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Microsoft snub PC Gaming
This year's keynote during CES left a lot to be desired. Where was Direct X11 and Games for Windows Live?
Written by Andy Griffiths, 07 January 2010
Let's face it we should all be used to this by now, Microsoft have once again ignored PC gaming during their hugely significant keynote at CES. During a two hour presentation plagued by technical difficulties, there was barely any attention paid to the world's most widely used platform.
Games for Windows Live was mentioned once and that was to co-inside with the announcement of personal arcade spaces dubbed Game Rooms, where gamers can buy retro classics for between 240-400 Microsoft Points. Judging from the trailer this seemed more than a little reminiscent of Playstation Home and we can't imagine many PC gamers paying for arcade classics which can be freely played online.
Next up we had improved HD TV functionality for Windows 7 which touted watching five channels at the same time. Not to seem too ungrateful, but many PC users already enjoy streaming television on their monitors. This wasn't an announcement which surprised anyone and surely time taken up by this redundant feature would have been better served by anything else PC related.
How about 3D gaming? Well they did show off Dirt 2 in Direct X11 enhanced 3D and a selection of gaming laptops with impressive amounts of power. However again this was nothing we hadn't seem demoed before in much greater detail.
Microsoft were more than happy to trot out gaming's best when it came to the 360, but for the PC they only payed lip service with a few mediocre announcements. This CES has seen new information about Halo Reach, Fable 3, Alan Wake, Project Natal and Xbox Live. So what do we get? Another way to watch TV on our PC...
If the big M really are serious about empowering PC development they must be willing to evangelise the platform at every opportunity, and frankly yesterday's showing at CES was nowhere near good enough.
The fact is, console gaming is more profitable and the market more malleable. Games aren't lowered to 9.99 on console games, there are no 'Sold Out' type labels for console games. Find a 12-18 month old console game and it'll probably still be full price. In 2-3 years it may still be over 25.00. So mostly this is about greed. This is another sign, along with disappearing genres, more shallow games and console conversions over PC only titles, that mainstream publishers are not interested in PC gaming.
Of course, the media doesn't help, with it far too close ties to the industry. When have you ever seen an interview of an industry leader that was anything more than a marketing exercise? When have you seen an interview where the industry person was sweating in the slightest? How many times have you read 'news articles' that seemed like they came straight from the PR department of the company concerned?
Let's face facts, with GOG and STEAM'S success, 5 million DOSBox downloads and an ever thriving indie market, AAA mainstream PC gaming is coming to an end.
UK_John
7 January 2010 @ 21:40PM GMT
Even with piracy as an issue, both platforms have that going on, and both have ways of "stopping" it momentarily. It's only treating the symptoms though the real issue is most of the time, prices are way too high for most sane people to deal with. Also, highly restrictive DRM is extremely annoying. Then those who pirate it to pirate it wouldn't have bought it anyways. It's only really prevalent on PC due to the sheer size of the users and accessibility.
In any case, MSFT has to support their console, I suppose. I can sort of see why it could've been a good console, but at this point it's just a pale reflection of the PC.
NoMessages
7 January 2010 @ 14:07PM GMT
The relaxed nature of P2P and torrenting will be the demise of PC gaming for everyting but indie games eventually.
Mr_Schultz
7 January 2010 @ 14:01PM GMT