In an age where pretty much everyone believes that PC gaming is dying a slow death, it’s nice to see some optimism from developers. While Blizzard and Valve have already shown their love for PC, there’s another developer scurring behind them, and that’s Gas Powered Games, known for their PC-exclusive games, such as the Dungeon Siege series, Supreme Commander and last year’s Space Siege.

Chris Taylor, supreme commander of GPG said in an interview that he believes that PC gaming is, in fact, rediscovering itself. The last 10 years of it, have been all about breaking system requirements, and the audience was also crazy enough to buy the latest gear for it. That is starting to change.

“We have to be careful we don’t create games that require four gigs of RAM to run. It’s just not responsible. It kind of was, in the old days; now, well, hardware’s pretty quick. We don’t really need to do that. We should be focusing on the characters, the story, the UI, the design.”

Nice to see it come honest and clear from a game developer. While console gamers have only to buy a disc and pop it into their drives, PC gamers have to inspect the game, compare the requirements, install it, and then hope it’ll run as it should. No wonder even the most hardcore PC gamers have been taking to consoles!

Taylor also thinks that Blizzard has the right idea, “using art direction rather than pure technical showmanship to create visually appealing but less-demanding games.” He says that GPG is working on something very similar with Demigod, their upcoming RPG-Strategy hybrid.

We’ll just hope Taylor’s optimistic tone holds up. Long live PC gaming!

Brütal Legend, the game prophesied for raw awesomeness, will not be appearing at this year’s E3, according to MTV Multiplayer.

They were sent a mail from Lord Awesome Tim Schafer himself, who informed them that the game will not be appearing at E3 and that there’s nothing to worry about: the game is in fine order. “We’re not going to be showing at E3, but soon after that we hope,” he said. As for when this “soon” comes, he says “As soon as the dust settles from this whole [Activision Blizzard] merger thing we should be able to talk about the game a lot more.”

For those not in the know, this is because the game was originally supposed to be published by Vivendi, which now becomes a subsidiary of Activision along with Blizzard, by the clauses of the Great Activision Blizzard merger.

Brütal Legend will see Jack Black playing the roadie protagonist as he travels across a surreal heavy metal-inspired landscape. The game will feature music and cameos from several Metal Gods, such as Ronnie James Dio, Lemmy Kilmister, Rob Halford, Black Sabbath, Wolfmother and many more. It is going to be one hell of a game! Check out our earlier coverage on it! You’ll love it!

It’s great that there’s a resurgence of PC gaming, or at least PC game development. Valve is already doing fantastic with promising stuff in Steam Cloud. Blizzard show their respect for the venerable platform by making pretty much all their games PC-exclusive (and they’re all big hits, too). I mention this because I believe that Blizzard has every authority of accusing Microsoft for not doing anything for Windows and gaming.

Ever since Microsoft dipped its feet into the console world, it’s never come back, devoting all of its gaming attention to the Xbox and Xbox 360. This is with good reason, as Blizzard COO Paul Sams notes, because it is where Microsoft Games’ bread and butter is, and it is their system, after all.

But they just can’t continue to ignore Windows.“Certainly they have a lot in Windows. And Windows is a system that supports all the business applications as well as games.” he says. That’s true: active participation from Microsoft is what is necessary to bring forth the PC as a gaming platform. Windows is easily the most widespread platform right now, with more copies of Windows in this world than every other console combined.

Take heed, Microsoft, and mend your ways!

Diablo III is finally arriving to PCs and Macs “when it’s ready” according to Blizzard! Diablo III was announced at The 2008 Blizzard Invitational held at the Porte de Versailles Exposition Center in Paris. As always with any Blizzard trailer, it looks fantastic! The development team spans 50-55 members and has been in development for 4 years.

Make sure to check out the Diablo III website for more movies, artwork, and info!

What previously would have been the month for the big video game expo E3 is now a mere filler in the year. Continue on we must in our Best of 2007 series. Welcome to May.

Best of 2007:
January - February - March - April - May

May

GameTap Goes Free
With competition increasing in the digital distribution field, GameTap releases a free version of its service. It would be nice if this free version actually worked, but oh well.

Microsoft Announces Silverlight
In the internet realm, there really are no standards formats. Microsoft heats up the video market with its version of what is basically Flash called Silverlight.

Spider-Man 3 Webs In the Money
$148 million in 3 days. Damn where’s my paycheck?

Everybody Loves Raymond
I discover that I love Raymond as well. Yeah I know the show came on the air and went off years ago, but for some reason I now truly appreciate it.

ABC Online Goes HD
Streaming TV shows in HD for free?! What a concept.

Starcraft II Announced
In another shocking event Blizzard announces the wildly anticipated Starcraft II. Don’t expect it anytime soon though. Command & Conquer is a better series anyway.

Geometry Wars for Wii and DS announced
I quiver at this post because I had to actually test these games over the summer. What crap they were.