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The Future of PC Games, According to Microsoft
Geaty writes "Gamespot has an article up about Microsoft's big PC plans. Topics covered include why DirectX 9 will be the last DX for a while, the increased game support in Longhorn, and a 'standard' PC controller. Looks to this ignorant reader like Microsoft is trying to tackle the games market (again?), cornering matchmaking and patching. The controller issue seems like an attempt to bring to the PC platform some of the uniformity that consoles have."
Software uniformity is hardly the greatest of the PC game-maker's concerns as hardware configurations are far more diverse. It would seem, however, that the new ATI and nVidia offerings are bringing graphics closer and closer to photo-realistic quality and hopefully once such a quality is reached and the majority of casual gamers have the necessary hardware the focus of PC games will shift back towards the gameplay, storyline, and complexity that simply cannot be matched by console games.
assuming the above occurs, one must also realize that consoles are killing themselves in some aspects. one of the best aspects of early consoles such as the atari 2600 and nintendo was the ease of use - simply pop in a cart and play, no hardware, software, or OS issues. now take a look at the X-Box and PS2 (gamecube doesn't fit the paradigm but also is not as popular and arguably targeted at a much younger audience over all): they have hard-drives, increasingly complex RISC OSs, and are constructed at least partially of modified PC parts. with new features promised such as patches available over the internet and hardware expansions the consoles are turning themselves into nothing more than mini-PCs, and personally I'd rather spend a few hundred more dollars and buy myself a decent desktop PC.
meanwhile, people were still developing Playstation 1 games long past the time when it was _obvious_ that the Playstation 1 was the three year old PC equivalent of what their grandmother is using. Remember: consoles are special because they represent an unmoving target for game developers. Game developers optimize the hell out of console games, which they simply cannot do with PC games given the wide variety of available hardware (not to mention drivers, 3d lib support, operating systems, etc.) that the game could be running on. So, despite the fact that XBox is no longer (and has never been) a high-end PC, you will still see mind-blowingly complex games coming out for it because of this non-moving target fact. Same thing goes for the PS2, a 300MHz machine with some ridiculously small amount of RAM, and no hard drive.
iRooster, the Mac OS X a
(1) Standalone CDs - With what I've read on Longhorn, this shouldn't be an issue - since the traditional file system will be replaced by a registry type database. However, for massively multimedia intensive games, there will be a physical need for installation - unless they mean DVD instead of CD.
(2) Standardization of a PC controller - this could be fun, because if they actually standardize, it would mean that people could build their own controllers... *if* they make it an Open Standard. History says no.
(3) With DirectX 9 stalled and 64 bit processors due out shortly, I wonder if the hooks for utilizing the 64 bit instruction set for the new Intel are already there - or if Microsoft is handing AMD a nice swing at a juicy ball.
(4) Centralization of game patch updates is interesting in that it means that game manufacturers may become inspired to put out shoddy first releases so that people need to go through the Update server to get the fixes that make things work... and if they didn't buy the title... Well, think about it.
(5) "adding sophisticated matchmaking into Microsoft Messenger and parental controls over which users can play certain games" adds to point 4, but also demonstrates that they are also doing something naughty that the DoJ had something to say about.
In all... Just more Microsoft. No really *good* news.
Does the Half-Life engine support more than one keyboard or more than one mouse on one machine? Does it support split-screen?
:)
This brings up an excellent point. I would have to say that there is nothing more obnoxious in the console world than split screen gaming. I mean, who the hell wants to play a FPS game when you can see everything your opponents are doing? I have 6 computers in the house, at least 3 of which make decent game machines, and I would never, ever want to play Half-Life in split screen mode on one of them. One of them is just for lending to visitors. A half-way decent game machine is as cheap as $400, and is a normal computer for the rest of the family at other times.
I don't pay much attention to consoles, but it looks like they are just starting to get the multiplayer features that PC's have had since forever. The idea of a 16-player FPS game involving 16 different machines is a novelty in the console arena, yet every day I play games with twice to fifty times that number of people in them.
On a side note, concerning controllers, what a joke. I keep hoping that Microsoft will release a FPS that is multiplayer across platforms so I can beat the pants off of some kid playing with his thumbs. I can pick a flagrunner out of the air with a headshot at 2000m in Tribes/Tribes2, I'd like to see someone do that with a thumbpad.
Anyway, enough ranting, back to the games