Valve Questions Microsoft's PC Gaming Commitment 79
GamesIndustry.biz is reporting on comments from an interview they conducted with Doug Lombardi, marketing manager at Valve Studios. Lombardi criticized Microsoft's recent commitment to PC gaming in the form of the 'Games for Windows' initiative, which we've previously discussed here on the site. In Lombardi's view, this new push for games on the PC platform is nothing more than an extended advertising scheme to sell the Vista OS. "'Sony and Microsoft both have armies of PR people whose job it is to cram that information down the throats of press and analysts every day ... All those people do is say the PC's dying, the console's winning, and nobody on the PC side is championing that platform. And sales data tracks retail, and there's no doubt about it, PC sales at retail are declining ... World of Warcraft is making a whole lot of money outside of the retail channel, we're making a decent bit of cash off Steam, all the casual guys are not tracked - the PopCap games, Bejewelled, all that stuff doesn't show up.'"
The guidelines (Score:5, Informative)
I'm far from loving Microsoft but I don't understand why people see a marketing ploy in the Games for Windows thing. As I see it, it's a guideline for developers so that the customer knows that the games he/she's buying will work in a certain specific way, and from what I read, it's not bad at all.
For example, the game must be executable from a normal user account (finaly!) and the savegames must be placed in the users' home directory (My Documents). It's a huge step for Windows - especially for games - where lots of programs can't be run under a normal user environment (this was becoming less and less true recently but there where still many games unplayable without admin rights). Then, it forces the game to support widescreen displays, task switching (alt-tab), have a shortcut in the Games Browser, etc.
Nowhere does it say that is has to be installed on Vista. Granted, it was announced a only a few months before Vista came out, but I think it's normal that they try to start fresh with a new OS with guidelines for programs that will be coming out from now on. Still, none of the requirements state that it needs Vista. Company of Heroes is a Game for Windows and does everything right on Windows XP.
I havent read it all, but I doubt it would prevent developing games for other platforms (Mac, Linux). It only makes it so that IF the game is to be installed on Windows, it should follow the guidelines. And some of them are a given for MacOS and Linux (user account, savegames)
Steam? (Score:3, Informative)
Hmmm, that might just be an idea. Once they come up with such a thing, maybe they can choose a cool name for it, like "steam"
(granted steam is more than just a download system, it also handles their rather annoying copy-protection, advertisements, etc, but it's been around for awhile, and hasn't killed box stores yet).
Re:Get rid of Steam (Score:3, Informative)
I was actually for steam before at least somewhat, but it's just a lot of examples of a good idea that Valve did wrong.
Streamed content: Possible with steam, but just doesn't really happen, definitely not as well as it could (thats where you download the engine/core data files first, then the first level or two, then start playing the game while level 3 and 4 download in the background.)
Episodic content: Neat idea,if they stuck to it. Instead HL2:E2 gets pushed absurdly far back to the point where I'm no longer remotely involved in the E1 story. And they bundled in two additional games, which goes against the entire premise of episodic content (release often, develop quickly).
Game data stored online: Many possibilities, like weekly map additions or updates. Nothing happens.
I could go on and on, but frankly its not even worth it. Valve fucks up everything they touch, sometimes not enough to ruin it, but never enough to make it come out as good as it could have and should have been.