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Microsoft Losing Ground On Windows Store and UWP For Gaming
Vigile writes: Microsoft has big plans to try and merge the experiences of the Xbox One and Windows for gaming but the push back from the community and from major developers and personalities is mounting. Earlier this week PC Perspective posted a story that detailed the controversy around DX12 performance analysis without an exclusive full screen mode, changes to multi-GPU configurations and even compatibility issues with variable refresh that crop up from games from the Windows Store. Microsoft's only official response so far as been that it is listening to feedback and plans to address it with upcoming changes. Now today, Epic's Tim Sweeney has posted an editorial at The Guardian with an even more dramatic tone, saying that UWP (Unified Windows Platform) "can, should, must and will, die..." Clearly the stakes are being placed in the ground and even damage control from Phil Spencer on Twitter isn't likely to hold back angry PC users.
Really? Gamers care? What Gamer is running games from the Windows store???
I left MS because of the abomination that was Windows 8. The last couple of years have proven my initial thoughts correct. MS cannot be trusted. Their products are a privacy nightmare. They screwed the pooch on mobile, they're doing it again here.
I fled to FreeBSD/OpenBSD and Sony PS4 (which also Runs FreeBSD). Never to return...
What advantages are there to buying a game on the Windows Store versus Steam or GOG? Seriously, I cannot think of a single one. It has inferior performance, functionality, portability, etc.--I'm literally paying the same for less.
If Microsoft has their way, it will be ALL OF US. This is why Steam OS exists, to try and help stave off this future where Microsoft controls the PC gaming market. You saw what plans they had at the Xbox One launch shitshow, they havent abandoned them, just delayed.
Good-bye
" The "PC gaming gods" that complain about this shit and want to "boycott" it are holding Windows as a whole back a decade."
Fuck you. Bill Gates PERSONALLY held back computing at least 2 decades and we are still paying for it and will continue to do so for a while.. you can shove this tripe up your ass.
Good-bye
Just remember that this opinion rant on The Guardian is coming from someone who cannot figure out how to sideload apps on his Android phone, because apparently opening an APK from any number of the existing file explorers out there and then having it directly prompt the user to temporarily enable side loading is a "hidden" feature that makes it difficult, just like how Windows has had UAC for a decade now.
The only remaining big hangup preventing wide-scale adoption is the shitty video drivers on Linux. Until NVIDIA and AMD pour resources into better Linux drivers (or someone else pours even MORE resources into good open-source drivers) we will continue to see crappy performance, and that will keep potential developers at bay.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Remember Windows RT? This is Windows RT repackaged. It's the slow to a boil cooking method. Once they reach critical acceptance they will deprecate the Win32 API in Windows and ONLY UWP API's will work. This will take years but Microsoft has always gone for the long game. Remember when they lost the browser wars to Netscape or the time they were five years late to the internet?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Head of the Xbox division.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
I was surprised at this as well. Do you know who apparently still like physical disks? Kids. They enjoy being able to lug their games over to a friend's house, throw it in their game console, and start playing. Personally, I've gone 100% digital. The idea of never having to touch another disk to launch a game is a joy, but not everyone cares.
That being said, part of the furor was the notion that MS is forcing you to check in with them once a day or your games simply don't work. That's pretty draconian. Losing the secondary used game market was also deemed unacceptable. Yes, it was a bit of an overreaction, but MS brought in on themselves by their "fuck you, peon, you'll like what we tell you to like" attitude, and the general impression that they were ignoring their core constituency: hardcore gamers. Plus, toss in the ridiculous forced inclusion of the Kinnect device, bumping up the price for a moderately inferior console, and it's not hard to see why the Xbox had a PR disaster early in it's lifecycle, and is likely paying the price even now.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Gamers aren't nerds. They end to be under-35, but that's pretty much it. Games are mainstream.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
This is their play to get their own app store. If they can get a 30% cut on all games involving DX14 for example (by obliging DX14 games to use their app store), then they will be raking it in. There is no way they will give up on this strategy, as the benefits are too high.
Personally I say fuck them, they shit on PC gaming with GfWL because they were focusing on xbox, so I'm glad that Steam ate their lunch while they weren't looking. To add insult to injury, there are games now that are defunct because they relied on GfWL which was then abandoned by MS.
It turns out that Gaben was right all along about the need for SteamOS.
SURELY NOT!!!!!