An Unlikely Savior

I sympathize with your friend who is unable to play the latest games because of PC hardware limitations. To me, the whole appeal of video games on the PC is the ability for end-user development, mapping/modding, etc. While I think this opens up much more opportunity for longevity of a game, fostering community, etc. - it also forms a bit of elitism. He with the powerful video card and broadband connection owns up on the competition.

I myself just bought an Athlon 64 laptop to be able to go to mobile web-dev meetings for my job, while also being able to play Age of Empires 3. The benefit of console gaming is compatibility. Most average users are on the same page, and able to borrow each others games etc.

In my opinion, FPS and RTS are better played on the PC, but nothing beats a console for games that center around fighting, driving, or sports. I guess I just can’t get used to the controls of modern controllers, when it comes to using them for things I’m conditioned to use a mouse for. Perhaps I should give the Xbox360 a try, as the last console I purchased was the Dreamcast, specifically for Soul Calibur.

Sounds like a very good plan from Microsoft to make even more money out of people. I like the idea of Joe Bloggs being able to easily find a game that will run on their system. Whilst this will further encourage people to upgrade, at the same time, I think it’ll draw people away. Component prices are quite expensive nowadays, and for say the price of a 7800 GTX, if someone could get say 6 other XBox 360 games or an XBox 360 alone, I’d think they’d be more likely to choose that.

Sadly whilst this does raise awareness to people, and will probably make more sales, I can’t see it being that drastic, at least not the way their 360 marketing conflicts with Vista. They’re really pushing 360 this time as the ‘hip’ next best console, so I can only really see exclusive games for the PC, such as MMORPGs grabbing a drastic amount of market share from the consoles.

As for shelf space; not sure what the problem is in America. Over here our main games store chain is ‘GAME’ (which merged with EB a few years back), and they have a shelf just a little smaller than the XBox one. It’s even bigger than the GC (Nintendo seem to have had the smallest shelves for the past 10 years though).

It’s nice to see all that money going to something useful. I like where MS is heading here, especially in the areas of PC game shelf space.

The only thing I’m concerned about is all that stuff with the controllers. If I’m gaming on my PC, I want to use my keyboard and mouse effectively, which more or less cannot be done with games designed to be controlled with a console controller. As long as developers keep that in mind though, it should be all right.

The colour system is a nice touch (if a little iMac-ish), although it probably won’t inspire Joe Casual Gamer to go out and buy a new PC to run the latest games. It’ll help him to understand why he can’t run it, but he won’t necessarily do anything about it.

Am I the only one who isn’t sure how this colour system is going to work? I mean, the colour system will have to be dynamic to allow for changes in technology. A “red” video card is going to be “green” 12 months down the track, but the games on the shelf aren’t going to change their packaging to stop them needing red, and only have them needing green. And what about periods like right now, where Nvidia’s “red” high-end card is a whole generation newer, and up to twice as fast, as ATI’s high-end card?

It doesn’t make sense to me. Computing technology changes too rapidly for a set system like that to be enforced. I can only see it working if they bring out new colours all the time. We’re going to run out of easily discernable colours within a few years though.

Well Cyrris I am assuming that as time moves on games will just trickle down the color scale. I am also sure with window’s patches and security updates they will include WinSAT updates. While tech changes a lot if you really think of what games require it won’t change for years. For example my system previous to this (AMD 2400+, 1 gig ram and GeForce FX 5900) could run F.E.A.R., A red game no doubt, just fine. That GeForce FX is 2 years old. If I had gotten my WinSAT scores of Red when I first built my computer (it was top o’ the line then) it would still be able to play red games more than two years later. The WinSAT system would enough need large adjustments every year or so.

And honestly if you look at what your PC does for you upgrading really isn’t such a money intensive task. While grabbing a 7800 GTX sure is expensive a 6600GT will play all the latest games admirably and costs less then $150. $150 for Xbox 360 launch quality graphics (from the screens i’ve seen) or $299 for a bastard child of a console system with 1/2 its innerds. Upgrading your video card is really the most impressive increase and often the bottleneck for gaming. I’ve upgraded many CPUs and the difference in performance (for games) is negligble. $400 split on RAM and a video card will net you one badass gaming machine.

You could grab a $399 computer from Dell and swap its video card for a total of $550. That would play games well and you can browse the web, download music, talk with friends, write papers, do work (ha), and thousands of other tasks that only a PC is capable of. Rarely does anyone put PC upgrading in perspective.

As for shelf space; not sure what the problem is in America. Over here our main games store chain is ‘GAME’ (which merged with EB a few years back), and they have a shelf just a little smaller than the XBox one. It’s even bigger than the GC (Nintendo seem to have had the smallest shelves for the past 10 years though).

Actually, I asked GAME about the whole EB thing. Apparently the 2 companies were never really connected except that GAME had bought the rights to use the EB name for some of their stores until they realised that more people in the UK had heard of GAME (for which they already owned the name) than they had of EB (for which they were paying an annual fee). In the end the (rightly) decided to abondon the licensing and that’s why all the EB stores became GAME stores.

Anyway, I still can’t support Microsoft as a saviour of anything, particularly when last seen they were doing their best to kill off OpenGL in Vista which will effectively kill the games market for Macs and Linux. That, as has been noted, is a purely business decision rather than technical so regardless of the “handiness” of WinSAT I still consider Microsoft role in games as one that I don’t like. If Microsoft allowed the porting of the DirectX libraries to other operating systems then I’d be much happier but I see their moves with OpenGL as one of exploiting their position in order to kill off any chances that the Mac has in the future of getting ports of major PC releases. I can only hope that the developers who still support OpenGL have a strong word with MS about this one (yes, id, I’m looking at you…).

Back on topic, the idea is reasonable as a simple color scheme would make sense and be easier to understand. However, it should be noted that given the sheer magnitude of different PC configurations, a simple 5-color scheme is most likely an over simplification. Within any given “band” there is likely to be a significant variation in performance that is going to lead to some degree of disappointment when a game doesn’t run as well as you’d hoped. Still, it is probably better than nothing, although it does continue to show why the reliability of console performance is one of the biggest attractions.

Incidentally, is there any particular reason why Microsoft is pushing PC games? I’d have thought that it should be pushing 360 gaming as being the preferred alternative to PC gaming as they make much more money this way. I may be wrong here but I didn’t think that they make any money from PC games aside from sales of the version of Windows required to run them.

Well Microsoft Game Studios is definitly a force on the gaming and producing front. Also, in the numbers, PC gaming as a stand alone platform has potential to eclipse console gaming entirely. Also, remember Vista is coming out in 7 flavors. This “Ultimate” edition may be aimed at PC gamers.

In a recent PC Gamer podcast they highlighted a bit of the linux competition. One of the huge “balls” in Microsoft’s court is PC gaming. If linux could wrangle PC gaming in a somewhat user friendly way Microsoft would definitly be feelign some heat. As I see it Microsoft can guarentee their dominance in the OS field by really appealing to the user’s wants and needs. Microsoft sells the OS that games are made for, makes the OS specifically geared towards such games, then sells games its studio makes as well. Profit, profit, profit.

Perhaps the PC gaming support is a safety fall back, what if the 360 bombs? Are they willing to dump millions and millions into another console for the hope of future profits? Perhaps Microsoft wants to have their feet in as many pools as possible. There is definitly money to be made in PC gaming and as consoles push closer to being full PCs maybe Microsoft is trying to meet them half way. Often PC enthusiasts and PC gamers have more disposable income than console gamers so if PC gaming was really backed the potential profits increase even more. It is an already proven platform, they do not need to fight to gain the marketplace, they just have to expand the already thriving market. After seeing what they did with the Xbox’s public image I have a good amount of faith in their efforts.

Whatever the case there are a good amount of reasons for Microsoft to support PC gaming.

Well, let’s be very clear on one thing here. Until the PC becomes the hub of living room and is as simple to maintain as a console there is no question of it becoming more popular than console gaming. Seriously, you are never going to see people buying PCs in the form that they currently are when consoles offer a longer-term, more attractive, more accessible investment.

On the gaming on other OSs part, the problem is that Microsoft has the market by the balls and it’s doing it best castrate the others. Windows is undoubtably the biggest market for PC gaming so naturally most developers target it first since you might as well go after the biggest market that you can. If a game is big enough on Windows then it may be ported to Linux and OS X if the investment required it relatively low vs. the expected gains. This presently only really happens when the game was written using OpenGL since it is available for all 3 OSs. DirectX, however, is only available on Windows and numerous ports have been canned because porting from DirectX to OpenGL is too expensive (the original Half-Life for the Mac went this way, apparently). Given this the only way that gaming on other PC OSs is viable is if either OpenGL continues to be supported in Windows as a first-class citizen or DirectX is ported to the other OSs. It might sound like sour grapes but given the already dominant position they are in I find it utterly outrageous that Microsoft is trying to kill off OpenGL in Windows and therefore “force” PC gaming to Windows.

Mind you, given all this I do wish Apple would stop being such an ass and open its AAC format so that songs bought from the iTunes Music Store can be used on devices other than the iPod. Having a closed proprietary codec in a supposedly competitive market where they are already dominant puts them in a much weaker position to “call foul” with Microsoft or anyone else exploiting their position.

Needless to say I’m waiting for the PS3 before making any decision on the XBox 360 as I’d rather buy Sony than Microsoft, given the choice. I’m much more dubious about the Nintendo Revolution given the way that the Gamecube lost so many titles.

Excellent article!

I think the point that most commenters are missing is that PC games are a 4.2 billion market, with NO advertisements or appeal to the causal Joe-gamer, while the console market is a 6 billion dollar a year market because they advertise and appeal to the casual joe-gamer. Now, the potential for the PC gaming market is HUGE if microsoft can make it appeal to the casual Joe-gamer. Currently no PC game needs TV ads if it’s a good game. The current PC gaming community is self sustained without traditional media advertising (magazines, TV, etc.) Now imagine the potential of a PC gaming market if they do advertise and appeal to Joe-Gamer; that is, by making a Joe-gamer friendly OS of course!

In college I play PC games in the dorms on my desktop. At times I had about 10 people standing around my desk as I played Doom 3. These people have never seen anything like this on a computer before. They were baffled that I even had surround sound! I helped several people upgrade their computers because of it. If Microsoft promotes PC gaming to the Joe-gamer, the potential for PC gaming is unlimited. And, of course, it’s best played on Windows Vista!

Oh, this is off-topic, but…the idea that gaming isn’t fun unless your on your living room couch playing on a HDTV is irrelevant. If Joe-gamer wants to get confortable he’ll hook his PC up to his HDTV, make a game room in his house, or just buy a more comfortable desk chair.

A couple of points

A- They’re featuring this partially because they’re really running out of things to feature in Vista. Microsoft’s best customers are their corporate customers who’ll buy something like 250,000 liscenses to run on their machines. But frankly I’m not sure how much they really have to offer them in Vista. Machine builders –people who make computers are surely going to buy this and offer it in large numbers. But basically this is something they can push to their 3rd best customer set–enthusiasts.

B-I’m kinda skeptical about the shelf space thing lasting very long but it sounds great. I guess i can be guardedly optimistic about this. I also think the controller idea sounds great but I hope this doesn’t lead to anyone trying to drop mouse and keyboard support from their console ports of stuff like say Brothers in Arms or Splinter Cell or somesuch.

Good article and a nice idea but that marketing to the common denominator is what Microsoft do well but
“So essentially a vendor or seller (hello newegg) website could pull your WinSAT information”
Is it just me or is that not a scary concept? How would it do this Active X? I’m not a fan of IE specific webpages / technologies so that wouldn’t work. What ports (or holes) would be open to otherwise allow this information to a website would even, based on who its aimed at ie the non technically minded, whatever way this info is available not allow *any* site to see this info, granted there’s no real loss if they could see that info but I do worry that it won’t be tied down as well is it could be…

there is something else that’s going to happen soon thanks to microsoft that will be really good for PC gaming.

the x-box 360 joypad. no, i’m not kidding. since it’s going to be compatible with the PC you can bet that any cross platform game that’s also on x-box will just plug and play with said pad. one of the biggest gripes of playing console esque games is the horrendous joypad support the pc versions usually get.

introducing what you could call a standard general purpose pad will make games like prince of persia play as well on a PC as on any console, without the pain of fiddling around with the controller set up first. furthermore, i’m expecting developers to leave in those little coloured icons you get in console games saying press ‘X’ to jump complete with a little icon of the X button. my joypad doesn’t have numbered buttons, and seeing either ‘press button 3′ or press ‘Space’ when i’m playing with a pad, hinder things.

even better, if people do start buying into the 360 controller, third party companies can design their controllers to just plug and play as well. the PC has been lacking a good standardised pad for a long time, and seeing microsoft provide one in this manner, should see games that play better on pads, playing better on PCs.

for casual gamers, it’s a god send.

Yeah a standardized controller is definitly going to help. Especially since the Xbox 360 control does look pretty solid and very multifuction. I’ve always wanted to buy a gamepad for my PC for some games but I’ve heard horror stories about compatability. Even Microsoft Sidewinders do not work with all games.

I forgot one of the strangest, and sometimes most interesting, feature Vista is going to have. “Instant Play” PC game discs. Apparently Microsoft has figured out a way to design software on a disc that will allow you to simple pop the disc in and start gaming. It is still a “PC” game. The game installs in the background while you start playing through the beginning. In fact it is a lot like Steam, how you can play the game before it is all downloaded. They say it will not work with all games, and their are still some hurdles to get over. Still a neat idea.

The only thing remaining is patches. I wonder if Microsoft is planning any big ideas to make patching less irritating (a steam approach could work).