Microsoft: "We Definitely Haven't Told Our Full Story About Gaming On Windows"

[rtwjunkie]

PC gaming is far from dieing.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/...now-brings-in-more-money-than-console-gaming/

There's a lot of money to be made in PC gaming. Recently League of Legends reported almost one billion dollars in micro transactions this year alone.

LOL..um, I was being somewhat sarcastic. I'm on record here much over the years talking about how strong PC gaming is. I was just trying to point out that so many sources have pronounced us dead, and Microsoft has treated us as if there are only a few of us, yet now Ryse comes to us to help them turn a profit on their game....which if we mattered so little, we wouldn't be able to do.

I should have laid out the premise of my thought a little clearer the first time. But hey, at least I knoew in my own head what I meant!

 

[64K]

LOL..um, I was being somewhat sarcastic. I'm on record here much over the years talking about how strong PC gaming is. I was just trying to point out that so many sources have pronounced us dead, and Microsoft has treated us as if there are only a few of us, yet now Ryse comes to us to help them turn a profit on their game....which if we mattered so little, we wouldn't be able to do.

I should have laid out the premise of my thought a little clearer the first time. But hey, at least I knoew in my own head what I meant!

Yeah, I knew you were being sarcastic. I find it funny too when sources say that PC gaming is dieing when the sales just keep going up year after year.

 

[Steevo]

Are you saying Azure is a failure because it doesn't work for your specific scenario? Because man that's dumb.

When they tell me it will, insist it will, and I full well knowing I am talking to marketing assholes finally agree to send them exports of some databases for lookup and some other windows interfacing, where if they were to dump the CSV into a database, create a sharepoint server to house and run the interface and install a few IBM applications it would work on a PC, but they insisted all they needed was the CSV, and all we needed was Azure subscriptions for each PC to access the server.....


The number of other features some of which were in beta, that failed was overwhelming.

Imagine a thin client logging onto a cloud server where all your data is safe, whoops, looks like another team changed our trial server disk setup, we will get back to you when we feel we are ready.

Hey, we have a deal with McAfee, we would like to infect install it on your PC's free of charge from a sharepoint server, where after it fucks up, and we have licensing synchronization issues we will leave you high and dry. Fortunately I allowed this on a whole 5 PC's that weren't really "mission critical".

lets talk about keeping all your machines up to date, if you install this software and run it it will send you reports of the machine name that is out of date on patches, antivirus subscriptions, definitions, and is reporting any malfunctions. Excuse the hundreds of emails about normal security events we accidentally sent, we seem to have fixed it, please note this file may slow down your productivity, and may infact randomly choose to run when users are actually trying to get work done, causing the machine or applications to crash, we will send a fix for it when we get around to it, and after we add more features that mean nothing, but keep someone on the marketing team happy.

We are ready with a new backup to cloud service, it takes a snapshot of your systems and uploads it to the cloud where it is secure from hardware failure, you can schedule the runs, and after the first backup its incremental, and we maintain X number of prior backups in case something like a MS update breaks things and you need to downgrade your system. Just like carbonite, except it only kinda works, and there are occasional issues like using UDP transport, where when we try to run it and the internet jitter happens it corrupts the file we were uploading, then as the software detects the uploaded file is different, it downloads that file to replace the one on your PC, possibly rendering it unworking, who needs .dll's anyway?


I did my fair share of "testing" and while many ideas were decent, most lacked good implementation, and participating in weekly or biweekly sessions on the faults and failures never seemed to get any results, and after awhile the few times a year you got a copy of software you weren't supposed to sell, cause I really needed another copy of Vista, Office, or another free month of cloud services, or XX hours of HPCC....... I gave up.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

...it should be implied that it will launch on Windows and Xbox on the same day without exception.

Honestly, given what's happened, I don't know why so many gamers want/expect multi plat titles to release simultaneously. Rockstar has proven that you can appease all platform players, not compromise PC graphics, and make plenty of profits with staggered releases.

The fact is the PC platform, esp with graphics intense games, DOES take more development time and money. And it's not just due to higher end hardware or offering more settings. The multitude of configurations obviously takes way more testing and patching.

We've recently seen Ubi say they're pushing for simultaneous releases, and now they're saying Sony and MS are pushing for 30 FPS on all platforms. Push leads to shove on the PC end in the form of crappy, rushed ports. I say stop the madness and have PC players get used to staggered releases.

Sony and MS got us into this mess by launching x86 platforms with not enough exclusives for a lot of players to maintain interest in them. So now they're literally leeching off multi plat titles trying to force a level playing field by enticing big developers into dumbing down PC graphics.

The next gen launch disaster ship has already sailed people. Expecting PC titles to release same day will only make it worse.

 

[Steevo]

Honestly, given what's happened, I don't know why so many gamers want/expect multi plat titles to release simultaneously. Rockstar has proven that you can appease all platform players, not compromise PC graphics, and make plenty of profits with staggered releases.

The fact is the PC platform, esp with graphics intense games, DOES take more development time and money. And it's not just due to higher end hardware or offering more settings. The multitude of configurations obviously takes way more testing and patching.

The next gen launch disaster ship has already sailed people. Expecting PC titles to release same day will only make it worse.

MS claims to have a software tool that moves code from the Xbone to PC or back with 80% efficency.

Also, Rockstar has no doubt been paid or pushed to get the console versions of GTA5 for the holiday season, to sell consoles and games. The PC version has been in development as long as the game has been out, and if we look at what the modding community can do for free, there is no reason for them not to release it, sell it for the two year old game it is at the price it should be at and let the community have at it.

Unless of course you think Rockstar is amazing at making video editors, and that is what we all need, another video editor, cause there aren't enough for free, or sale.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Honestly, given what's happened, I don't know why so many gamers want/expect multi plat titles to release simultaneously. Rockstar has proven that you can appease all platform players, not compromise PC graphics, and make plenty of profits with staggered releases.

The fact is the PC platform, esp with graphics intense games, DOES take more development time and money. And it's not just due to higher end hardware or offering more settings. The multitude of configurations obviously takes way more testing and patching.

We've recently seen Ubi say they're pushing for simultaneous releases, and now they're saying Sony and MS are pushing for 30 FPS on all platforms. Push leads to shove on the PC end in the form of crappy, rushed ports. I say stop the madness and have PC players get used to staggered releases.

Sony and MS got us into this mess by launching x86 platforms with not enough exclusives for a lot of players to maintain interest in them. So now they're literally leeching off multi plat titles trying to force a level playing field by enticing big developers into dumbing down PC graphics.

The next gen launch disaster ship has already sailed people. Expecting PC titles to release same day will only make it worse.

The logic is that whatever improvements are made for either platform should improve the opposite platforms release too. Microsoft should hold Windows launches to the same strict standards they do Xbox launches. That translates to no day-zero patches, no rushed patches within a week of launch, and no DLC preferential treatment (Xbox owners for example got cheated on Fable III when Windows got all of the DLCs for free).

 

[Frag_Maniac]

@Steevo,
I don't see much sense in factoring in porting efficiency unless you have a case where the platforms are drastically different, like PS4 vs PS3 where TLoU ws ported. Reason being that port time is not the whole story. To even be able to make a PC version capable of using the very best PC hardware, esp 4k, you have to have very high textures in the first place. So it can be said part of that PC development starts at the point of original development pre porting.

Also, porting only refers to translating raw code. It doesn't account for all the settings scripts, control schemes and testing I referred to. There's a WHOLE LOT more that goes into a PC title than the porting itself. And btw, Rockstar has been staggering releases for quite some time. It's nothing new, and it still works well. Nor with their huge budget do they need to be paid off by Sony or MS to release the console versions first. Ubi has recently put it as them "wanting" this or that, but clearly Rockstar are successful enough to call their own shots. I think they just knew it was going to be more profitable for them to stagger, and it has been. Rockstar just have a lot of common sense. Ubi, not so much.

@Ford,
That logic is still somewhat flawed because equating title quality from one platform to another is not at all the same as equating the platforms themselves, and obviously they still have clear differences, despite having similar code now. This reeks of the same devs doing QA on console and PC, and they really need to be individualized efforts.

I mean my GOD, just expecting no more day one patches on PC makes it clear you are lumping the simplicity of a fixed hardware system in with a platform that literally has endless combinations and potential problems.

Where did we get to the point of day one patches being a negative anyway? In this day and age of rushed titles where we often see bugs take months to get fixed, if they're even fixed at all, I would think they would be a huge plus by comparison.

Expecting all PC tiles to launch with no problems is unrealistic, esp if you don't give them proper development time. That usually means staggered releases, considering how they focus first on console QC, since that's where most of the profits are.

 

[RealNeil]

if it weren't for games I would have ditched windows years ago.

Agreed. Games are why I'm still on Windows. Just look at the functionality of many Linux distros,...........

 

[Frag_Maniac]

Agreed. Games are why I'm still on Windows. Just look at the functionality of many Linux distros,...........

I think this goes without saying for many. It will be interesting to see if Steam OS eventually changes that, but I get the feeling at best Valve will always be playing a huge catch up game.

 

[eidairaman1]

It be best if they have separate teams deving the games. In the day when I played nfsu on a Dell Xps inspiron gen 1/9100 (9700/9800) i maxed detail settings out and ran smoothly. Xbox was running at its max already and people said the pc version looked better. At that time it told me EA took time to develop the game for pc and then dummed the settings down to that of a gf5200 (could run on low settings) for xbox use. So the game ran at best possible performance on a 5200 but maxed detail on a 9700 while being fun to play, 30fps to me is like what the xb,gc,ps2 ran at. They can do that for those but allow 60-144 Vsync on pc.

 

[Blue-Knight]

Shame that linux isn't quite the gamers OS.

Maybe because no one is selling it for a high price.

I'm just speculating...

 

[eidairaman1]

Installation of programs/drivers isnt as easy on linux plus no ms apps work on it, few game devs are even writing for it-open gl/cl are needed, good drivers for chipsets and gpus are needed

 

[RejZoR]

I disagree that gaming community is more "vibrant" than ever. Community, maybe, but i don't care about community (loner and all), i care about the games. And a chronic lack of racing games and deep complex FPS games like System Shock or Deus Ex is not helping really. I feel really depressed this year knowing there won't be any racing games on PC. Not even anything from NFS franchise. All they did was re-release of Rivals with all DLC's. Boooring. I just hope skipping 1 year means they are working on a kick ass title for NFS. Like NFS Hot Pursuit 2010 where multiplayer was the best in NFS i've ever seen and is still alive even today. It's a shame that Criterion didn't bother with that game. Or the NFS The Run. The race across entire North America was really amazing experience.

But that's that. I miss times when there were so many racing games on PC you couldn't allocate enough time to play them all. And now you're having hard times finding one. And i'm talking fun games, not boring circuit simulations which exist in great numbers.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

The Crew is coming soon. There's a similar title from another studio (forget the name) coming soon as well. Also can't forget Next Car Game.

Dishonored is getting a sequel, Deus Ex is getting a sequel, another Hitman title is in the works. It seems like I'm forgetting several too.


The reason why racing games aren't like they were is because they reached a cross roads: physics, open world, MMO. All three of these things are expensive and the audience for racing games is small. They have to invest a ton of money in a new engine in order to make a game people will pay for but they also have to create something that can move enough units to turn a profit.

NFS has been dead to me since Underground 2.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Gosh really... both stupid AMD and Nvidia fix your linux drivers and let Steam reign there...

 

[RCoon]

The Crew is coming soon. There's a similar title from another studio (forget the name) coming soon as well. Also can't forget Next Car Game.

Dishonored is getting a sequel, Deus Ex is getting a sequel, another Hitman title is in the works. It seems like I'm forgetting several too.


The reason why racing games aren't like they were is because they reached a cross roads: physics, open world, MMO. All three of these things are expensive and the audience for racing games is small. They have to invest a ton of money in a new engine in order to make a game people will pay for but they also have to create something that can move enough units to turn a profit.

NFS has been dead to me since Underground 2.

Next Car Game looks funky, but probably won't have much on Project Cars. Sequel to Deus Ex can't be good. 2nd was bad, third was average. Dishonored was a great game, I can only hope they don't mess it up somehow. I also stopped played at Underground 2, mainly because my Original XBOX ONE died while I was playing it.

If they really cared *sniff sniff* they'd make a Freelancer sequel or release a HD version.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Dishonored is getting a sequel,

Truly?! I hadn't heard that, but it's good news! It's one of the few recent games that I immediately had to go and play a second time. That's how I guage games...are they good enough that I immediately will play again?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Next Car Game looks funky, but probably won't have much on Project Cars. Sequel to Deus Ex can't be good. 2nd was bad, third was average. Dishonored was a great game, I can only hope they don't mess it up somehow. I also stopped played at Underground 2, mainly because my Original XBOX ONE died while I was playing it.

Deus Ex HR used a Square Enix engine that was wholly unsuitable for the game they were making. Most of their efforts, therefore, went to making the engine work for their kind of game. Case in point: the engine was almost completely devoid of physics processing. During the prologue in the game where people went flying off the second floor in the lab took them a long time to make that play out in a reasonable fashion. I have no doubt the next Deus Ex game will be hugely improved because most of the engine hurdles have been overcome.

I think all of the Deus Ex games are good to very good. The only exception is Deus Ex The Fall because they didn't put enough effort into the controls when porting it to Windows. I'd call that one average because the story makes up for it.

If they really cared *sniff sniff* they'd make a Freelancer sequel or release a HD version.

What is Star Citizen? Yeah, yeah, it's not Microsoft but that's kind of the jist of this thread. Microsoft doesn't give a flying pig about Windows gaming. The only exception to this rule is DirectX and I think that is only because it stems from the same group of geniuses that are responsible for Visual Studio. The Xbox division doesn't have direct control over the technology.

Truly?! I hadn't heard that, but it's good news! It's one of the few recent games that I immediately had to go and play a second time. That's how I guage games...are they good enough that I immediately will play again?

It sold so well they'd be fools to not exploit it. 2016 is the most reliable year I can gather.

 

[RejZoR]

The Crew is coming soon. There's a similar title from another studio (forget the name) coming soon as well. Also can't forget Next Car Game.

Dishonored is getting a sequel, Deus Ex is getting a sequel, another Hitman title is in the works. It seems like I'm forgetting several too.


The reason why racing games aren't like they were is because they reached a cross roads: physics, open world, MMO. All three of these things are expensive and the audience for racing games is small. They have to invest a ton of money in a new engine in order to make a game people will pay for but they also have to create something that can move enough units to turn a profit.

NFS has been dead to me since Underground 2.

The problem is obsession with open world bullshit. Who says it has to be open world to be enjoyable? I don't see any point in open worlds when they are 80% generic roads and 20% of memorable sections. Where circuits, can be memorable on their own. If you ask me what was memorable in NFS Most Wanted 2012 i'd just stare with a dull expression on my face at you. But if you ask me about tracks in NFS3, i'd be talking about them for 2 hours straight. I can actually tell you all the traks names, all the sections of them, hell i can close my eyes and take you through the tracks for a game that i haven't played for like 12 years. It's that memorable and awesome. Country Hometown in autumn colors, wooden covered bridges, small town center, open highway between crop fields, twisted canyon roads carved into orange rocks of Redrock Ridge and Lost Canyon, high tech coastal city Atlantica and Aquatica with sterile white buildings, glass everywhere and loads of water features everywhere, green and rocky twisted roads of Rocky Pass, the other end of Hometown covered in snow through Country Woods or the killer Summit, snowy Rocky Pass with insane elevation changes. That's why i don't want some shitty open worlds because trends demand that. People would change their minds when you'd deliver them proper thematic circuit tracks that would remain in their memory forever. That's why i loved NFS The Run. No open world bullshit, just highly thematic segments of one way roads that were also incredibly memorable. But all companies know to do these days is to make either open worlds or closed real world circuits (liek Suzuka). Which is all so booring unless if you're into for my taste boring grinding of soulless "blank" race tracks. Or the same way how they ruined Burnout series. Burnout 3 was awesome, but the Paradise one was fun for few hours and then i forgot about it. But i did like Split/Second:Velocity which was quite criticized by people, but i loved it because of unique gamestyle and thematic tracks that could be rerouted. And i bloody miss that. Badly. Give me NFS: The Run 2 that goes through entire Europe or something. I'd buy that for sure.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

That's because Most Wanted (2012) was a terrible game; I didn't even bother to finish it. I've beat The Run and didn't find it memorable at all (seems pretty much everyone agrees and it was considered a failure).

I found Most Wanted (2005) the most memorable because it was the first cop chase game that actually got my heart racing. I can still tell you where most of the pursuit breakers are located, what routes are generally the safest to take when wanted, the design of the regions of the map, and the major parts of the plot.

 

[Champ]

I thought metro on linux was gonna break things open, but I don't know. I was watching a vid about that and there are only a handful of graphical options. Seens like gaming linux would be a waste of highend components

 

[Frag_Maniac]

I found Most Wanted (2005) the most memorable because it was the first cop chase game that actually got my heart racing. I can still tell you where most of the pursuit breakers are located, what routes are generally the safest to take when wanted, the design of the regions of the map, and the major parts of the plot.

Don't know why you'd say everything NFS since Underground 2 is dead to you then, which came out a year before Most Wanted 2005.

I agree that MW '05 was great, lots of good chases and ways to lose cops, but it had a HUGE flaw that I don't recall ever being fixed. One of the Most Fun things about the game was lengthy pursuits, but the longer the pursuit, the bigger the chance the game would crash. After 20 min your chances rose, after 30 they rose significantly.

I had all the pursuit breakers and jumps memorized and had made LOTS of videos of the game. My final one was a lengthy pursuit that involved using all pursuit breakers and jumps. You can't imagine how many tries that took, and it wasn't for my driving or forgetting where things were. It was the crashing to desktop.

I actually enjoyed The Run though. The on foot and mob chase scenes got old, but there was some great racing in it. Too short a campaign though, and once again, a game with technical problems. They never fixed the control mapping resetting.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

My bad. I'd rank them:
1) Most Wanted (2005) - Loved the Rap Sheet--can't believe no title has had it since.
2) Porsche Unleashed (Playstation) - First open world map--cop chase multiplayer.
3) Porsche Unleashed (Windows) - Amazing graphics and detail on cars.
4) Underground 2 - First open world map on Windows.
5) Hot Pursuit 2 (2002) - Best music--after this title came the hip hop.
The rest aren't worth mentioning.

I never had problems with Most Wanted crashing. I had a 30 minute long, $10 million bounty chase too. You could try the large address aware edit to see if that was the problem.

 

[Troy210]

Now that I'm a FORMER Microsoft Store employee I can say this to the world: MS does not care about PC Gamers. My store had a 'dedicated' section for PC gamers, a 4x4 section with 5 games, a mouse, headset, and a new Razer Blade.
Pretty sad really. When I brought up to my bosses how popular PC Gaming is, they just laughed. That section was gone within weeks because "it wan't selling well". That's what happens when you shove this little section next to Go Pro cameras and Fitbit accessories.

Microsoft does not care about PC Gamers.
Microsoft Store does not care about PC Gamers.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

^Yep, MS are the GameStop of OS corporations, same mentality. If it's not console, it can't be good.

How can it be if they don't want big developers to even allow PC titles to look any better than console ones? I translate this thread topic as "We definitely haven't told the whole truth about the damage we've done to PC gaming".

BTW Ford, don't know if I'll get around to playing MW '05 again, but can you detail the use of that "large address aware edit" please? I don't recall using such a thing.

I bought the game in '04 though and played it on a P4, X800XT rig, so I wasn't even using spec that caused problems, like the issues it had with dual cores. I also played it a long time and the 1.3 patch that was supposed to fix a lot of bugs came out well within that time, so I know I tried it.

I DO recall CTDs on long pursuits was a common complaint on the official MW forum though, and I don't recall seeing this edit you refer to. Nor have I seen it on any guides like TweakGuides or PCGamingWiki.

My P4 did have HT though, and I just read that can cause problems with the game. I don't recall if I ever tried disabling it, or if I even used it at all.