The Lord of the Rings Online Interview

HEXUS Gaming had the chance to fire several questions at The Lord of the Rings Online executive producer Jeffrey Steefel during the Codemasters Connect 08 event. Topics include Turbine's MMO philosophy, the threat posed by Warhammer Online and Age of Conan, the death of PC gaming, and more.
HEXUS: We're sure you've heard the likes of Epic Games, banging on about how PC gaming is in demise, right? What's your opinion?

Jeff: Firstly, I've been doing this for 15 years now and PC gaming has been apparently dying every year. I think part of it is that the PC isn't growing as quickly as console gaming. Console gaming is now opening itself up to a much broader audience.

Comparatively, a lot more new players are playing console games, because the console is in the living room and its much more accessible. It's more fun to sit in the living room in some cases rather than on the PC.

The people who like to play PC games, will always play PC games, but the type of games that lend themselves well to PC is comparatively getting smaller. Once we get to a place where the platform it's distributed on is independent of the product that's what will really matter. It's really important that we push that.