Windows Vista From A Gamer's Perspective

mybrainonfire writes "1UP has an article looking at Microsoft Vista and its implications not only as an operating system as a whole, but what it means for gaming, based on a recent visit to Microsoft. 'According to the Microsoft message: Windows games is becoming a big priority. A study done among thousands of users determined that 35% of people use the PC for Web surfing, 18% use it for games and everything else is an also-ran. The next biggest thing, email, is only 9.2%. This gave Microsoft the boot in the proverbial ass to get back to its PC gaming roots.' It's a little rambley, but it's an interesting take on what to expect whenever Microsoft stops delaying things."

Comments

Oh. Come. On.

[Otter]

A study done among thousands of users determined that 35% of people use the PC for Web surfing, 18% use it for games and everything else is an also-ran. The next biggest thing, email, is only 9.2%.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that 1) this refers to home PCs only and 2) that the question was about the most frequent use (and the numbers therefore add up to 100%). There are enough niche uses, all under 9%, that add up to 38% of people's primary computer use? This makes no sense.

Re:Oh. Come. On.

[TripMaster Monkey]

It's obvious that this is a completely bogus study, as no mention whatsoever is made of pr0n.

Re:XboX

[JonN]

No, the X-Box was released so that Microsoft could enter into another market and compete with the PS2, also, the PS2 would have been released regardless on if X-Box would be, so how can you attribute all the blame of the 'Death of PC gaming' onto Microsoft and the X-Box?

Re:Grammer Check?

[Tyrsenus]

Grammar.

I guess Spell Check isn't a priority either.

Re:Grammer Check?

[Schuler]

I guess Grammer Check isn't such a big priority.

I guess Grammar checking isn't your big priority either!

//Grammar Nazi, someone was going to do it.

They just figured it out?

[JonN]

According to the Microsoft message: Windows games is becoming a big priority. I mean, Microsoft has the monopoly of games. Nearly every popular game released is for the Windows OS. So with that in mind, how can Microsoft just now be realizing how important the Windows and PC Games connection is?

Re:They just figured it out?

[Bastian]

Hell, I think that gaming is probably the thing that is most responsible for Microsoft's dominance of the desktop market. The kinds of software that are lacking on non-Windows platforms can be broadly broken into "games" and "niche professional apps." The latter group doesn't directly affect the desktop market much.

In short, their games monopoly is one of the main reasons why they have an OS monopoly.

Re:They just figured it out?

[ZephyrXero]

It's pretty obvious to most that the PC gaming market is Microsoft's biggest strength over the other OSes. You can find just about anything else for Mac and Linux without much work. Probably yet another reason Macs are switching to Intel is because the x86 Windows games can be ported over much more easily. This is why Linux distros and developers really need to work on making it much easier for games to be ported to Linux. Unfortunately 9 out 10 games created for PC these days run off Direct X, so getting people to switch to things like OpenGL and SDL will be very important in this. As far as the xbox 360 pad goes, it shouldn't be too hard to reverse engineer... What ever happened to that gamer oriented distro people were trying to start up last year?

Perhaps...

[Penguin Programmer]

Perhaps what they've actually realized is that the ONLY advantage Windows has over other OSes (and the only reason why a large portion of the population is sticking with Windows) is the availability of games.

Since it's the only reason for people to use Windows these days, Microsoft ought to be capitalizing on it.

Re:XboX

[guaigean]

If anything, I think that WoW has shown that the PC gaming industry is alive and well. The real thing that has diminished PC games has been the lack of good games recently as opposed to the slightly older and easily moddables. Games can last quite a while, provided they have a good modding community. There just haven't been that many games out recently that were worth the 50 bucks and have taken advantage of the PC's differences.

Re:Reality

[obeythefist]

1) I don't see why this won't go over well with gamers. Serious gamers will be running as admin like they always do.

2) I don't see why this won't go over well with gamers. Contemporary gamers dig eye candy (although they stay for the gameplay/useability).

3) I don't see why this won't go over well with gamers. Gamers tend to buy things that are percieved to be cutting edge for the sake of it. Also, the vast majority of gamers prefer AMD and therefore will own 64bit on their next upgrade (if they don't have it already). This will only be bad for intel 64 bit gamers... and they already own intel so they're screwed.

4) I can see why this may be an issue for some gamers, but what many people don't understand is that you don't need hardware that supports all functions of the API to install it and run games with it. The vast majority of games and apps for Vista will no doubt be compatible with DX9 level hardware. Upgrades are inevitable, you can't reasonably expect to sit around with 4 year old hardware and run the latest and greatest.