Xbox Boss Claims More Steam Releases Are Coming

Megalith

Megalith

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Phil Spencer has admitted that game releases on the Windows Store haven’t gone well and suggests that at least some of them will be heading to Steam. They should just abandon the Windows Store or severely overhaul it, but since neither is going to happen, I’ll take what I can get.

"I look at Steam today, it's on an incredible growth trajectory. It's a massive force in gaming; a positive force. I think it will be bigger a year from now than it is today. And five years later it will still be bigger again," he said. "I look at Valve as an important [independent software vendor] for us on Windows. They are a critical part of gaming's success on Windows. I don't think Valve's hurt by not having our first-party games in their store right now. They're doing incredible well. We will ship games on Steam again."
 
I remember buying a game called Half-Life 2 in 2004. It made you install it using some program called Steam which wasn't popular because there were only a couple Valve games on it.
 
tec1500 said:
I remember that too! But then this "Steam" became so popular that they didn't need to create Half life 3.
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What are you talking about? They've been developing it for twelve years now... They just have to wait on the timing of a release. Timing is everything you know... :)
 
that forced steam shit for hl2 was annoying its never going anywhere! :) but...
what if they've been waiting this long for vr, HL3VR...
 
Speaking of which, Valve really needs to do something about Steam and Linux, cause as you can see Microsoft is planning to do something about PC gaming. Key problem is lack of games, specifically popular games like GTAV, Fallout 4, and etc. Find a way to get these games running on Linux, please. Before the Windows Store isn't shit.
 
Translation: MS is looking into buying Valve and/or buying Steam from Valve.
 
DukenukemX said:
Speaking of which, Valve really needs to do something about Steam and Linux, cause as you can see Microsoft is planning to do something about PC gaming. Key problem is lack of games, specifically popular games like GTAV, Fallout 4, and etc. Find a way to get these games running on Linux, please. Before the Windows Store isn't shit.
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MS is paying lip service like usual. To MS, PC gaming is a necessary evil. Almost all of their dev tools depend on the PC platform. Everything you see or hear from MS about PC gaming becomes meaningless once you realize it is all aimed towards transitioning the gamer and dev over to Xbox, and the MS store.

If a dev does not want to, or can not afford to, put in the effort to insure Linux compatibility, there is not much Valve can do. I would love it if all of my games ran in Linux natively.

SeymourGore said:
The thing about Gaben is that he can't be bought with cold hard cash, maybe warm delicious pies, but not cash.
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I am sure he could, but, when he is sitting there eating donuts freshly prepared by his own personal donut chef off of a solid gold, platinum etched, diamond encrusted platter watching Steam print money for him, the amount would likely have to be astronomical.
 
SeymourGore said:
The thing about Gaben is that he can't be bought with cold hard cash, maybe warm delicious pies, but not cash.
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Microsoft could make it worth his while. But it would be costly and guessing there may be some anti-trust issues that come into play. Valve has been in the game for a long time and Microsoft just got started. Obviously there is a much higher level of comfort with Steam than the Windows Store for games and the sandboxed nature of UWA obviously is at odds for Win32 gaming, like mods and overlays. But a good deal of the bigger issues besides these have been fixed. I bought Tomb Raider and Quantum Break in the Windows Store. I personally have been happy with them, they did quickly sort out the bigger issues. And a GTX 1080 helped with the rest.

The Windows Store may never be a big AAA gaming distribution system, though that's starting to become much easier with Project Centennial. But the Windows Store is necessary for touch and tablet apps, and that's becoming much more important for Windows devices these days. That's never going to be the world of Win32 apps.
 
this title is completely misleading. I heard everything he said and what he said was he wants to do windows store, he doesn't want to put big titles like gears of war and quantum break on steam,

he pointed to smaller titles like Ori and the blind forest and Age of Empires on steam that they released. He said he wants to grow the windows store, and that steam wont be at that much of a loss without a quantum break being on it.
 
Why does MS even bother saying stuff like this? We all know they aren't going to release anything worthwhile on steam.
 
He talks like it is Valve's loss rather than it being the gamer's loss which is kind of weird.
 
Actually it would seem that, so far, it has been Microsoft's loss, with Windows Store selling pitiful amount of games.
 
d8lock said:
Why does MS even bother saying stuff like this? We all know they aren't going to release anything worthwhile on steam.
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They will, a couple years later. Games like Quantum Break will likely show up on Steam, eventually. They will want to try to compel MS store adoption with their first party games, when it does not work for anything outside of Halo, they will relent to try and recoup losses by publishing on Steam.
 
Do not care, Microsoft will never see another penny from me after their GFWL bullshit, welcome to the bozo bin Microsoft, you are in good company along with Ubisoft. No, I do not want to install Win10 either.
 
Tech Deals said:
MS just paid $26.2 Billion Dollars for Linked in... Do you think Gaben would turn down $26 Billion Dollars for Valve?
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Yes he would.

Because everything Microsoft touches post-2005 turns to shit. A Microsoft Steam would be abandoned in droves, especially when they started trying to crowbar everything into a UWP wrapper.
 
Tech Deals said:
MS just paid $26.2 Billion Dollars for Linked in... Do you think Gaben would turn down $26 Billion Dollars for Valve?
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This is a concept difficult for many Americans to understand, but when you're already a billionaire, have complete autonomy for your company to do what it wants, your company keeps increasing in value, and you have the good will of millions of people, some people might NOT get rid of that in order to make MORE billions. While there are a few things, I mean this as a serious question: What's holding you back at 1 billion dollars that you would be free to pursue if you had 10 billion dollars?
 
tetris42 said:
This is a concept difficult for many Americans to understand, but when you're already a billionaire, have complete autonomy for your company to do what it wants, your company keeps increasing in value, and you have the good will of millions of people, some people might NOT get rid of that in order to make MORE billions. While there are a few things, I mean this as a serious question: What's holding you back at 1 billion dollars that you would be free to pursue if you had 10 billion dollars?
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Why do people play RPGs? Seeing big numbers get bigger.
 
Gorankar said:
MS is paying lip service like usual. To MS, PC gaming is a necessary evil. Almost all of their dev tools depend on the PC platform. Everything you see or hear from MS about PC gaming becomes meaningless once you realize it is all aimed towards transitioning the gamer and dev over to Xbox, and the MS store.
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What MS wants to do is merge PC with Xbox, which is bad.
If a dev does not want to, or can not afford to, put in the effort to insure Linux compatibility, there is not much Valve can do. I would love it if all of my games ran in Linux natively.
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Valve can do two things.

#1 Port the games themselves, if allowed.
#2 Make a compatibility layer.
 
DukenukemX said:
What MS wants to do is merge PC with Xbox, which is bad.

Valve can do two things.

#1 Port the games themselves, if allowed.
#2 Make a compatibility layer.
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You willing to pay for #1? You may be, I would be, but would enough other people be willing to do so? Could it be done every time without fragmenting any online community that may exist for said game?

For #2, do you think MS would not sue, if Valve actually dumped money and dev time into making something like Wine really work properly all of the time for every game? Can you actually make something like Wine work all of the time, for every game, without using any MS code? Would MS license that code?

I would love for a truly functional Win7/8/10 compatibility layer in Linux. They have come close a few times, at various points in time, but they never really got there with it.
 
DPI said:
Yes he would.

Because everything Microsoft touches post-2005 turns to shit. A Microsoft Steam would be abandoned in droves, especially when they started trying to crowbar everything into a UWP wrapper.
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You seem to misunderstand Steams purpose. Steams purpose is not just pure distribution for companies it's also anti-piracy companies would easily stick to Steam if microsoft owned it. Companies like EA wanted more cut so took steam out as their middleman for distribution Origin still around, still has quite a large installation, EA library carries it. Battle.Net fucntions similar to Origin for Blizzard, carried by exclusive titles. Ubisoft doesn't force distribution through Uplay even though they could. D2D and GoG aren't popular among the big studios for new releases for obvious reasons. Microsoft only has to maintain the level of 3rd party AAA content steam current has to maintain user base, it takes a whole lot of shit to move users off habits or a truly revolutionary product to move users. Large game library with most new AAA titles is all microsoft would need to maintain the user base in steam.

If microsoft could purchase steam they should if they're serious about capturing games on PC. That being said Gaben is likely rich enough at this point more money might not influence him, then again notch was pretty rich and gladly took more money even with his microsoft hate(lol the dude hated microsoft because to port his game to be distributed on xbox he had to recode it(outsourced) so it would be coded properly(actually coded with security in mind) and got upset over that)
 
Gorankar said:
You willing to pay for #1? You may be, I would be, but would enough other people be willing to do so? Could it be done every time without fragmenting any online community that may exist for said game?
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Why should I? Valve wants to expand their business away from Windows, so they should pay. Or developers could release the source code and let the community do it, like with Doom 3.
For #2, do you think MS would not sue, if Valve actually dumped money and dev time into making something like Wine really work properly all of the time for every game? Can you actually make something like Wine work all of the time, for every game, without using any MS code? Would MS license that code?
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Why doesn't Microsoft sue Wine? They can't, and it's not because it's open source. You absolutely can make Wine without any MS code. Ever heard of ReactOS? It shares some code with Wine and vice versa. Microsoft ain't sueing the pants off of them either. So long as 0 of their code is used, it's legal. Same reason why Nintendo isn't after Dolphin, and why Xenia isn't sued to hell by Microsoft. None of their code is used. Doesn't have to be. Wine even uses an open source .net called mono.

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I would love for a truly functional Win7/8/10 compatibility layer in Linux. They have come close a few times, at various points in time, but they never really got there with it.
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Wine is too busy ported their broken code to Android instead of making it actually work on Linux/Mac. And because of CrossOver, not many people will donate code either.
 
So money is the issue. You don't want to pay, and Valve does not need to as long as MS does not lock them out of Windows, or cut into their profits enough to make doing so a worthwhile ROI. For a wee bit it looked like MS were going to try with Win10 UWP and the WIn Store, which is why Steam OS sort of happened. MS has not, and does not appear to be planning to try that in the near term, so I don't know how much more Valve will commit to it. My opinion is that they intend to string it along on life support so they have something at least started should MS ever really try to require UWP and the MS store, or to put pressure on MS not to try anything funny like that.
Right now, Steam OS, or Linux in general, are no where near a solution for gamers that want out of the MS ecosystem, much as I might wish it were so. Nor does it look like it will be in the short term.

So we are stuck listening to MS lies about PC gaming.
 
Microsoft does not have the talent to manage a service like Steam. It takes more than money and an endless stream of H1Bs to make a good product.
 
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