Is WoW factor killing PC Gaming?

Last week, Epic Games' Mark Rein was blaming Intels Integrated Graphics chip for the decline of PC gaming - now another veteran developer has come up with an alternative scapegoat possibility: the success of World of Warcraft.

Speaking to Gamasutra, Brian Sullivan, co-creator of Age of Empires and now president or Iron Lore Entertainment, feels the MMORPG's huge success could be proving detrimental to other areas of the industry:

"For retail PC games, I think the biggest problem is World of Warcraft. It is such a compelling MMO game that it sucks up a lot of money and time that would normally be spent on other retail PC games."

He has a point. As we all know, MMORPGs make considerable demands on our leisure time, not only because they're incredibly immersive, but also because the subscription model itself encourages longer play. However, MMORPGs have been around for several years - plenty of time to come up with a competing business model, or an innovative means of engaging the same audience. I'm not sure if developers of retail PC games are really meeting the challenge. The industry is going round in circles endlessly re-inventing the same two or three genres.

Iron Lore's own game, a mythological RPG adventure named, Titan Quest (pictured above) is due out later this year.