The Sims and World of Warcraft "sucking air out" of PC gaming, says Molyneux

Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux has expressed dismay over the state of PC gaming, saying that any initial innovation in casual gaming has dried up and that monster franchises like The Sims and World of Warcraft have sucker-punched the industry in general.

"There's an enormous amount of gaming happening with PopCap, Big Fish and Reflective," he said. "The fascinating thing is when they first started, all these games came out like Peggle and Mystery Files and Alice Greensleeves and Diner Dash, and it felt quite exciting. There was a lot of innovation going on. OK, there weren't great graphics, but there was innovation.

"In my view, that has completely stopped. They're doing the same game over and over again with a different wrapper. It's like a mini-universe in itself which is emulating what's happening in our industry. The second thing is, you've got The Sims and World of Warcraft sucking all the air out of the PC market. It's just incredible."

Spekaing in an interview to be aired in its entirety on Eurogamer later this week, Molyneux went further, saying that Blizzard and EA's unending quest for franchise sales is a "tragedy".

"I think it's a huge tragedy," he said. "I mean, you might as well say PC gaming is World of Warcraft and The Sims... The weird thing is everyone's got a PC, they're just not buying software for it."

Expect to hear plenty more from Peter this week: he's demoing Fable 2 at GDC on Friday in a conference titled, "Fable 2 –The Big Three Features Revealed".