Universal Windows Platform and its possible impacts to PC gaming

Lmfao!

EDIT: Yup, Dx11.

da68a6648dd94728ac05521727060dba.png


https://twitter.com/x/status/763398340667113472

http://www.remedygames.com/quantum-break-coming-to-steam-and-pc-retail-on-14th-of-september/
 
Last edited:
Colour me unsurprised.

Everyone knew games being exclusive to Windows Store would flop. (And they have, sales are atrocious, Rise Of The Tomb Raider had a shocking disparity)
 
Coz its like better like and new so it must be good coz its new.

The idea behind it isn't a bad one - being able to make games that work over a variety of platforms and integration with those platforms with the ability to build in companion apps and other OS features like notifications and live tiles, etc. in practise meh.
 
Last edited:
Gimpymoo said:
Can someone not working for Microsoft tell me why UWP is needed for PC games?
Click to expand...

It's not? Unless you want to publish on the Windows Store, in which case if you want to play in their playground then you have to follow their rules (which apply to all apps, not just games).
 
Gimpymoo said:
Can someone not working for Microsoft tell me why UWP is needed for PC games?
Click to expand...

It isn't. It was just an attempt to leverage Windows into taking a slice of Steam's cake, and exert control over the PC gaming market.

Rather like Windows phone or Zune, it was never going to work against less restrictive and better products already dominating the market. It simply isn't good enough for people to shift from existing services, because it only benefits Microsoft, not the customer.
 
Steampunk said:
It isn't. It was just an attempt to leverage Windows into taking a slice of Steam's cake, and exert control over the PC gaming market.

Rather like Windows phone or Zune, it was never going to work against less restrictive and better products already dominating the market. It simply isn't good enough for people to shift from existing services, because it only benefits Microsoft, not the customer.
Click to expand...

The main reason UWP exists is to make cross-platform (*Windows 10* cross platform) development easier. And it makes perfect sense from an apps point of view. I'm running exactly the same Netflix app from the Windows store on Windows 10 as I would if I owned a Windows Phone, or Surface, or Xbox. Netflix have only had to develop a single app which can be used on all devices. This is a huge bonus for developers - if a bug is found in the app then they only have to fix it once rather than fixing multiple versions for multiple devices and rolling them out separately.

The gaming area is a little more muddy. There are games which will benefit from this same write-once-target-many approach (such as the Windows 10 version of Minecraft) but the benefit to games which are only going to be released on PC is questionable.

However, it does mean that it's attracting games which we would have never previously got on the PC, such as Forza and Halo. I don't care if this is a result of developers liking UWP, or if Microsoft are incentivising them - I think these games on the PC is a good thing.
 
ZombieFan said:
The main reason UWP exists is to make cross-platform (*Windows 10* cross platform) development easier. And it makes perfect sense from an apps point of view. I'm running exactly the same Netflix app from the Windows store on Windows 10 as I would if I owned a Windows Phone, or Surface, or Xbox. Netflix have only had to develop a single app which can be used on all devices. This is a huge bonus for developers - if a bug is found in the app then they only have to fix it once rather than fixing multiple versions for multiple devices and rolling them out separately.

The gaming area is a little more muddy. There are games which will benefit from this same write-once-target-many approach (such as the Windows 10 version of Minecraft) but the benefit to games which are only going to be released on PC is questionable.

However, it does mean that it's attracting games which we would have never previously got on the PC, such as Forza and Halo. I don't care if this is a result of developers liking UWP, or if Microsoft are incentivising them - I think these games on the PC is a good thing.
Click to expand...

They can't be exactly the same app because the windows phone are ARM versus x86, obviously some phones are x86 though from the Intel line up though, and there's some x86 exclusives. I might be being naive, but someone's going to have to explain that to me.

This whole single development was meant to be part of W8's big plan, but my Surface 2 RT's dead as a door knob.
 
Martini1991 said:
They can't be exactly the same app because the windows phone are ARM versus x86, obviously some phones are x86 though from the Intel line up though, and there's some x86 exclusives. I might be being naive, but someone's going to have to explain that to me.

This whole single development was meant to be part of W8's big plan, but my Surface 2 RT's dead as a door knob.
Click to expand...

Yea, exactly the same app. Apps are written for Windows 10 (well, W10 device families to be pedantic) and then run on any hardware which supports Windows 10, which includes phones, tablets, and even the Raspberry Pi and Hololens. That's what the 'Universal' in UWP is for :)

Obviously, different devices have different input and display characteristics (there's no 'back' button on a desktop pc, for example) so the app still has to detect what it's running on and act accordingly. That's the same principle of changing the input method depending on if an xbox controller is plugged in or not.

Here's a UWP app running on a Raspberry Pi with Windows 10 installed - https://www.maker.io/en/blogs/how-t...raspberry-pi/32b278bd7eaa473182441cbbe2d92edf

Here's a tutorial which shows you how to write a simple app and run it on your desktop PC, and then exactly the same app in a Windows 10 Phone emulator - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/uwp/get-started/create-a-hello-world-app-xaml-universal

You're right - they attempted to do this with Windows 8 and Windows RT. But mistakes were made and it didn't get traction. Microsoft have doubled-down with it in Windows 10, since from a developer's point of view it's very attractive to be able to maintain a single code base for all windows devices.
 
Last edited:
It still sounds like it's not gaining traction to me.
And Windows Phone's (At this point, more like ARM on Windows, there's no tablets anymore that aren't x86) more or less dead, they can just use win32 for their single code base, they don't really need any store. It's still generally pointless.
 
Last edited:
Martini1991 said:
They can't be exactly the same app because the windows phone are ARM versus x86, obviously some phones are x86 though from the Intel line up though, and there's some x86 exclusives. I might be being naive, but someone's going to have to explain that to me.

This whole single development was meant to be part of W8's big plan, but my Surface 2 RT's dead as a door knob.
Click to expand...

The API is the same, all the code is the same. Developers just compile for a different target, job done.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom