Creator of Psychonauts, Brutal Legend Talks Lack of PC Development, Fails to Convince Us

Posted 11/27/2010 at 11:57pm | by Nathan Grayson

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A disclaimer: We love Tim Schafer. We want to marry his brain, buy a house, and eventually win his trust so we don't have to keep him tied up in the basement anymore. That being said, we have to admit that we're not entirely sold on the Psychonauts and Brutal Legend creator's reason for refusing to return the PC's calls.

“As a developer we do not have final say in the sku plan for our games. That is the decision of the person investing the money, i.e. the publisher. We have much of the technology in place to produce PC versions of all these games, but there is still some more work required to make them shippable and that costs money,” reads a post on Double Fine's website.

“So far, our publishers have not elected to fund that work. Not because they hate PC Gamers, but because they don't see enough financial reward. Double Fine does care about PC Gamers, and we always push for a PC version, and will continue to do so in the future.”

When in doubt, blame the big, bad publisher man, right? And we can understand that. Well, mostly. Problem is, two and two don't quite make four here. For one, Double Fine's current publisher, THQ, has gone on record saying that we'll see “almost every one” of its core games on PC as long as it "makes sense." So, does it?

Well, let's have a look-see at Double Fine's current lineup, which consists of bite-sized downloadable titles like Costume Quest and Stacking on XBLA and PSN. Hey, isn't there another platform where experimental download titles can net their creators $350,000 a day? Also, we'd like to point out that Schafer himself – barely audible over our schoolgirl-like cheers as he admitted he'd like to make a Psychonauts sequel – said that Psychonauts earned the bulk of its recognition through PC-only distribution channels. 

So Tim, are you sure you want to stand idly by while publishers give PC gamers the cold shoulder? This could very well be a literal million dollar question. Is that your final answer?