EVE Online's Boss Just Said What We’re All Thinking: PC Is Where the Magic Happens, and Consoles Are Just Boring PCs Now

Every few years, some analyst in a suit declares that "PC gaming is dead." Meanwhile, I’m sitting here playing a game about a squirrel with a gun that was made by one guy in a basement.

The PC platform isn't dying. It is the only place left where things are actually getting weird. Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, the CEO of CCP Games (the maniacs behind EVE Online), agrees with me.

In a recent interview with PC Gamer, Pétursson dropped some hard truths about the state of the industry. He argued that "most of the innovation in gaming has happened on PC."

He pointed out that mobile gaming has stagnated into "refinement and execution and formula." That is a very polite CEO way of saying mobile is just a wasteland of copy-pasted gacha mechanics designed to drain your wallet.

The Beauty of No Gatekeepers

The reason PC wins is simple. Nobody can tell you "no."

Pétursson highlighted that the lack of gatekeeping is the platform's superpower. On a console, you need certification, dev kits, and the blessing of Sony or Microsoft. On PC, you just pay Steam $100 or upload your junk to itch.io for free.

This freedom means "success comes out of very random places." Look at Cuphead. Or Vampire Survivors. Or Balatro. These games wouldn't survive a corporate boardroom pitch meeting, but on PC, they became juggernauts.

As Pétursson put it, "When I love a game, it's so deeply PC."

Consoles Are Just Locked PCs

He also touched on something that console warriors hate to admit. The hardware gap is gone. Consoles are "basically PCs by now," but without the one feature that makes PC gaming immortal: modding.

I can mod Skyrim until it looks like a next-gen game. On a console, you are stuck with what you bought.

It is refreshing to hear a CEO acknowledge that the "wild west" nature of PC gaming isn't a bug. It is a feature. It is the engine that keeps this entire industry from becoming a boring, formulaic factory.

So yeah, long live the PC. The death certificate has been signed a dozen times, and we just keep respawning.

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