Microsoft to will increase focus on PC gaming

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http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=14687

Yay - I think?

"Windows Vista leads heavier promotion of the PC games marketplace

Microsoft's games boss Peter Moore has pledged to do more to promote and support PC gaming in the coming months and years, after apologising for neglecting the company's "number one platform" in favour of the Xbox.

Speaking at the DICE summit in Las Vegas, Moore admitted that Microsoft was partly culpable for the decline of the PC platform at US retail, and apologised openly for "the dereliction of duty to our company's number one platform, the PC, in terms of gaming."

The recently promoted head of the firm's entire videogames division - encompassing both the Xbox platforms and the PC gaming division - outlined a number of key problems he sees with the PC market at present, including technical issues such as the lack of a unified online service and troublesome install processes, and a lack of coherent branding leading to consumer confusion.

Moore hopes to address many of these problems through the launch of Windows Vista, Microsoft's next operating system which is due to be released at the end of this year after several major delays.

Games will be a key element of the Vista OS, in the same way that images, videos and music have gradually been integrated into the system, and the new system also promises to introduce a more stable environment for games and a simplified install process.

The company will also be driving for the standardisation of PC game packaging at retail, Moore told the summit, and will be providing developers with new tools to build online community functionality into their games on Windows Vista.

While Microsoft's new focus on PC gaming will be welcomed by the industry, it's likely to come in for a cynical response from many gamers, who already see the software giant using videogames as an excuse to force users to upgrade to Windows Vista.

The company last week announced that Halo 2 will be available exclusively on the Windows Vista platform, meaning that people wanting to play it on their PCs will not only have to wait for two years after the launch of the Xbox version, but will have to pay for an expensive operating system upgrade to do so."
 
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Moore admitted that Microsoft was partly culpable for the decline of the PC platform at US retail
Hah, they wish.

apologised openly for "the dereliction of duty to our company's number one platform, the PC, in terms of gaming."
Compete in an open, easier to program market against big names, or make a profit on every one of those same big names on your closed-system console? Ooh tough choice guys. Number one platform my backside.

including technical issues such as the lack of a unified online service
It's a pipe-dream to think PC gaming will ever have such a service, so it's silly to bemoan the lack of one.

So yeah, seems like a lot of placating talk in order to try and sound interested in PC gaming, when I imagine they're not.
 
ethan said:
true, but they know eventually we'll beforced 2 upgrade.

i remember a topic on this fourm a few months ago and the end result was that people still use windows me/2000 on their PC's, so i would think a lot of other people would 2



but still, people should up date because they want to and because that op system does a lot of new stuff, not because MS are only releasing ports of console game on a certain type of op system.
 
I have Xp with various adds. Windows XP will suit me for another few years, and I wont bother with O/S exclusive games. I will buy others that arn't or go opensourced for applications if applications like Photoshop and others go O/S exclusive.

I have no desire to have Windows Vista. People still use 98 or 2000 today, so XP will do just fine.
 
The problem is they want to stop all support for anything other than their newest babies after a few years, which they think forces us to upgrade, whereas it just gives them a PR nightmare in the long run.

To be honest, I feel that they are just trying to tie up a relatively open market.
 
Only games made by microsoft will be vista only. Why would other companies limit their market like that? Of course the answer to that would be because they're getting paid off by MS but let's hope that doesn't happen.

From a personal POV I couldn't care less because I plan on upgrading to vista almost straight away anyway.
 
Im looking forward to it, I was one of them that said they where sticking to win98 I even said it about win95. If they make the improvement over XP that XP made over win 98 I will be very happy with it.
 
Psyk said:
Only games made by microsoft will be vista only. Why would other companies limit their market like that?

Microsoft might only offer support to developers who are going Vista-only. Depending on how "new" the Vista stuff is going to be developers could be in for a long/expensive process of getting up-to-speed on the new operating system. In the long-run we could see more and more companies going Vista-only although it won't happen until a year after release, probably.

It really depends on how well Microsoft support other companies who want to use this new gaming technology in Vista that they're hyping just now.
 
Vista is the future of PC gaming wether you lot like it or not. Full Stop. I think what Microsoft are trying to do is make PC gaming more mainstream with simple installations, easy to understand minimum requirements and stability. This can only be a good thing in the long run. To us "hardcore" gamers the benefits will be small though.
 
i remember a press release that said that games will not need full installs in the future, so they will just preload a little bit, and install the rest as you are playing...
 
nO}{8 said:
Vista is the future of PC gaming wether you lot like it or not. Full Stop. I think what Microsoft are trying to do is make PC gaming more mainstream with simple installations, easy to understand minimum requirements and stability. This can only be a good thing in the long run. To us "hardcore" gamers the benefits will be small though.
Simple installations? What could be more simple than pressing "next" and then double clicking the "Start game" icon that has just magically appeared on your desktop?
 
Killerkebab said:
Simple installations? What could be more simple than pressing "next" and then double clicking the "Start game" icon that has just magically appeared on your desktop?
A standard place for them to install to would be nice. At the moment some install just to the C drive, some in program files, some are grouped by publisher or developer, some have their own directory, etc, etc. It would be good to have a My Games folder where all game files are installed to.
 
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