News Microsoft: "PC gaming is very important to us"

i think in general a lot of us would have grown up with consoles, for me we had a megadrive and then i had a playstation and a ps2, i started pc gaming in my early 20's (i always played some games on pc before this, but it was my dads pc, and my own console was obviously preferable), i think that unless you had parents who were buy anything for you, most of us weren't in a position to have a gaming pc (and maintain it) until we were earning ourselves, consoles work for younger players.

the issue now is that the kids are those with the mass spending money, either their own or their parents, because of broadband they have a much higher presence online (i could never go online with my ps2 despite having internet at home - it just wasn't practical), and they have parents and grandparents buying them games as it's quick easy and they know it'll work on the machine they have.

i'm not sure much has changed demographically, just spending power.

microsoft, interestingly, have caused a slight shift away from pc gaming, by pushing the xbox and releasing exclusives for it, and releasing games on it before pc etc. they make it clear they expect windows to sell itself and are only interested in getting people on their console, but with steam becoming multiplatform, and the potential (all be it distant) of cloud gaming (meaning less upgrades - and therefore less reason to buy new windows), they have suddenly realised they may have backed themselves into a bit of a corner and are hoping they can get their way out of it.

as someone above has said though, i'm certain this pc friendliness will only last until they bring out their next generation of console.

 

Those of you who say gaming isn't important to the PC market are somewhat right… For those of you who don't remember back when the first Windows versions came out. When the PC was mainly a business machine and not really a home machine, one of the big selling points to the home consumer was this game changing application called Solitaire.

Believe it or not, it was a big selling point to the home consumer to show that not only could you do things like, word processing, spread sheeting, etc… but you could also use this "thing" for entertainment.

It would seem that now that MS has it’s market share in both business and home markets, the need for their software to be entertaining has diminished with their development of the Xbox. Well, like others have said, If my PC can't really be used for gaming much, why use Windows, I will just buy a cheap $400 PC and run Linux and free productivity software on it and save the other $1000 and buy something other than a Xbox just to spite them as I am not much into consoles but would like to game a bit if that is all that is really going to be out there for gaming…

 

Yep and so would I.

 

talk is cheap..MS

where's the beef?
or

better yet where's Halo 3

 

Same.

Of course, seeing the results of Portal being ported to Mac I'm not entirely sure that's true. Didn't look quite as good on OpenGL, though that may have to do with not being initially designed for it. And drivers like was mentioned previously. But in a hypothetical showdown based purely on two games which work exactly the same on both systems and no other factors involved? Linux all the way if I had the chance.

 

Your call is important to us.

 

you are actually joking right?

 

PC Games are the only reason to buy their crappy Operating Systems.

Consoles are not real gaming.

 

I'm easily satisfied, mind you, I'm only 5 (in my head that is)

 

Thank you

 

"crabapples"

 

For the silly people who think gaming props up windows then you really need to have another look at the computer market and see what a small percentage of that consists of gaming grade hardware.

Linux will be as suitable for gaming as it is suitable for every other computing task i.e. not very for the majority of people. Don't get me wrong Linux is great but it will never be mainstream with the current attitude of the community.

Also I hear kinect will be compatible with PC, perhaps a good media centre control method?

 

I wouldn't be to sure. A large proportion of Windows users are in the workplace. The public sector, thanks to an EU mandate is forced to look at open source operating systems. Red hat have been largely unaffected by this recession and there appears to be a general push for open standards in everything. I'm not saying it is going to happen overnight, but given the speed that linux is progressing at, I don't think widespread acceptance is particularly far fetched.

Lets be honest, among the younger generation, Microsoft have taken uncool to almost biblical levels. Whilst the older generation may stick with Windows, the youngsters are far more open minded.

The attitude of the community will change as the demographic shifts from developers to consumers, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

 

Look at the Unigine benchmarks - they look the same whether you use OpenGL or DX10. The newest version of OpenGL can handle tesselation and other features included in DX11, so there is no reason why OpenGL can't hold its own.

 

have you ever worked in openGL and that abortion of an extension system? Khronos have just tacked on feature after feature over the year without stopping to think that it might not be the smartest thing to just keep adding and adding.

openGL in its current state is bloated and monolithic, while yes it can do pretty much everything DX10/11 (still behind in several aspects) its a pain in the ass to develop in. The only thing it has going for it is its ES variant. (that and legacy CAD applications)

Hopefully more developers will hop onto the DX11 bandwagon now since DX11 can now run on dx9/10/11 gen hardware by making use of the new devcaps system, there is no need for 3 renderers anymore.

DX10/11 is a nice lightweight API that stripped out a lot of the legacy FF systems, while openGL is still dragging all those old features along. As a developer, there is no way in hell I would choose openGL as my graphics API.

 

yes, but not necessarily a windows based one

 

Microsoft better turn their entire attention to PC gaming because if it wasn't for PC gaming I would own a MAC. Microsoft failed by having the PC play second fiddle to the 360 (quick money grab I understand) but now that Valve is opening the door for Macs to be considered a serious gaming platform a lot of Pc owners will switch to Apple OS only machines because Microsoft seriously lacks innovation

 

I think Bit-Tech should have a survey question that reads....

If all Pc games were available on Apple computers just like they are on the PC as well as your favorite Nvidia or ATi Gpu which system would you buy... A Mac running OSx or a PC running windows 7?

 

I know I'd still own a PC, but that's my own preference.

 

+1.

I'm not gonna lie, I still would stick with W7 over Linux or OSX,

I think that Windows 7 feels finished, I tried OSX and in some areas it felt a little "clunky"... With Linux it lacked that simplicity that you get with Windows (and of course the support is very poor with linux)

and Since OSX is starting to become a little more popular I notice that I have started to come across alot more tech news stories about OSX having big security holes (pretty much everywhere), and obviously it won't be long until we find the same problem with linux if that starts to attract a big crowd...


Just my opinion though...