[Dasilva]

Windows Vista leads heavier promotion of the PC games marketplace

Microsoft's games boss Peter Moore has pledged to do more to promote and support PC gaming in the coming months and years, after apologising for neglecting the company's "number one platform" in favour of the Xbox.

Speaking at the DICE summit in Las Vegas, Moore admitted that Microsoft was partly culpable for the decline of the PC platform at US retail, and apologised openly for "the dereliction of duty to our company's number one platform, the PC, in terms of gaming."

The recently promoted head of the firm's entire videogames division - encompassing both the Xbox platforms and the PC gaming division - outlined a number of key problems he sees with the PC market at present, including technical issues such as the lack of a unified online service and troublesome install processes, and a lack of coherent branding leading to consumer confusion.

Moore hopes to address many of these problems through the launch of Windows Vista, Microsoft's next operating system which is due to be released at the end of this year after several major delays.

Games will be a key element of the Vista OS, in the same way that images, videos and music have gradually been integrated into the system, and the new system also promises to introduce a more stable environment for games and a simplified install process.

The company will also be driving for the standardisation of PC game packaging at retail, Moore told the summit, and will be providing developers with new tools to build online community functionality into their games on Windows Vista.

While Microsoft's new focus on PC gaming will be welcomed by the industry, it's likely to come in for a cynical response from many gamers, who already see the software giant using videogames as an excuse to force users to upgrade to Windows Vista.

The company last week announced that Halo 2 will be available exclusively on the Windows Vista platform, meaning that people wanting to play it on their PCs will not only have to wait for two years after the launch of the Xbox version, but will have to pay for an expensive operating system upgrade to do so.

Microsoft has got some very good titles under its belt, Age of Empires, Fable, Dungein Siege, Flight Simulator...

Lets hope they come up with more great titles.

Source: Game Industry Biz

[Fop]

Age of Empires developed by Ensemble
Fable by Lionhead
Dungeon Siege by Gas Pop Games.

MS developed games tend to be pretty generic. Flight Simulator gets pardoned since, well, it's a simulator.

[SoccerDude28]

The only MS game announced that I am looking really forward to for the PC is Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends. I love the Arabian nights fiction, and with a whole race based on that, I am sold. The graphics are not too shabby either.

[Dasilva]

Microsoft seems to be a GREAT publisher, they have the money for developers to do whatever they want. If you see some Dungeon Siege II video interviews they said they had absolutely no restrictions from Microsoft, they could do whatever they wanted, and it turned into a successful game.


If only all publishers were flexable.

[Dale Baldwin]

Psychonauts was going to be published by Microsoft originally. Screw 'em.

[Dasilva]

Well I dont see Psychonauts being very successful, its probably going to end up being like System shock. Great game, very underrated and very much in the shadows of other games. Thats what you get when you delay the game a millions times, but HL2 proved that its possible to have a delayed game and still make people want it. Just my opinion anyway.

[SoccerDude28]

Originally Posted by Dasilva

Microsoft seems to be a GREAT publisher, they have the money for developers to do whatever they want. If you see some Dungeon Siege II video interviews they said they had absolutely no restrictions from Microsoft, they could do whatever they wanted, and it turned into a successful game.


If only all publishers were flexable.

You are talking about a company with 273.01 B in market cap. Compare that to Electronic Arts one of the biggest publishers in gaming which has a 16.43B in market cap, and you can see the huge discrepency.

Still Microsoft has done a couple of very stupid moves. They screwed up a couple of really awesome developers, which I'm still a little bitter about. It was unexcusable how they dropped Psychonauts and Oddworld Stranger's Wrath, two of the best and most innovative games of last year, instead banking on average games like Kameo, Perfect Dark Zero and Conker.

[Dasilva]

Well hands down EA is the worse gaming giant, I hate them for closing down westwood. But I'm relieved that they got back together and formed petroglyph.

Most of EAs' games are pretty mediocore or average, they only have a handful of truly spectacular games. Its the way the market works, Im sure things will change in the future.

[Fop]

Originally Posted by Dasilva

Microsoft seems to be a GREAT publisher, they have the money for developers to do whatever they want. If you see some Dungeon Siege II video interviews they said they had absolutely no restrictions from Microsoft, they could do whatever they wanted, and it turned into a successful game.


If only all publishers were flexable.

Ehm, yeah. Dungeon Siege 2 isn't exactly a hard sell. It's EA's and Microsoft's dream blockbuster design already, there's no reason for MS to interfere. For games like Psychonauts, on the other hand...

[Tanukitsune]

Wait, do they mean more PC gaming or more games for Vista only?

[Dasilva]

Vista only probably.

[jjacob]

Oh well, don't worry about that, everyone will upgrade eventually, and once we get over the bitching about the initial flaws and bugs and such we'll get to marvel at DX10 games . Sure, they know how to make a huge profit for one piece of software and a validation key, but it's how it is, and I don't see Linux becoming a viable gaming alternative any time soon.

[Fop]

I wonder if there'll be more Mac versions of games now that Apple went Intel. And Mac versions would be a good base for Linux versions

[squarejawhero]

Actually, given critical reaction to Psychonauts and Oddworld compared to the flatly received titles mentioned by SD, I'm willing to bet there's some serious thinking at MS about how they introduced the 360. They knew that games like Perfect Dark would sell, but I'm sure they knew it was on hype alone and the fact they were initial titles.

Much as I'm not a fan of the money-man, I'm willing to bet in a company like Microsoft they've taken a look at some of their moves in the recent past. It'd be foolish not to. After all, it's better to have titles on launch that're to be remembered for a long time and tbh, Majesco didn't handle Psychonauts' marketing very well which would account for a good deal of its failiure to perform. Ditto its EU/UK release.

With a push from a giant like MS, those titles may have made excellent launch games. Pyschonauts is already quite a looker, but with the extra power that would've been available to them, imagine how it could look on the 360 given the development time! The style is already incredibly strong. There's not much else they could do with it, but I'm sure Schafer and co. would've done a lot given the extra time and funding available to them.

Still, "what if, what if"...