How 'Games for Windows' Will Change PC Gaming

Joystiq has a short piece up talking with Windows (GFW) Marketing Director Kevin Unangst and PR Manager Michael Wolf about the future of the 'Games for Windows' initiative. With the launch of Vista, Microsoft is making a big push to turn PC games into a 'console-like' cohesive brand. Instead of relying on the good name of individual publishers to sell titles, Redmond is requiring that all titles use similar packaging and a distinctive logo. Along with the new gamer-centric features in Vista, and the tie-in to Xbox 360 with 'Live Anywhere', this is meant to reinvigorate the PC games market for the sometimes not-so-savvy consumer. From the article: "By making gaming a priority in the Vista experience, Microsoft is molding a powerful pairing of the Games for Windows and Xbox 360 brands. To some extent, this is based on a hope that Live Anywhere will be embraced by GFW developers and publishers, pulling Xbox Live (and your Gamertag) outside of the 'Box, in turn encouraging an unrivaled virtual community. But there are simpler touches that also spark our interest. For example, start up Vista's Minesweeper, connect your 360 controller, and enjoy a subtle rumble each time you slip up. It's the melding with the familiar that will drive new and lost consumers to the Games for Windows brand."

If they can pull it off...

[jfclavette]

Anything that brings the usability of a console with the flexibility of a PC together is a good thing in my book. An XBox Live system for the PC+XBox would be welcome too.

I don't know if this is gonna change much...

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole games for Windows isn't introducing a whole lot. The ratings system to compare your hardware to game requirements is great, but not for me, i can read the requirements and know what my system can and can't do, but good for teh newb. I can't imagine hooking up a 360 controller to my PC as one of the features of PC gaming over consoles is the fact that a PC gets to use a mouse/kb and the console is stuck with a controller. The joy of getting a rumble cause I messed up in Minesweeper isnt' go to hit me as it's not very likely that I'm going to play minesweeper. I dunno about this, I thought the new Direct X was really the only interesting thing about gaming in the MS world.

Re:oh boy

[MooseMuffin]

Is it just me, or is minesweeper with a controller horribly unappealing? Its a timed game, with small little boxes to click. A gamepad doesn't seem up to the challenge. Especially since there will be a mouse already attached connected to the computer.

Considering how few consumers want Vista

[WillAffleckUW]

I'm predicting this will fail.

True, 2007 will not be the Year of Desktop Linux, but that's only because most people who won't buy Vista have no need to replace their old computers yet. Most of us will be moving games onto Mac or consoles, and abandoning the Windows desktop or laptop.

Re:Hey Sony, Nintendo, and Apple, Listen Up!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

the thing is, everyone wants to be M$ with regards to the OS and game market, they all want to lock people in so that they can't leave.

Sure they do, but if they're trying it while going up against a company that has a monopoly they can leverage they'll lose. Sony is part of a cartel and has some leverage to bring to bear. Apple has a near monopoly on iPods they can exploit (and nothing to lose from interoperability). Even so, unless they work together to take shares in a competitive market, they'll fall further and further behind as isolationist entities.

Even the nice guys of the market won't open up everything. Just leave those damn closed source games for PCs

They don't need to open up very much at all, simply to collaborate on an open standard toolset. None of them have a lot to lose by this and mostly they keep technologies closed out of reflexive secrecy.

Re:New and lost?

[GodInHell]

If you have to link into Live and use the features of Live (sorry gamespy) they might get me to pay attention when I look at a game. "Will this game support pain-free multiplayer set-up? Yehp, it's got that logo thing.. good to go."

-GiH

Re:Changes little

[Nasarius]

Absolutely. What would be interesting if there was a certain minimum performance (say, 40fps average, never dropping below 30fps for more than a second) required for a minimum hardware spec. So if your hardware is GFW-certified and the game is GFW-certified, you know it won't run/look like crap. That would be worth doing.

Re:If they can pull it off...

[Ucklak]

No, they did this 10 years ago - they're just folowing SOP, rehash what's been done but call it new.

Gaming 10 years ago (specifically for Windows) had online communities. Remember DOOM? Duke Nukem? The Star Wars games?

When IE4 hit the playing field, coupled with the Zone (the MS online community) it was a booming community.

This is just market spin to keep mindset so that the Windows platform is synonymous with games and gamers will not venture off elsewhere.

The casual gamer does not care what platform he plays on. He cares only if his chess game will work.

360 Controller Requirement

[Roceh]

Although it'll be nice to have a proper centralised player matching service on the pc, much like live on the 360. The biggest concern for me is the mandatory 360 controller compatiblity to get games for windows certification. For RTS games this is going to result in horid UI's which have to work with both a mouse and a controller. Also as the games will most likely be cross platform with the 360, the controller will take precedance in the UI design. So games for windows will most likely mean that all the pc gets in future is 360 ports that require a controller plugged into the pc to play decently.

Ultimately while this seems like its a bold new push for windows games, in reality I can see this reduce the distinctiveness of PC games against 360 games (the control method) and hence push more people onto the cheaper wholely owned microsoft platform ... the 360.

Re:Changes little

[Phisbut]

Absolutely. What would be interesting if there was a certain minimum performance (say, 40fps average, never dropping below 30fps for more than a second) required for a minimum hardware spec. So if your hardware is GFW-certified and the game is GFW-certified, you know it won't run/look like crap. That would be worth doing.

That couldn't work. On a Windows PC, the hardware is not the only thing that detemines the FPS you get in the game. You musn't forget the horde of spyware, viruses and other malware running in the background eating up memory and CPU.

Why feel the need to hate Microsoft so much?

[ActiveNick]

Seriously? Yes, I'm a Microsoft MVP, yes I'm a software architect who specializes in Microsoft .NET technologies, yes I'm a big Windows gamer, I also have an Xbox and an Xbox 360, I'm an Xbox Live subscriber, so yes, you can call me a fanboi. But it amazes me to see that in the eyes of so many readers here, Microsoft can do no right. Whatever they do, you'll see the glass half-empty. Sure they tried gaming on Windows before and the MPC spec too, and it did not work. It does not mean the idea is bad, it means the implementation is. Look at pen computing: since the late 80's many companies (other than Microsoft) tried to push for pen computing and failed utterly, whereas Microsoft decided to take a crack at it and was very successful with the Tablet PC. Sometimes the approach has to change, not the idea. Ask any entrepreneur, they know. I'm happy this is coming to Games for Windows. do not need a nice box and I can easily read specs, but I also recognize that common folks (not everyone is a geek like us guys) will find it useful, and the extra testing will only help quality. And so what if Microsoft uses their Windows dominance to help the Xbox? Look at Sony... 70% of the console market and they cannot innovate beyond a faster CPU and they have such an arrogant attitude. And if Linux is supposed to be an alternative to Windows, then it needs to have what it takes. If you say "I only play on Windows because Linux has no hardware drivers and no games, it means there is no market for these. Linux still has to get a lot better for it to be used by average folks at home on their desktops. It is a great server OS, but it just does not cut it for desktops, and to beat Microsoft, you have to build something better, no destroy Redmond. I'm open to a discussion here, but please ask yourself, is there anything that Microsoft could do as a business that would ever please you? Honestly?

Hardware Rating

[Odin_Tiger]

If they want to pull this off, one thing they will absolutely have to do is make available for download some sort of non-geek friendly equivalent of 3DMark so that people who don't know the make and model of every component in their PC can just run a quick test and get a list of all the games they can currently run and possibly what they need in order to run LatestKillerGame 2008 or whatever, as well as hardware compatibility testing and a guided, centralized driver, BIOS, etc. upgrade system. So long as you have to know a dozen different numbers, from GPU to RAM speed to Processor family to Driver Version, as well as digging through archaic hardware manufacturer support sites and mysterious newsgroups to make sure that you don't end up with a dud even though your hardware exceeds the spec (Ubisoft / NVidia, I'm looking at you) because drivers are clashing and all involved parties are sitting on one hand and using the other to point a finger at somebody else instead of fixing it, PC gaming will simply never compare to console. Granted, I use a console maybe twice a month compared to gaming on PC nearly daily, but there's just no way in hell most of my console-gamer friends could hope to sift through the mess.

Re:oh boy

[Andrew Kismet]

Minesweeper flags on MSN games. Been around for ages. I play it against a friend of mine when we're both bored.

Familiar

[Perseid]

"Designed for Windows XP"
"Games for Windows."

Looks like they're really the same thing. And the summary is wrong. Redmond isn't forcing anything. If you want to have the GFW brand on your package you have to follow a set of rules, just like Designed For Windows 95. And I can still release a game for the PC that is whatever I want rules be damned. I won't get the GFW banner but MS can't stop me from releasing my game.

reinvigorate the PC games market my ass...

[NullProg]

Microsoft reinvigorated this household out of the PC games for the Windows market with its WGA spyware crap.

Case in point (this experience is from 01, 2006. Maybe Microsoft has changed since then),
Atari ships DX9 with Roller Coaster Tycoon Gold. It won't work under Windows 98SE/2000 with the latest Nvidia card without DX9c. Atari states the can't provide the update, you need it from Microsoft. Microsoft refuses to let you download the DX9c update because its WGA spyware thinks my original Win2000/Win98 systems are stolen. I've tried it several different boxes with different (unregistered) store bought copies of Win2k and Win98SE. All failed the WGA spyware check.

Thats OK though, all our new kid games are for the PS2/Gamecube (and Wii soon). All the new purchased PC (PC means personal computer for the Microsoft folks) games are for Linux, I bought 8 games this year.

So much for Win32/DirectX being compatible accross different Microsoft platforms.
And Microsoft wonders why thier entertainment division revenue is flat. Its called treating your customers like shit.

Enjoy,

Re:If they can pull it off...

[trawg]

10 years ago, in the wake of Window's 95, everyone wanted someone to make PC gaming a more user friendly experience that didn't require endless patches and work to play games

Windows 95 onwards made life WAY easier to play games. Remember dicking around with autoexec.bat and config.sys trying to get enough free memory to load games back in the day?!? I sure do.

Windows made my life much easier in terms of game playing. Patching games is a whole different problem and comes down to how developers handle patches. Some of them have a clue and get it right most of the time, but some of them are STILL utterly clueless. Some of them expect you to download a 500mb patch for a minor version update. Some of them expect you to pick between 8 different updates from various previous versions for a 2mb patch. Augh!

Re:New and lost?

[Nasarius]

Fact is, many games will auto-detect your hardware and give recommended settings. The problem is that the settings either can't be adjusted low enough to achieve decent performance, or if they can, it ends up looking WORSE than the previous generation. See Oblivion vs. Morrowind on a GeForce FX card. Morrowind looks beautiful and runs smoothly. Oblivion needs to use the very lowest settings to run faster than a slideshow, at which point it looks more like Daggerfall than Morrowind. And it still doesn't run very well. So while your idea is valid, it requires game developers to create engines that can be adjusted downwards while still retaining acceptable visual quality. I don't think this is too much to ask. I know OGRE [ogre3d.org] provides a number of features to make removing effects or detail quite easy.

Re:oh boy

[flanktwo]

http://minesweeperlive.com/ [minesweeperlive.com] - real minesweeper, not that flags game.

MS and Vista can kiss my shiny red babboon ass

[whorfin]

I can't guarantee this, but I believe that I've purchased my last windows game already. It's consoles for me now, baybee.

Gettng a PC rigged out for games is kinda pricey, every year or two I gotta get a new video card or sit in the back of the bus, and they're still not as fun as most console games. PC games tend to be solitary. Even when you're playing with others, you're alone. (Yes, I'm discounting the lan party, due to the microscopic size of that subculture)

I'll just do without the games I can't play on a console.

Anyway, this coming from somebody who has already spent far far too much of my life and money on PC gaming.

Re:this is just an extortion scheme

[jorghis]

You are completely wrong.

MS isnt forcing them to pay a logo fee. This is about simplifying hardware requirements. If you RTFA you will see that this is a system where your pc is given a ranking out of five stars that denotes what its capabilities are. That way when you go to the store you dont have to know anything about how much memory you have, what video card you have, the size of your L2 cache, etc.

This helps game developers a great deal because it means that people can buy games with confidence that they will work. A lot of folks have been turned off to pc games in the past because they got home after shelling out fifty bucks for a game and realized it wasnt playable with only 512 megs of memory or whatever.

Of course slashdotters didnt fail to put a negative spin on this with some lame conspiracy about how they are forcing their brand onto developers. And the conspiracy doesnt even make sense, those boxes ALREADY say that the game requires MS Windows.

Re:New and lost?

[Deliveranc3]

Something else exciting, system liscencing for games.

$1 per game ring any bells...

There's no more reason console developers should get it than games designed for directX.

It's going to take about 2-3 years before they'll be able to sensibly enforce it.

2-3 years after that the golden age of linux gaming can begin.

oh my, does this mean?

[Quixxilver]

Yup... it's time to go outside! :) I enjoy games as much as the next guy. I steer clear of consoles because the game play is typically not what I want. That said... If MS develop something I don't enjoy, I won't use it. /shrug No sweat off my back. It's the ignorance of overreaction that they feed off of. They develop products to make money. It's not a sin, nor is it illegal. It's what people do to make a living. While most everyone seems to be complaining here, I doubt very seriously their actions will stop you from spending your money on their products in the future. They've spent countless man-hours and money to ensure that continues. It's quite simple... They want the most money for their games and you want the most game for your money. They will continue to push the limits to get you to spend more, as you will continue to demand newer and better games. It's the very reason that the $500 Radeon 9800 Pro that was remarkably desired just a couple years ago is now "obsolete?"... or how about the 3.4GHz P4? Because it's not Dual-Core it's not good enough any more? Now we'll need Dual-Core cpu's with parallel dual-core gpu's to run high-end uber games! OMG! hmph.. or not. It's all marketing bs. Heck, the most fun I've had on the 360 is playing the classic games that can be downloaded through xbox live. /shrug A 25yo $5 game on a $500 console? That's so ironic, it's nauseating. Not to say I'm above it. I've got my custom home-built $1500+ pc, complete with high-end case and cooling system that has now become obsolete... so that I can pay $40+/mo for internet and a $15/mo subscription to blizzard so that I can a) play WoW and b) get the weather/traffic before I go to work? I guess what I'm tryin' to say is... Quit crying. If you don't like it, don't use it.

Re:New and lost?

[Cederic]

And it costs money.

Live doesn't make sense for MMORPGs. It doesn't make sense for modders. It doesn't make sense for those of us that don't trust Microsoft. It doesn't make sense for those of us over the age of 14 seeking mature gaming companions.

It might be easy; that doesn't make it good.

Re:New and lost?

[Jesus_666]

If Microsoft dictates fees for commercial use of DirectX, devs will investigate OpenGL, especially as now there's a valid business case for it. OpenGL usage means simplified porting means a higher chance for a Linux port.

Not exactly a golden age, but it definitely increases the chance of a given game being ported.