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Tim Sweeney has slammed Intel and big-box retailers as the main reasons why PC gaming has been dying for years.
Speaking with TGDaily‘s Theo Valich, Sweeney criticised retailers such as Best Buy for failing to up sell better PCs. "Retail stores like Best Buy are selling PC games and PCs with integrated graphics at the same time and they are not talking about the difference [to more capable gaming PCs].
"Those machines are good for e-mail, web browsing, watching video. But as far as games go, those machines are just not adequate. It is no surprise that retail PC sales suffer from that," Sweeney continued.
Not all sections of retail were criticised though, with him going on to say that demographics were favouring online retailers. "Online is different, because people who go and buy games online already have PCs that can play games.
Vendors also came underfire for allowing a massive divide between the capabilities of the lowest end PC and the highest end one becoming as big as it has. "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. [Today’s] PCs are good for anything, just not games."
However, it was Intel that he saved his biggest attack for, citing the vendor’s integrated graphics as one of the main reasons behind the decline of PCs as a gaming platform. "PC gaming is in a weird position right now.
"Now, 60 per cent of PCs on the market don’t have a workable graphics processor at all. All the Intel integrated graphics are still incapable of running any modern games. So you really have to buy a PC knowing that you’re going to play games in order to avoid being stuck with integrated graphics.
"Intel’s integrated graphics just don’t work. I don’t think they will ever work," stressed Sweeney. "They always say ‘Oh, we know it has never worked before, but the next generation…”
"It has always been the next generation. They go from one generation to the next one and to the next one. They’re not faster now than they have been at any time in the past."
