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Vista Casts A Pall On PC Gaming?
simoniker writes "In an opinion piece, casual game publisher WildTangent's CEO Alex St. John (himself a Microsoft veteran and one of the DirectX creators) has sharply criticized some of Windows Vista's features as they related to video game creation, noting: 'We have found many of the security changes planned for Vista alarming and likely to present sweeping challenges for PC gaming, especially for online distributed games. The central change that impacts all downloadable applications in Vista is the introduction of Limited User Accounts. LUA's can already be found in Windows XP, but nobody uses them because of the onerous restrictions they place on usability. In Vista, LUA's are mandatory and inescapable.'" Meanwhile, the word has also come down that games will be on the Zune by Summer of next year.
Gaming and computing are two different animals. This is even more true for mult-user computing, a la Unix, OS X, XP, and now Vista. And, some of today's security problems in Microsoft's security model are directly related to and introduced by gaming requirements early on (circa 1992, 1993).
Gaming demands high-end, near-to-the-hardware, unencumbered access. Multi-user computing demands flexibility, equitable distribution of resources, and if properly done, capability of extremely high and granular security.
This puts the two activities at odds in deciding how to implement a "computer" -- probably one of the main reasons hardcore gaming usually is the domain of dedicated consoles and hardware.
In NT's early days (which eventually became Windows 2000 and Windows XP) Microsoft caved to requests for compromised access to "rings" of kernel security to give better (and acceptable) performance for game developers -- most notably there were some passthroughs for video hardware access. I don't know if there were other compromises but I suspect there were. These compromises contributed to security problems (but were not the cause of all of Microsoft's security headaches).
From what I've read, Microsoft has made some tough but I think "correct" choices for security in Vista... it should be very hard for limited users to do much more that use the machine. Unfortunately, gaming typically requires access to the machine that, under the covers, is much more than typical and casual access to the innards. This is probably why Microsoft has gotten into the game console market... they finally have hardware/software dedicated to and around gaming.
It's probably a tough pill to swallow for gamers and developers used to being able to pull it off in XP (and previous generation Windows), but it's probably a better security world on whole for general computing and Vista users.
Initially I thought this was just a rant, since the implications of limited user accounts have far greater benefits than limitations and users are going to have to enter an admin password to install nearly any software, so I don't see why games should be an exception.
That said, he makes a good point about the Game Explorer widget. Disclaimer: I have not, and probably will not for some time if at all, installed Vista on any of my computers yet. According to this article, though, it would seem that Microsoft is actually blocking games from running via any other means than the Game Explorer. This somewhat reminds me of Apple with iTunes in that using something else to sync an iPod takes more effort than most people would want to put forth. It would also seem to mean that installers will have to create special cases for Vista, which seems pointless to me. Admittedly, Microsoft could argue that limiting execution rights to the Game Explorer interface was necessary to enforce parental controls, but there are many other, less intrusive ways they could have gone about this (off the top of my head: deny execution rights to normal users, detect an attempted execution, if equal to or under parental ratings, run under a special Gaming account automagically, otherwise, ask for an escalation).
The obvious point is that Microsoft would seem to have a conflict of interest here; making PC gaming attractive may draw attention away from the X-box 360, something Microsoft would want to avoid at all costs. Are they making it difficult to run games in order to make the 360 seem much simpler by comparison? Maybe. I suppose I'd have to have both Vista and a 360 to find out, which I don't plan on having together for some time if at all.
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I would think that the biggest advantage to the console is that you dont* need to scale back to fit lesser machines. A console might only have 512MB, but its guaranteed, and you know (like you mentioned) that you have full reign over it.
* (Lack of proper punctuation brought to you by Firefox grabbing all my apostrophes as "Fast Find" requests.)
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How is this flamebait? He has a point (if rudely stated). WildTangent games have probably one of the worst interfaces I've ever had to deal with (far surpassing the annoying hoop of using nProtect on Korean MMORPGs*). I don't like having to install a third party launcher to run a game written by someone with absolutely no other ties.
*In Vista when you're going to full screen with a good deal of games, the OS switches you from Aero mode to Basic mode, which can take a boatload of time when you're also trying to load the game, and update nProtect all at the same time. nProtect has a penchant for running right as a game decides to go fullscreen.
Limited user accounts are very usable!!
I force myself to use them and my wife who uses the same machine
A few ACL changes make the games perfectly usuable install all games in c:\games and have that directory full control to all users
This means the total impact of a foolish action by a user can wipe out their account and all the games on the system. Much better than an admin account being compromised (ok ignoring priviledge ecalation attacks)
I recently had to remove a trojan from my wifes account - a fairly trival procedure given how limited her access to the system as a whole was. Reading up on the particular trojan I found that had it been able to get admin access it would have been much harder to remove.
Ok I'll concded on XP home without ACL controls its bloody hard to accomplish this. But if you have XP pro you really have no excuse.
(and to explain no I'm not a windows fan - I loathe the system especially as I frequently have to admin them in my work. I much prefer linux and am quite familiar with winex which I have work with extensively and created start up scripts for several games that would not work trvially out of the box. however I also know just how much of a pain it is to do this so stick to dual booting. not liking the OS is no excuse not to secure it properly)
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First of all $400 is not what it costs. You need to account for the HDTV that is needed to take advantage of the new hardware you have.
Second a $400 computer wont be able to keep up with your 360 but thats not how you should look at it. A computer is a multi-purpose system. Think of it this way. You spend $1000 for a computer that is no good for games but has a decent CPU and ram. $1000 is not an unreasonable price to get a computer that is up to the specs of a 360 not including the video card. So lets say you have this computer in your house and you want to play video games. Your options are spend $400 on a 360 or $400 on a video card for your computer. A $400 video card will be much faster that the video card in the 360. Also your computer will benefit in other ways from having a good video card.
I think your original comparison was kind of an apples and oranges arguement but when you consider the full cost of a 360 and the full benefit of a nice PC you can see why 360's are not that great.
Also i should mention that i used to work for microsoft on the 360. I have played almsot every game to ever be released for it and i can say that most are junk. The "best" games for consoles are the sports and racing games which are not something i enjoy. I much prefer RTS and FPS games which is where the PC blows consoles out of the water.
I think game selection should be the most important criteria in chosing a PC or console. As i stated above $400 will get you nearly the same PC or console gaming hardware (i think PC wins but not by very much). However if you are someone who is a big racing or sports fan and like to have friends come over and play Madden or Gran Turismo then a PC is something you shouldn't even consider.
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