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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.
>> even damage control from Phil Spencer
Who?
>> damage control...on Twitter
Yeah, time to rethink your PR strategy then because no one reads/forwards/retweets apologizes on Twitter. In fact, the only live people left over there seem to be reporters looking for the next drunk/racist/sexist celebrity/politician/athlete tweet, so craft accordingly...
Who fucking cares about 99% of PC users. Gamers care about this shit, and gamers are nerds, and this is news for nerds.
Really? Gamers care? What Gamer is running games from the Windows store???
Here is a list someone made:
No SLI/Crossfire,
Windows 10 store download is buggy,
No refund policy explained,
Vsync is always on,
Always borderless fullscreen,
Game files are protected,
Can't launch it via the exe (So adding it as a non steam game will not work)
No fps/hardware monitor software works with it,
You need to take control of the folder as admin if you want access to the files
Mouse software which lets you create custom binds for each game doesn't work
Say bye to using sweetfx and mods
Since no fps/hardware monitor software works, this means overlays meaning no Steam Controller since you can't use Big Picture Mode
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.
I'd consider myself a "gamer" in a previous life. Nowadays, I have exactly one machine (my media PC) that has a decent-ish GPU that I rarely use to play games. My typical gaming? Plants vs Zombies on an iPad.
There are hordes more like me than there are multi-GPU people. And Microsoft is doing the smart thing here. The "PC gaming gods" that complain about this shit and want to "boycott" it are holding Windows as a whole back a decade. I want a Windows tablet (like the Surface) but I'm forced to admit, the iPad has *way way way* more apps. And part of that reason is because neckbeards who are very vocal but by far in the minority are guiding the platform for the majority of users.
I like using Linux for most things, but Windows 7 is my main OS because it plays all my games reliably, Linux is still lacking in this area. I'd love if this UWP fiasco finally pushed gamers and developers off of Windows for good,
Oh fuck off! I don't think it's extreme at all to plunk $2,500 on the Megazapaplus 512GPU 512gb Uber Duber video card. Sure, I had to cut a hole in my case to fit it, and have to keep the whole unit in a chest freezer, but, I mean, that's totally normal, right?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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
Really? Gamers care? What Gamer is running games from the Windows store???
None, that's just it though. Microsoft is pushing it for their PC releases. Quantum Break, for example, is going to be exclusive to the Windows Store. It won't be on Steam or any other 3rd party platform. They are moving all of their 1st party games this direction and the fear is they are pushing 3rd party devs to do it as well.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Maybe a gamer who wanted the to play the games that are exclusive to the windows store such as Quantum Break, which is what caused the entire controversy in the first place. What this represents is the carving up of the PC space into a console like model of distribution where Microsoft is the gatekeeper of the PC gaming experience.
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
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
Sure, but for 12 whole seconds it was state of the art.
No, I won't care because I don't use Windows.
I'm on the verge of abandoning Win 7 (which I actually like) and moving over to Linux Mint.
I've got it installed (dual boot) on a laptop and it rocks. So far I've kept MS from 'upgrading' my PC to Win 10, but the moment that happens, *boom* I'm gone.
In fact I'll probably switch before then, but for the moment as long as my venerable Win 7 install keeps running I'll use it.
However, as soon as I buy a new bit of gear that doesn't have Win 7 drivers, that'll be the reason I jump ship (assuming that the new gear will work under Mint).
So basically it's just a matter of time until I switch....
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
A good way to help fix this:
Any time you're asked to fix a computer with Windows 8 or 10, do the person a favor and unpin the Windows Store icon from the taskbar and start menu to make room for things that are actually useful.
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.
> just remember that this opinion rant on The Guardian is coming from someone ...
This isn't just some dumb schmo off the internet. Maybe if you had written the Unreal Engine, or an optimized texture mapper in x86 assembly that supported dithering, written an whitepaper entitled The Next Mainstream Programming Language", AND been responsible for open sourcing the entire Unreal Engine then maybe we'd find you to be a little more credible. Tim is looking at the *big* picture, along with Valve. The more MS tries to be like Apple or Google the more game devs they piss off. Continued long enough it will reach critical mass.
> just like how Windows has had UAC for a decade now.
Riiight, because MS's solution is to *spam the user with modal dialog boxes*. When most people that crap off how is it solving the problem again???
Nothing can beat the bandwidth of a truck full of blu rays.
Since it's /. I get to geek out and say nuh'uh
BDXL = 128GB = 120mm Dia x 1.2 mm = 9MB/mm^2
2.5" HDD = 4TB = 100mmx70x19 = 27MB/mm^2
3.5" HDD = 10TB = 146mmx102x25 = 30MB/mm^2
microSDXC = 200GB = 15mmx11x1 - 1212MB/mm^2
Flash wins by three orders of magnitude :)
26' uHaul truck (since we're geeks not CDL drivers) holds 7400lbs or 3357KG .25g so you can carry 13,428,000 (by volume is 2x higher but...max weight)
uSDXC weights
2,685,600,000GB or 2.7EB
Let's say we're going 100km/hr and going NYC to SF for 4700km or 47 hours or 169,200 seconds
So that's about 16000GB/s
The approximate bandwidth of a 26' uHaul is 127tbps.
Those cards are $100 each so it'd only cost $1.3 billion (plus gas, tolls, and rental)
Let me know next time you want to move 2.7EB from NYC to SF - I'm down.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
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!!!!!