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Windows 10's Store Locks 'Call of Duty' Purchasers Into Windows-10-Only Battles (vice.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
Two Call of Duty games have been remastered for Windows 10, but if you buy them through the Windows 10 Store there's a problem. "Windows 10 Store players will be isolated from other PC versions of the game," reports the Windows Central site, noting a statement from Microsoft which implies that the decision was made by Activision.
"For unknown reasons, Windows 10 Store customers are segregated from customers who bought the game from Steam, which is by far the most popular platform on PC," reports Motherboard. "Call of Duty fans who made the unfortunate of mistake of giving Microsoft their cash are left sitting in lonely multiplayer lobbies waiting for games that'll never start."
Motherboard reports that at least one player successfully requested a refund, calling the situation "another black eye for a digital storefront that PC gamers already avoid like the plague."
"For unknown reasons, Windows 10 Store customers are segregated from customers who bought the game from Steam, which is by far the most popular platform on PC," reports Motherboard. "Call of Duty fans who made the unfortunate of mistake of giving Microsoft their cash are left sitting in lonely multiplayer lobbies waiting for games that'll never start."
Motherboard reports that at least one player successfully requested a refund, calling the situation "another black eye for a digital storefront that PC gamers already avoid like the plague."
Getting all games on all platforms is not feasible, no.
But why the flying hell can't the SAME GAME on PS4, XB1, Windows Store and Steam just ... just play TOGETHER?
FF14 has managed to do it, although I'm told Sony really didn't like the idea - but they have PS3, PS4 and PC players on the same servers. They then have OTHER problems if you want to, say, migrate your standalone PC account to Steam, but that's a whole other can of worms.
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No one will use UWP for serious 3D games - Angry Birds, sure. CoD, never.
We tried to make a cross-platform video streaming app with it and it took 6-8 months longer than expected (mostly due to Microsoft bugs and limitations, as you said) and in the end STILL didn't actually work properly on most "Windows 10" devices. We couldn't even get it to work properly on all Windows 10 Surface Pro tablets and PCs (let alone non-x86 tablets and phones). Made Android platform fragmentation seem simple in comparison.