Much like Epic Games and Valve Software, id Software, first-person shooter pioneers known for Doom and Quake, once focused primarily on making games for the PC. But times have changed, and the combination of piracy and overall lackluster PC game retail sales have driven these developers towards consoles. id co-founder and programmer extraordinaire John Carmack acknowledged in a new interview with Tom's Hardware that "We still think the PC is a market worth supporting, but we're not making decision[s] around the PC." He added that PC is now a "junior partner in the cross-platform strategy."

What's to blame? It's hard to pin it on one thing, Carmack noted. "You can say piracy. You can say user migration. But the ground truth is just that the sales numbers on the PC are not what they used to be and are not what they are on the consoles," he said.

PC gamers shouldn't fret, however. id isn't about to stop bringing games to PC anytime soon. "We certainly expect Rage and the Doom project on the PC. We're contractually obligated to have Rage on the PC, and I would be stunned if we did not do Doom 4 for the PC," he said. "It would just be wrong. Even if it was a marginal business case, we would still do it because it's the right thing to do."