Rein: PC gaming has "shot by" consoles

Epic's Mark Rein has talked up the importance of PC to the future of gaming, insisting: "We're at the stage in the life of the consoles where the PC has shot by them in terms of capabilities."

Echoing comments made by id Software's John Carmack at E3, who said current PC gaming tech was "ten times as powerful" as current consoles, Rein argued that PC was "always the most important leading edge platform".

Speaking exclusively to Eurogamer TV, in the first part of a series of video features on PC gaming, Epic Games' VP said: "Don't forget every game that's ultimately built is built on a PC. PCs are always going to be the tools through which all games get made.

"With the PC you can simulate the future – you can put enough hardware in a PC to show you what a future console will look like."

Epic grabbed headlines at GDC earlier this year with its Samaritan Unreal demo, created to showcase the near-future of high-end gaming, but running on ultra-high spec current PC tech.

"It was kind of our love letter to hardware manufacturers," Rein explained. "The next-gen, we expect, will look like that. If you fast forward a year or two years that should be a fairly common gamer's spec.

"We hope the console manufactures look at that and go, jeez, if we aim for that in our next consoles we'll be competitive with what you'll be able to do on a PC in a year, year and half from now. A reasonably priced PC - obviously you can do it on an expensive PC already."

There's more from Mark Rein and others in The Future Of PC Gaming Pt.1, which you can watch below. Part 2 will be published next Friday.