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Microsoft Will Soon Start Bundling Drivers With Windows Store Games (thurrott.com)
Microsoft will start bundling drivers with Windows Store games to improve the performance of the game once downloaded. A report on Thurrott adds: This will work by the game download trigging Windows Update to acquire the minimum driver requirements to make sure that application works as intended. This may perturb some users who like having complete control over the driver updates for their hardware as this auto-download mechanism will overwrite the existing installation of the driver. Of course, you can still roll-back the update but hopefully Microsoft gives us a way to stop the auto-download of the driver via the Windows Store when this feature arrives.
What could possibly go wrong?
Don't play games off Windows Store.
Windows Store == games for windows live, just for Windows 10.
It's basically their own special sandbox that they get a cut of, which is rife with technical hickups, and no guarantee you'll keep what you buy when the service is (nigh inevitably) shut down in (roll 2d8) years.
Lots of multi-platform development tools have added Windows store as a publishing output, but honestly, a regular-old Windows exe put out to GOG/Steam is the best choice, looking at every single example of income streams I've seen.
IF NOT XBOX:
PunishUser(_IncompatDrivers)
Problem solved.
Really, with Steam, GOG, etc who needs it? I game like crazy and use window 10. Windows store games--not even once.
Silence is a state of mime.
Will Microsoft then FORCE driver developers to decouple the ACTUAL drive from the shit bloat software that comes with them? Who the fuck needs a 300MiB download just for a video driver? The hardware vendors do, which over 90% of that is bloatastical bullshit, mostly just "fancy" ads for other games, or optional (but a pain in the fucking ass to remove) graphics utilities nobody asked for or even wanted in the first place.
Full drivers or the more basic ones without the ati / nvidia control panels / apps?
Will the bug of nvidia updater and windows update both auto updating drivers in a loop come back?
was Microsoft struck a deal with Uber.
Of course, it's yet one more thing for Microsoft to ram down Windows users throats.
Also, what if some applications stop mentioning certain prerequisites, due to the operating system silently accommodating them? You know, the ones enabling additional....*a-HEM*...telemetry?
Even aside from the (valid; but clearly not who Microsoft cares about catering to at this point, concerns about 'no, I don't really want Redmond scribbling all over my drivers 'automagically'); I just don't understand what purpose this serves. Microsoft already provides drivers through Windows Update; and while it can be persuaded otherwise, the intended consumer settings are 'check automatically for drivers when a new device is connected' and 'check for updated drivers periodically thereafter'.
That being so, what drivers remain for the precious 'windows store' to handle? There are a few games that have dedicated peripherals, so I suppose those might be a use case; but aside from that anyone who lets MS handle drivers for them already has drivers that are, at worst, perhaps a few days behind the curve. Windows update checks pretty frequently, and the only drivers that really churn significantly are GPU drivers(and even those move fastest in the vendor's own semi-beta release system, with the WHQL drivers typically moving less frequently).
So what is the point here? Are they just covering the tiny number of games that do require specific hardware? Is touching the Windows Store going to kick you off WHQL GPU drivers and onto bleeding-edge-gamer-fanboy drivers?
The issue of 'I don't want MS monkeying with my drivers' is getting close to moot at this point; they haven't entirely cut out your ability to disable it; but it is pretty strongly encouraged as a default; what confuses me, though, is that Windows Update already covers driver updates, so unless someone has deliberately chosen otherwise, they'll already be up to date. What's the point?
So I install software X, and software Y breaks because they share drivers or libraries, and Y is not compatible with the newer version of the shared parts?
This is what the famed DLL-Hell did. Is MS bringing that back? Hell, might as well bring back Clippy to make the nostalgia experience (nightmare) complete.
Table-ized A.I.
It even says so while it's searching for updates for drivers; "This may take a few minutes". So now we have to deal with that AND the game installation?
Is the idea to drive people away from their software? Looking at their crazy behavior over the past several years, I can't help but wonder if their new "business strategy" is to tank the company.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Windows Store == games for windows live, just for Windows 10.
It's basically their own special sandbox that they get a cut of, which is rife with technical hickups, and no guarantee you'll keep what you buy when the service is (nigh inevitably) shut down in (roll 2d8) years.
Lots of multi-platform development tools have added Windows store as a publishing output, but honestly, a regular-old Windows exe put out to GOG/Steam is the best choice, looking at every single example of income streams I've seen.
2d8? If I understand the lingo correct that's two 8 sided dice? Try flipping two coins instead. Heads = 1, tails = 0.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Two great articles by Shamus Young show just what a trainwreck the Windows Store is:
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twe...
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twe...
I'm sure most here already knew that, but he really lays out how MS doesn't seem to care about the customer experience or competing with Steam (just muscling them out through lock-in). It's sad that Valve can't seem to make the Steambox concept work, but if MS's platform is the one that succeeds, then we all lose.
Pretty much single AAA title the last years has come with a driver update requirement. Try to go pay BF1 or whatever the latest title is - you'll be required to get the latest nvidia or AMD driver. The game will tell you. Not sure if this is the case for many store games but I assume that for any AAA titles it would be the same. That's why this is a convenience for those cases. The driver is more or less PART of the game because the necessary driver changes were done in collaboration with the studio.
For end users, this could create a broken configuration that could occur when whatever GPU software and Windows itself fight over who's driver gets installed that a user with poor computer knowledge would just be unable to grasp, and the support nightmare that comes along with it.
For power users, this is just annoying and further damages the likelihood anyone would use the Windows Store for anything other than to chuckle at.
I think Steam has pretty much sewed up the PC Gaming delivery platform. M$ wasting their time with this Windows Store thing.
Personally, if I wanted an 'App Store', I'd go buy an Apple. Windows Store is one of those things I just destroy it's icon and forget it even exists.
Like Communism, this sounds great in practise but reality says differently. I wouldn't trust it worth a damn because Microsoft has a fantastic track record of hosing people's machines with updates.
Heck, a recent update killed network access for countless people in the UK because they somehow managed to botch DHCP.
n/t
As if I needed another reason to avoid the windows store for game purchases...
>> hopefully Microsoft gives us a way to stop the auto-download
Under Windows 10 I can't even choose what system updates it downloads or if/when they get installed.
What makes you think that any company that even thinks that is OK in the first place, will give gamers any more choices?
nVidia doesn't automagically install anything on my system, they don't even ask me if they can update. They just put up an easily-missed notification in the system tray.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
too bad that mac os is not on more hardware and they are pushing there locked down store very hard.
Linux to many distributions and not a lot of linux games. Wine is very hit or miss.
But still you can have it where the MS auto installs an older WHQL driver on top of a newer one installed by the ATI or NVIDIA app.
> but hopefully Microsoft gives us
No, they won't. Or if they do, it will be something that will go away later. Windows users will put up with anything, so why should they bend over backwards for them in any way?
That's 2d2-2 you casual.
I seriously doubt this has anything to do with drivers, which are merely there to feed calls to the GPU, and the blame falls on a broken DirectX implementation.
You seriously have no idea WTF you are talking about.
Developers write code that hands off primitives and rendering instructions to DirectX. DirectX is a relatively thin API that exposes functionality in the GPU via the driver.
DirectX is sending roughly the same thing to the driver (barring app developers who choose multiple code paths). So if one driver breaks first and then the other breaks completely at random, it's 100% the problem of the driver devs.
Do you know why driver updates can improve performance and compatibility? Because there are different techniques they can use to turn a DirectX command queue into GPU instructions. It's a very complicated task.
Video drivers don't just "feed calls to the GPU". They are doing a lot of work translating those calls; modern GPU drivers are closer to JIT compilers than your old-fashioned device drivers.
Microsoft has done a lot of shit work, but this isn't one of those cases. Driver devs have a lot of hard work to do, and sometimes they screw it up.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.