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?

The other 38%....

[brunes69]

9% Soft core porn
9% Hard core porn
9% Animal porn
9% Vegetable porn
2% CowboyNeal porn

"cow-towing"?

[bornyesterday]

WTF? Is that the newest rage amonst bored denizens of rural areas? They weren't happy with just tipping them over, now they're dragging them behind their pickups? That's just cruel!

...and it's not 'off-topic' you illiterate punks.

Red Light, Green Light.

[Anonymous Coward]

"This gave Microsoft the boot in the proverbial ass to get back to its PC gaming roots."

Actually it's "roots" was software for a traffic light. And we can't trust them to get even that right.

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.

Controllers

[drxray]

FTFA: "X360 controllers working on the PC is just frosting."

I can't see that. This is potentially huge. We can finally get beat-em-ups, platformers and several other genres on PC, where they've been pretty scarce before. If it's taken up by developers it means I won't need a console again, and can go back to just having one box.
Of course, Microsoft isn't that likely to marginalise the console industry now it's a player in it, so there must be some kind of catch.

P.S. yes, I already have a USB doodad for using my controllers on my PC. What I don't have is a PC version of Tekken 4 or Super Monkey Ball.

Reality

[xenocide2]

Some of the nifty new features of Vista that might not go over so well with gamers:
1. Restricted user mode. This is already available on XP, Vista just makes the transition easier. The problem is that virtually every game makes this useless. Thanks to the incredible distrust of their market, PC game makers require players to allow their games to run as Admin, and don't apologize when remote exploits in their netcode appear two days after release. So basically, this is worthless.

2. New shiny interface. The shine lasts for all of about 30 seconds while you're not playing games. After that, every game out there takes the whole screen and re-invents the entire user interface. I'd wager that a number of gamers may simply attempt to turn back the wheels of time, back to the generally familiar win98 style, as they did for XP.

3. 64bit. I hope the fundamental reason for this change is a long ways off. The largest hurdle is owning a 64 bit processor. Despite AMD having a 64bit line promoted as a gamer's system for some time, Intel's (much larger) side has only just begun. The other big hurdle is device driver support. When switching to 64bit for the performance, you need your drivers to have the extra 32 bits as well. To make matters worse, some games don't work well on a 64bit OS, or sometimes copy protection kicks in when it shouldn't.

4. DirectX 10. Not sure what extras they plan to add, but it will probably include me buying a new video card. Sucky.

While one and three are largely the fault of game makers, part of Microsoft's task here is to reign them in, however possible. Aside from increased performance for free, the one thing I think gamers everywhere could appreciate is an enforced security model that finally curbs the tide of spyware and popups. Nothing like missing a sniper shot because some dipshit program would really like to let you know about online degrees from the university of phoenix!

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.

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.

Faster Alt+Tabbing?

[extropy]

I've been curious about this.. Will Vista's new 3d accelerated gui allow for faster or even instant alt+tabbing? i was thinking if everything is just texture mapped polygons (at least thats my understanding of the new gui) then the desktop could quickly be brought to the front, instead of taking forever to load up like usual. I know resolution changes are a factor too, but that delay seems relatively negligible.

Re:MS, focused on games?

[obeythefist]

Well, if you put it that way... yes.

Microsoft has enough resources to cater for every market segment it wants to be involved in.

There's absolutely no doubt in saying that Linux has always needed an answer to Windows gaming. Windows gaming is, as I see it, the biggest obstacle to mass market adoption of Linux. Linux does everything I could ever ask for... except game as well as Windows.

OS X... The Mac is now directly targetting the Linux niche market - everyone who has a PC but doesn't want to run Windows, the answer is no longer Linux, it's OS X. Steve Jobs has never been seen as an advocate of gaming, otherwise there would have been a bigger push on making the Mac a dedicated gaming machine. This could be a bit of a shortcoming given the huge surge in gaming in the general populace that has taken hold over the last decade.

So I'm not sure what Mr AC is trying to say between the lines, but yes. MS is more gaming oriented than Linux or Mac. This seems like a very intelligent strategy given the proportion of gamers out there, allowing MS to outcompete Linux and Mac in that market.