced that yet.”

When asked what sparked Capcom’s decision to join the PC Gaming Alliance (as well as take a more aggressive stance in the PC gaming market), Svensson’s answer was quite simple. “Taking a very global view. We have brands that are very appealing, but the platform of choice in many countries is not a current-gen console. I’ll point to Russia, to Brazil, to emerging markets in the Middle East. India is an emerging market, even if it is a few years away from doing the kinds of things that we need. The PC is global, and it’s ubiquitous. And quite frankly, the more people who shy away from that platform, the bigger the opportunity. It’s not easy, however. The PC has a lot of moving parts, there’s a lot more testing to be done, there’s a lot of considerations about how to even get to market. You need broad understanding. We know it’ll take a few years of development and investment before we’re where we want to be.”

Svensson also states that Capcom is a strong proponent of digital distribution, and largely agrees that retail sales as a whole are falling out of touch and necessity of modern PC gamers.

While it is unclear exactly what IP’s Capcom intends to port or create on PC, it’s always refreshing news to hear of another developer opening their eyes to the PC gaming market. As for the PC Gaming Alliance, we’ll have to wait and see exactly what they can cook up with a newly acquired partner.