Microsoft and Nvidia Abandon PC Gaming Alliance 195
An anonymous reader writes with this quote from PC Authority:
"Ever since Microsoft turned its back on Windows gaming in favor of the closed Xbox ecosystem, the platform has been crying out for a champion. The company occasionally gives nods toward a revived focus upon PC gaming, most recently with yet another relaunch on Games for Windows Live and a trio of upcoming PC games, but when it comes to throwing cash around the Xbox is the beneficiary. What can definitely be said is that the one group that should be championing the PC, the PC Gaming Alliance, is going backwards. In 2009 the group lost the biggest PC game developer/publisher, Activision-Blizzard, and now it seems that both Microsoft and Nvidia have bid the alliance farewell."
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. If Microsoft wanted to improve the status of PC gaming, they would produce a new XBOX with an x64 processor in it.
If Microsoft wanted to improve the status of PC gaming, they wouldn't be trying to move people onto consoles.
Their problem is that they've been successful enough at doing so to reduce most people's need for a new Windows PC -- gaming is about the only thing Joe Sixpack does which could stress a modern system -- without making any money from consoles.
Odd given their busness model.... (Score:2, Insightful)
I will NEVER buy an X-Box to game on, so they will not be getting money from me for that.
I DO buy windows products for 2 reasons 1) play games on, 2) keep up with current version so I can make money fixing other peoples PC's.
if they are no longer supporting gaming why would people buy their operating system? To do office work? Linux does that quite well. To do development? Linux does that even better.
Apparently their new business model will be leasing out cloud servers to run legacy OS to businesses that were not smart enough to use Linux. How sad.
Another M$ "partnership" bites the dust (Score:4, Insightful)
Nokia, you're next.
Re:PC = Windows? (Score:4, Insightful)
Game Developers are more than capable of developing cross platform. But they have to go where the money is and what the Managers say, games cost an awful lot to develop. and while developing the code to be cross platform may or may not impact much on development time , it certainly impacts on QA - you are at least tripling your playtesting time as you now have to support 3 platforms. Look at the market share of Linux and Mac and its obvious that while its possible to develop crossplatform - the additional cost of supporting those platforms becomes a real problem. Not to mention Linux having a million different distributions and questionable graphics driver support.
Unless someone finds a disruptive technology that solves this problem.
One way may be to develop some sort of Virtual Machine that runs on all 3 major platforms and have games target that - this would then allow developers to target one "virtual" platform.
By the way -Porting CryEngine or Unreal Engine to QT is a preposterous suggestion - they are in no way similar frameworks , QT is for building desktop / moble applications - the other is for building 3D games. As far as I am aware Unreal Engine is already crossplatform in its own right.
N.