Microsoft: More Must Be Done With PC Gaming

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Let's all hope that Microsoft is serious when they say that more must be done with PC gaming.

When a user asked if such games would come to Games For Windows (in favor of downloading Steam), Spencer was quick to respond. "I agree that Microsoft needs to up our gaming presence on Windows. Part of my Xbox role is to bring back our Windows gaming focus." However, there's bound to be a different means to bringing them to the service, as Games For Windows Live is rumored to be shutting down next month.
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The last time Microsoft "upped their gaming presence on Windows", we got Games for Windows Live. I, for one, am not looking for a repeat of that.
 
They could allow Xbox One games to work directly on Windows. It's the same hardware as a PC for gods sake, so why the fuck not?
 
Xbox Live services are already integrated with Windows 8.1, complete with achievements. They just need a good showcase game for the platform.
 
When it comes to gaming on Windows, Microsoft says one thing and does another. They've been holding off on porting any of the Halo games since Halo 2. Doing that tells you something right there. Games for Windows Live is a joke that just gets in the way of setting up the game from what I've seen.

Microsoft just needs to keep focusing on updating DirectX to remove the performance overhead and not worry about PC gaming. We've done fine without their help.
 
A good start would be to stop looking at what they can make that takes advantage of us and start thinking about what kind of services we could really use.

For instance, TeamSpeak3 is one of just a few comms utilities any competitive gaming group uses, why spend any development money toward in-games comms by individual titles when they could develop a common Microsoft hosted communications application linked to the "Next Games for Windows Live", that all of their titles would support. I'm not saying they have to offer free services but that by offering a common functional alternative that's very reasonable would serve as a way to bring gamers into an environment that's actually useful to the players. Then they can offer convenient access at other games and services and maybe even group rates for them.
 
I bet this is leading to a Microsoft style Steam/Origin service.
 
Ashbringer said:
They could allow Xbox One games to work directly on Windows. It's the same hardware as a PC for gods sake, so why the fuck not?
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Because you code much lower to the metal when coding to consoles, since there's exactly ONE set of HW to support. When you port to a PC, you have hundreds, if not thousands of different pieces of HW, and millions of configs. Something in code, somewhere, will break unless you re-code the program from scratch.
 
Maybe if they give us what people actually want this time around, like cross-platform multiplayer and the ability to play console-exclusive titles in Windows...
 
Releasing a console like the Xbone 720p Kinect sets back both console and PC gaming quite a bit.
 
Everyone knows Microsoft's wet dream is to kill off PC gaming and move all the Windows gamers to their Xbox closed-off ecosystem where they can charge for DLC, multiplayer, overpriced accessories, etc.
 
niconx said:
Releasing a console like the Xbone 720p Kinect sets back both console and PC gaming quite a bit.
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No offense, but saying things like Xbone 720p Kinect just makes you sound ignorant. It is called an Xbox One, it does play 1080p games, and you can even buy an Xbox One without the Kinect. I feel like I'm back in high school with people talking in some weird tech ebonics that only fanboys use. I'm not arguing the fact that it is this super amazing console but come on... really?
 
Anytime Microsoft says anything about PC gaming be sure to remember this (From Angelus Errare at NeoGAF

Angelus Errare @ NeoGAF said:
For people getting their hopes up. This is MS's various statements on their promise to PC gaming.




Sorry, but all MS is doing is blowing smoke up the ass of gullible people. So yea go ahead and get your hopes up and get excited. In a year or two when none of what they say comes to fruition...I'll pretend to act shocked.
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I'm not sure why they would do more when desktop sales are declining every year, and there is no expectation that would change.
 
jimmyb said:
I'm not sure why they would do more when desktop sales are declining every year, and there is no expectation that would change.
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Do you have any clue how many actual pc gamers there are and will be for the foreseeable future? Not just lumped up pc sales where tablets are taking away from the web/email only crowd.
 
I think it'd be pretty cool for MS to bring their X720* games and software to Windows. It'd be really nice if MS gave PC gaming some presence at its upcoming E3 conference. Sure it's one thing to state that PC gaming is important to them, but it'd bring their words legitimacy if they go and announce it at a very public event (ie: E3) with some software to backup their claims.

*:p
 
GFWL some of the most asstastic software ever. All it did was make me hate installing the otherwise excellent Batman games.
 
pcjunkie said:
Do you have any clue how many actual pc gamers there are and will be for the foreseeable future? Not just lumped up pc sales where tablets are taking away from the web/email only crowd.
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Do you have any idea?
 
gamerk2 said:
Because you code much lower to the metal when coding to consoles, since there's exactly ONE set of HW to support. When you port to a PC, you have hundreds, if not thousands of different pieces of HW, and millions of configs. Something in code, somewhere, will break unless you re-code the program from scratch.
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That all really depends. DX12 is going to be low level API, just like Xbox One. In fact Xbox One is also going to have DX12.

In other news Apple also plays to introduce their own API for iOS called Metal. Which is another low level API.
 
Umm, nope, not really.

Because you code much lower to the metal when coding to consoles, since there's exactly ONE set of HW to support. When you port to a PC, you have hundreds, if not thousands of different pieces of HW, and millions of configs. Something in code, somewhere, will break unless you re-code the program from scratch.
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That's what drivers are for, the hardware manufacturer writes those, usually, we hope.

But no, and the other layer of making things work is the API, and those are universal, so yea, nope your wrong. The game doesn't have to be written and tweaked for all the hardware in the world, that's what standards are made for. Now you do have to do things like learn how to write your code to run properly with multi-core support or decide if you are going to support multiple monitors, but the only way you might have to change the code to support different types of monitors is if you want to support higher or lower then normal resolutions or something like that. And it isn't that challenging, it just takes more time and effort to cover those bases. That's one of the reasons that way back with Diablo2, Blizzard decided to only support two game resolutions, like 640x480 and 800x600. Otherwise they would have had to rebuild all their graphics items for the higher resolutions or allow the higher resolutions to display greater map area which they decided would give players an unfair advantage so they said. I think they just didn't want to redo all the graphic models several times over, it costs money, I get it. but that's really what it came down to.
 
By Jimmyb;
I'm not sure why they would do more when desktop sales are declining every year, and there is no expectation that would change.
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Jimmyb, desktop sales are in decline for several reasons, one, much of their sales are business related and business has also been in decline, two, mom and pop and many other people don't need a PC when their phone does email and a WD TV Live does Netflix and Hulu and they were never gamers anyway. But the real reason this statistic doesn't mean much is that first off, many gamers build their own machines which means component sales, not desktop sales, and the sales don't usually come from the big distributors like HP, and lastly, cause regardless how fast the hardware changes, the developers aren't writing their titles only to those new standards so that hardware still stands up pretty good for several years when it didn't used to be that way.

And for some of us, I never stopped PC gaming, but I got rid of my last desktops three years ago, it's been gaming laptops ever since. I had to have a decent laptop for gaming while on business trips, and it made no sense to try and keep both a desktop and a laptop up to good gaming standards, so the desktops are gone.
 
By Jimmyb;
Do you have any idea?
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Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft remains the #1 subscription-based MMORPG, with approximately 7.6 million ...
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https://www.google.com/#q=fy+2014+world+of+warcraft+subscriptions


Jimmyb, that's one title, there are equally millions of PC gamers who have never played WoW.

The computer game StarCraft had an active professional competition circuit, particularly in South Korea.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft:_Brood_War_professional_competition

Starcraft wasn't even a subscription based game and in South Korea they actually had a TV Channel dedicated to that one game.

Jimmyb, stop believing the marketers, their idiots.

Um ...I hope your not a marketer :D
 
lcpiper said:
https://www.google.com/#q=fy+2014+world+of+warcraft+subscriptions


Jimmyb, that's one title, there are equally millions of PC gamers who have never played WoW.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft:_Brood_War_professional_competition

Starcraft wasn't even a subscription based game and in South Korea they actually had a TV Channel dedicated to that one game.

Jimmyb, stop believing the marketers, their idiots.

Um ...I hope your not a marketer :D
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Yea blizzard and their games have helped keep the PC alive as a platform, that's for sure.

Kind of off-topic, but i wonder if blizzard's moba game will be the first moba on consoles...
 
It would be nice if they did more online cross-platform gameplay. I still fire up Shadowrun once in awhile to play against console players.
 
Jimmyb, you want solid sales numbers but there is a problem with that. For the most part, any title written primarily for a console and ported to a PC is usually a disappointing experience. I usually hate them myself because the UI is typically crap compared to a title that is developed for PCs first and foremost. So when I see a game like the next Call of Duty or the next Battlefield game I think, so what, it's going to play like crap cause it's written and the UI is designed for consoles and doesn't leverage a PC's capabilities.

So those sales figures will not represent the number of PC gamers very well nor will they represent what PC gamers like or don't like. It would be like Pontiac coming out with a new "true" sports car model that doesn't perform and isn't really a sports car, and when it doesn't sell they claim that people just don't want sports cars anymore. But that doesn't mean there are not millions of sports cars being driven every day. Maybe they should check the State's reregistration databases instead of sales from the showroom floor.
 
tuksonrider said:
It would be nice if they did more online cross-platform gameplay. I still fire up Shadowrun once in awhile to play against console players.
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MS isn't interested in that, because they don't have end-to-end control like they do with a closed console.
 
By tuksonrider;

It would be nice if they did more online cross-platform gameplay. I still fire up Shadowrun once in awhile to play against console players.
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The most recent title I saw that was PC and just started offering an XBox version was World of Tanks, but I don't think it's offers cross platform gameplay. I don't think the consollers could be competitive against the PCs.
 
Prove to me that you care by putting out that Halo 1-4 collection on Steam.
 
lcpiper said:
mom and pop and many other people don't need a PC when their phone does email and a WD TV Live does Netflix and Hulu and they were never gamers anyway.
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I'm ignoring the fact that the economy is in the toilet and nobody except the obscenely rich seems to be making any money and therefore cant afford a new PC every time theres an OS upgrade.

Its not always that they dont need a PC, but that they don't need a new PC. A PC from a few years ago can do everything a new PC can do so quite rightly they dont see a need. PC sales are driven by advances in PC technology and theres not been anything for a while.

On my gaming PC the CPU is 6 years old, graphics card is 3 years old and it works fine on full detail on most games at 1440p. PC advancements really dont matter as much these days and with almost all content designed for 1080p thats not going to change any time soon. Sure you can show that game X is 40% faster now so it runs at 70fps instead of 50fps but most people wont care or even notice. The only advances I see are in optimization & efficiency but even those are only really making a difference on the lower end of the CPU/GPU market. Once low-end PCs can 'play Crysis' to a decent level PC sales will flatline.

Even if both new consoles supported games at 4K now I bet it still wouldn't be standard in most homes for the next 10 years at least.

The simple fact is that most people buy PCs how they buy cars, when they need to. The exception to this is Apple products but that level of blind loyalty and post-purchase rationalization is probably impossible to reproduce.
 
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