Microsoft: We've Been Killing PC Gaming

MCV has an article up discussing a new intitiative that Microsoft will be launching soon to re-establish the Windows PC as a gaming platform, ahead of the launch of Vista. From the article: "Microsoft has pledged to 'put the game back into Windows', admitting that its lack of investment in PC has been 'killing' the platform. The firm has outlined to MCV details of an 18-month drive to establish Games For Windows as a platform with the credibility of PlayStation and Xbox, ahead of the launch of the Vista operating system."

Comments

Sign your company is way to big #67

[antifoidulus]

When you find that a success in one sector of your business hurts another sector of your business.....

Its lack of investment in PC has been killing it?

[dtfinch]

I suspect Microsoft's war on OpenGL might have contributed a bit as well.

Ah no

[Apreche]

The XBoX has been killing PC gaming. People are playing Halo instead of Counter-Strike. I remember when some people only had one argument against switching to Linux, and that was "there are no games". Well, thanks to MS that's no longer an issue. Personally I dual-boot, but my XP partition is very small and only contains Steam. It doesn't get very much use either, and probably wont anytime soon thanks to Advance Wars: DS.

Let's see if MS actually makes some quality PC games or just brings some XBoX 360 games over that will only run on Vista. I mean, for a gamer there is really no reason to upgrade to Vista. So MS has to go out and make one.

Re:Ah no

[Goyuix]

You make some good points, but more importantly than them playing Halo instead of Counter-Strike, it is Halo on the XBox instead of on a PC....

The bought out bungie, forced a first party release to their console, and only later offered a crippled pile for the PC. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

They did similar thing with the Midtown Madness and Crimson Skies franchises, and probably others as well. If they don't want PC gaming to die off, well duh, quit cancelling games that were targetted for it!

Microsoft would *love* to kill PC gaming

[popo]

The upside potential to be gained from Xbox far outweighs the upside potential from increased PC gaming.

This is a half-baked effort to make nice with the only segment of the hardware business that has legs. (Gamer's always demand the latest and greatest).

Re:Wishing for "Games for Linux"

[DrMorris]

Those days weren't good. I had no special floppies but about 6-8 boot configurations with different memory managers, each with it's own settings. I don't think that DOS gaming was comfortable. But I don't think gaming on anything other than a device (I'm speaking of the console of your choice) built for gaming is comfortable to deal with (if you _only_ want to play games).

Re:Its lack of investment in PC has been killing i

[Gogo0]

Because game engines can usually be ported from one platform to another with opengl.
Do you know of any DirectX support in linux/bsd/os9/osx/any other OS other than windows?

They certainly aren't helping w/ DirectX roadmap.

[nobodyman]

It's hard to reconcile Microsofts statements about "saving" PC gaming with their statements about the future of DirectX.

Initially, Microsoft said that DirectX 9.1 would be the last major version of DirectX, and that it would be replaced by Windows Graphics Foundation (essentially putting app and game graphics development under the same umbrella).

But then they've recently announced that the WGF concept is dead, and there will be, in fact, DirectX 10.

Incredibly, they've further announced that DirectX 10 will not be backwards compatible with directx 7, 8, or even directx 9.1 !!! Apparently the legacy directx API will run in a software compatibility layer and/or emulation, which means that Directx 9.1 games will run slower after you install DirectX 10.

Now, the article is from the inquirer so it could be bogus, but I've read this other places as well. I'm hoping someone here can show that it *is* bogus and/or misquoted, because if it's true I fail to see how this is going to do anything but hasten the death of PC gaming regardless of what Microsoft's marketing department does.

Have to save....

[787style]

the gaming industry first. Microsoft hasn't being killing PC gaming, the industry has. Lack of innovation, a sequel based mentality of game development, and the cross-platform release requirement imposed on most titles has screwed the industry. Remember when a group of ten guys could spend a year making a game that would keep you up for weeks, like X-Com? Or an independent developer could release a game like Intelligent Qube and still turn a profit? Now you have 60-100 people trying to make a pretty game that just fun enough for the first three levels, because that's all most of the market will play.

Re:Wishing for "Games for Linux"

[tepples]

Remember the good old days of building special dos boot floppies for your games to make them run better/faster?

Back then, every video card implemented the same VGA register set.

Wouldn't it be damn sweet to have a game come on a DVD with knoppix on it?

Today, different machines use different hardware registers for accelerated 3D graphics. You'll need to have drivers for every 3D card in existence because they're all different. If games came on a DVD, and you tried to play them on your new computer with a new video card model that your old game does not support, then you'd get slow-ass software rendering.

Re:Its lack of investment in PC has been killing i

[skreeech]

I think PC gaming is killing the alternate operating system market.