Valve questions Microsoft's PC gaming initiative

Oh shut up Lombardi, GFW is far less offensive than your godawful Steam platform. I don't see PC gaming thriving under the current/old business model outside of Warcraft, so it's worth at least TRYING something different.

GFW is about marketing dollars for the publishers. In return, the publishers have to fulfill certain requirements, e.g. supporting limited users properly, installing into the Games Explorer if they're on Vista, etc. Frankly, it's pretty low bar stuff in exchange for a logo, marketing campaign money, and a consistent retail box (which PCs have never had; go into your bestbuy to see the shelves for PC games vs 360/PS3/Wii and tell me which makes more of an impact). I don't think how trying to promote more PC games can be a bad thing, unless we want the only PC game company to make money be Blizzard.

There's also no restriction in GFW that the games be Vista-only. Lego Star Wars and Company of Heroes, both GFW titles, were XP capable. I think Lego was even Win2K compatible. It just seems like a no brainer to me. The threat to Doug is more around the competition to Steam. For a long time they've had free rein to provide a craptastic experience since they were the only game in town. Now they're running scared because Big Bad Microsoft is muscling in.

"I don't see PC gaming thriving under the current/old business model outside of Warcraft, so it's worth at least TRYING something different."

That's because the current business models absolutely refuse to change and adapt to current market trends. Let's take a look at some recent initiatives.

MMO are a genre to be raped and pillaged until market can only tolerate one. Where you aware we once had a period of five new MMOs a month? Think about that. Five new subscription based games a month? What if you didn't like it? Well, majority of them did not feature a demo so you plunked down $50 on something you may or may not like. The saturation eventually lead to a dispursed consumer base until they started attaching themselves to the most common game.

EULA and other ways of saying "fuck the consumer." Seriously. If you refuse the EULA, you cannot take the game back to a store for a refund. You're stuck with it. And because of stupid ideas behind the way certain games ran, some were not compatible with more customized setups.

Why finish the game, when we can just patch? Keeping all the latest patches to your games can be quite a chore. One which many people hated. The idea of buying a game that may or may not work was frightening enough. But imagine the annoyances when you discovered it will work, eventually, when they get around to it. Thanks for your $50, btw.

Direct to Drive has to be one of the most annoying initiatives ever to grace the hairy back of an angry Nascar fan. Let's put it this way. D2D gives the developers a larger percentage, saves publishers money, but consumers pay the same amount. I mean, with iTunes, an album is $9.99, not $18 like at stores. If D2D saves them money, why not pass the shit along, huh? I mean, if I get no discs, no manual, no hard copy, no packaging, save me some cash. Don't make the bargain "Well, you don't burn gas going to a store."

If you add WOW and Valve and one or two others you have ALL of PC Gaming. That is not a "thriving" business for anyone but Blizzard and Valve. Microsoft should be applauded for trying to revitalize the market so more than a couple of companies can sell some games. If nothing else, I would hardly call WOW a win for the industry. It is sucking away a billion $$ a month that is not getting spent on other games, not to mention the time spent in WOW that is not spent playing anything else. And while Steam is distributing some cool stuff, it is a very limited channel that only really serves Valve.

PC gaming is being kept alive by only a few games. It's too bad, as PC gaming used to be all about variety.

I like Steam

I don't know anything about business strategy, and I don't read all the reports about how much money game companies make. But so far, I've bought the following games for windows games:
Company of Heroes.
Supreme Commander.

And they are both fantastic games, both PC exclusive, and both shining examples of why PC gaming definitely has a great future. If the 'Games For Windows' tag continues to be attached to such great games, then I'm all for it.

I'm also looking forward to live anywhere, and cross platform live gaming. From a consumer perspective, innovation and competition can never be a bad thing.

PC gaming isn't viable these days because it is so damn expensive compared to console gaming. A decent rig for playing new PC games at anything but the lowest resolution will probably cost you 1200-1300 dollars (Remember, most people aren't capable or willing to build their own gaming rig for cheaper). Compare that to the price of the 360 or the PS3 and you can see why most people are keeping their distance.More and more I'm finding noone to play with on any games except the newest of the new (except perhaps on older free games such as Enemy Territory) and this makes me kinda sad; The newest isn't always the greatest, and the PC market doesn't reflect that. If someone can create a box along the lines of the 360, add windows to it, and then sell it for 600 or 700 dollars, then maybe gaming on the PC will come back into grace. But when people have to pay 1300 dollars to play a game like Crysis, you can't blame them when they don't.

I think Games for Windows will be a good thing for PC. If they don't release games worth buying, people won't buy them.

Like Anonymous said its all about price.Wanna know why WoW and the sims sell like crazy?

BECAUSE THEY CAN BE PLAY ON JUST ABOUT ANY PC...


PC gaming will never ever be fully mainstream until they realize how to balance horsepower and price if console dev can do it so can pc devs.

And please dont say "but you can build a good pc for 500 bucks" because I can fix a car for 60% less than a shop chargers but that doesnt mean everybody can do it....

IMO, pc gaming is imploding. Nothing but negativity coming out of this group.

Anyone associated with Steam in any way has absolutely no right to be talking negatively about anyone else's plans for distributing and marketing games. Half-Life 2 was one of the games I deemed good enough for me to go out and purchase and what did I get for my money? A cardboard box with CDs in paper sleeves, no cases, no instructions, no key layout, and that system resource hogging piece of crap Steam.

Only fire coming out of me is fire over how I still can't seem to show up as anything but "Anonymous". What is the trick?

Except for the fact that World of Warcraft, Steam, and PopCap are total shit. More hardcore games are needed to make the nulls upgrade to core2 duo sli rigs. How about some dx10 besides crysis?!?

Vista is garbage but their Windows Gaming initiative has some merit. I'm a big fan of Steam and think it works great but what I would like to see from Microsoft is some sort of initiative to make all games playable by a certain level of hardware. I'm sick of all the upgrading.

To further comment on the price thing, most people buy a computer with gaming as not the primary purpose. Most people buy a computer to go on the internet or run MS-Office or something simple like that.

But just because they don't have a dedicated gaming PC doesn't mean they don't want to play games, they just need games that run well on their system.

God, I'm sick of hearing about "how you have to upgrade every so many months in order to play games" BS. I upgrade my Video Card Every 3 years, and I play the most current games without a problem. PC Gaming is just fine. It's in a major transition between OS's not to mention DX9 to DX10 software. As a global market, it's thriving, everybody uses the lousy NPD numbers to base their opinion on PC vs. Console. NPD numbers don't include online distro, MMO's, e-tail purchases(Which most PC gamer's use, at least the one's I know including myself), Walmart, and finally only USA figures. It's nothing short of a joke. MS knows there is a huge opportunity to tap into the wallets of millions of gamers and if PC gaming was in such disarray, MS wouldn't be making the push to begin with.

Consoles are great, I've always had one, but there's nothing like the experience you get on the PC.

Yeah ... that STEAM, resource hog!!!

It's stealing a whole 3MB of my RAM and 0% of my system CPU resources; and when I open it up it runs within 8MB.

Considering that Task Manager is 5MB, or iPodService is 3MB or Acrobat Tray is 2.5MB -- it's pretty darn efficient.

As a non-cheating purchaser of PC games I think Steam is pretty darn good: good range of games, easy to manage downloads, keeps everything up to date, what's not to like? ... anti-piracy and anti-cheat?

I like steam too.

Run great on Linux!



*ahem* (winehq.com)

What #17 said.

Lombardi's question seems rhetorical at best. Of course this is a branding exercise for Microsoft. And of course it's trying to push both Vista and the 360.

I don't see how this is supposed to represent a commitment to PC gaming, though. Insofar as Microsoft can make more people buy Vista and 360s, and keep their games on software/hardware controlled by Microsoft, the better off they'll be. This seems like a no-brainer, and I don't fault the company for it, but I don't see the big benefit to gamers here.


Geoff
http://www.alinktothefuture.com

(More on the blog.)

Even if I upgrade to Vista in 2009 to play Crysis 2 or whatever, I still want my XP = "proven" PC to play Rome: TW, Galactic Civilizations 2, Oblivion (play on 360 = moronic), & Company of Heroes.

@21
Oblivion was basically designed for the 360. Playing it on the 360 is more or less the same as playing it on the PC (sans the mods). Having said that, I prefer doing TV-Out via DVI from my PC to my TV and then running the game with HDR and (via a special patch) 4x Anti-Aliasing. It gives me a slightly crisper picture than the 360 version, and it lets me use mods.But is there any real differance in the retail non-modded version? Nah. And the 360 will run it better than your PC could probably anyway, unless you've spent alot of money on a PC

I can see what Doug is saying but give it a chance. It's not like MS has done anything this bold in the windows gaming sector before. It'll compliment 360 i believe. Some organization and standardization never hurts. Eventually all the titles will be under that banner.

Somehow I don't think Doug knows as much about the GfW logo as he should. Yes, half of it is a push for Vista, the other half is a push from MS to make PC gaming more similar to console gaming. They've been building this up for a little while, and have mentioned it in articles in the DirectX SDK. Having the GfW logo includes compliance with certain standards, like compatibility with 64-bit CPUs, the Xbox 360 controller, widescreen support, the vista game explorer, and an install in as few clicks as possible (e.g. you put a CD in, you hit the install button, and that's it). Personally, I'm for the GFW logo, since for the most part, we're looking at a product that will likely just work better.

"I prefer doing TV-Out via DVI from my PC to my TV and then running the game with HDR and (via a special patch) 4x Anti-Aliasing. It gives me a slightly crisper picture than the 360 version, and it lets me use mods."
I've been doing nearly exactly the same...but *slightly* crisper?!
With the visual improvement mods and some config file tweaking the difference is amazing-I had both versions run alongside each other some time ago-and saying that the PC version is "slightly crisper" simply doesn't do it justice. :)

incompatibilities, patches, mods, and config file tweaking. mmm.

yeah thats why people like consoles.




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